The Quran

The creed of Islám, "Lá-iláha-il-lal-láhu wa Muhammad-ur-Rasúl-Ulláh," (There is no deity but God, and Muhammad is the Apostle of God) is very short, but the system itself is a very dogmatic one. Such statements as: "The Qurán is an all-embracing and sufficient code, regulating everything," "The Qurán contains the entire code of Islám—that is, it is not a book of religious precepts merely, but it governs all that a Muslim does," "The Qurán contains the whole religion of Muhammad," "The Qurán which contains the whole Gospel of Islám" are not simply misleading, they are erroneous. So far from the Qurán alone being the sole rule of faith and practice to Muslims, there is not one single sect amongst them whose faith and practice is based on it alone. No one among them disputes its authority or casts any doubt upon its genuineness. Its voice is supreme in all that it concerns, but its exegesis, the whole system of legal jurisprudence and of theological science, is largely founded on the Traditions. Amongst the orthodox Musalmáns, the foundations of the Faith are four in number, the Qurán, Sunnat, Ijmá' and Qíás. The fact that all the sects do not agree with the orthodox—the Sunnís—in this matter illustrates another important fact in Islám—the want of unity amongst its followers.

The Qurán.—The question of the inspiration will be fully discussed, and an account of the laws of the exegesis of the Qurán will be given in the next chapter. It is sufficient now to state that this book is held in the highest veneration by Muslims of every sect. When being read it is kept on a stand elevated above the floor, and no one must read or touch it without first making a legal ablution. It is not translated unless there is the most urgent necessity, and even then the Arabic text is printed with the translation. It is said that God chose the sacred month of Ramazán in which to give all the revelations which in the form of books have been vouchsafed to mankind. Thus on the first night of that month the books of Abraham came down from heaven; on the sixth the books of Moses; on the thirteenth the Injíl, or Gospel, and on the twenty-seventh the Qurán. On that night, the Laylut-ul-Qadr, or "night of power," the whole Qurán is said to have descended to the lowest of the seven heavens, from whence it was brought piecemeal to Muhammad as occasion required. "Verily we have caused it (the Qurán) to descend on the night of power." (Súra xcvii. 1.) That night is called the blessed night, the night better than a thousand months, the night when angels came down by the permission of their Lord, the night which bringeth peace and blessings till the rosy dawn. Twice on that night in the solitude of the cave of Hira the voice called, twice though pressed sore "as if a fearful weight had been laid upon him," the prophet struggled against its influence. The third time he heard the words:—

"When the voice had ceased to speak, telling how from minutest beginnings man had been called into existence, and lifted up by understanding and knowledge of the Lord, who is most beneficent, and who by the pen had revealed that which man did not know, Muhammad woke up from his trance and felt as if "a book had been written in his heart." He was much alarmed. Tradition records that he went hastily to his wife and said—"O Khadíja! what has happened to me!" He lay down and she watched by him. When he recovered from his paroxysm, he said "O Khadíja! he of whom one would not have believed (i.e., himself) has become either a soothsayer (káhin) or mad." She replied, "God is my protection, O Ab-ul-kásim. He will surely not let such a thing happen unto thee, for thou speakest the truth, dost not return evil for evil, keepest faith, art of a good life and art kind to thy relatives and friends, and neither art thou a talker abroad in the bazaars. What has befallen thee? Hast thou seen aught terrible?" Muhammad replied "Yes." And he told her what he had seen. Whereupon she answered and said:—"Rejoice, O dear husband and be of good cheer. He in whose hands stands Khadíja's life, is my witness that thou wilt be the Prophet of this people." The next Súra, the 74th, was revealed at Mecca, after which there seems to have been an intermission, called the Fatrah. It was during this time that the Prophet gained some knowledge of the contents of the Jewish and the Christian Scriptures.

Gabriel is believed to have been the medium of communication. This fact, however, is only once stated in the Qurán:—"Say, whoso is the enemy of Gabriel—For he it is who by God's leave hath caused the Qurán to descend on thy heart" (Súra ii. 91.) This Súra was revealed some years after the Prophet's flight to Madína. The other references to the revelation of the Qurán are:—"Verily from the Lord of the worlds hath this book come down; the Faithful Spirit (Rúh-ul-Ámín) hath come down with it" (Súra xxvi. 192.) "The Qurán is no other than a revelation revealed to him, one terrible in power (Shadíd-ul-Quá) taught it him." (Súra liii. 5.) These latter passages do not state clearly that Gabriel was the medium of communication, but the belief that he was is almost, if not entirely, universal, and the Commentators say that the terms "Rúh-ul-Ámín" and "Shadíd-ul-Quá" refer to no other angel or spirit. The use of the word "taught" in the last Súra quoted, and the following expression in Súra lxxv. 18. "When we have recited it, then follow thou the recital," show that the Qurán is entirely an objective revelation and that Muhammad was only a passive medium of communication. The Muhammadan historian, Ibn Khaldoun, says on this point:—"Of all the divine books the Qurán is the only one of which the text, words and phrases have been communicated to a prophet by an audible voice. It is otherwise with the Pentateuch, the Gospel and the other divine books: the prophets received them under the form of ideas." This expresses the universal belief on this point—a belief which reveals the essentially mechanical nature of Islám.

The Qurán thus revealed is now looked upon as the standing miracle of Islám. Other divine books, it is admitted, were revelations received under the form of ideas, but the Qurán is far superior to them all for the actual text was revealed to the ear of the prophet. Thus we read in Súra lxxv. 16-19:—

The Qurán is, then, believed to be a miraculous revelation of divine eloquence, as regards both form and substance, arrangement of words, and its revelation of sacred things. It is asserted that each well-accredited prophet performed miracles in that particular department of human skill or science most flourishing in his age. Thus in the days of Moses magic exercised a wide influence, but all the magicians of Pharaoh's court had to submit to the superior skill of the Hebrew prophet. In the days of Jesus the science of medicine flourished. Men possessed great skill in the art of healing; but no physician could equal the skill of Jesus, who not only healed the sick, but raised the dead. In the days of Muhammad the special and most striking feature of the age was the wonderful power of the Arabs in the art of poetry. Muhammad-ud-Damiri says:—"Wisdom hath alighted on three things—the brain of the Franks, the hands of the Chinese and the tongue of the Arabs." They were unrivalled for their eloquence, for the skill with which they arranged their material and gave expression to their thoughts. It is in this very particular that superior excellence is claimed for the Qurán. It is to the Muhammadan mind a sure evidence of its miraculous origin that it should excel in this respect. Muslims say that miracles have followed the revelations given to other prophets in order to confirm the divine message. In this case the Qurán is both a revelation and a miracle. Muhammad himself said:—"Each prophet has received manifest signs which carried conviction to men: but that which I have received is the revelation. So I hope to have a larger following on the day of resurrection than any other prophet has." Ibn Khaldoun says that "by this the Prophet means that such a wonderful miracle as the Qurán, which is also a revelation, should carry conviction to a very large number."

To a Muslim the fact is quite clear, and so to him the Qurán is far superior to all the preceding books. Muhammad is said to have convinced a rival, Lebid, a poet-laureate, of the truth of his mission by reciting to him a portion of the now second Súra. "Unquestionably it is one of the very grandest specimens of Koranic or Arabic diction.... But even descriptions of this kind, grand as they be, are not sufficient to kindle and preserve the enthusiasm and the faith and the hope of a nation like the Arabs.... The poets before him had sung of valour and generosity, of love and strife and revenge ... of early graves, upon which weeps the morning cloud, and of the fleeting nature of life which comes and goes as the waves of the desert sands, as the tents of a caravan, as a flower that shoots up and dies away. Or they shoot their bitter arrows of satire right into the enemy's own soul. Muhammad sang of none of these. No love-minstrelsy his, not the joys of the world, nor sword, nor camel, nor jealousy, nor human vengeance, not the glories of tribe or ancestor. He preached Islám." The very fierceness with which this is done, the swearing such as Arab orator, proficient though he may have been in the art, had never made, the dogmatic certainty with which the Prophet proclaimed his message have tended, equally with the passionate grandeur of his utterances, to hold the Muslim world spell-bound to the letter and imbued with all the narrowness of the book.

So sacred is the text supposed to be that only the Companions of the Prophet are deemed worthy of being commentators on it. The work of learned divines since then has been to learn the Qurán by heart and to master the traditions, with the writings of the earliest commentators thereon. The revelation itself is never made a subject of investigation or tried by the ordinary rules of criticism. If only the Isnád, or chain of authorities for any interpretation, is good, that interpretation is unhesitatingly accepted as the correct one. It is a fundamental article of belief that no other book in the world can possibly approach near to it in thought or expression. It deals with positive precepts rather than with principles. Its decrees are held to be binding not in the spirit merely but in the very letter on all men, at all times and under every circumstance of life. This follows as a natural consequence from the belief in its eternal nature.

The various portions recited by the Prophet during the twenty-three years of his prophetical career were committed to writing by some of his followers, or treasured up in their memories. As the recital of the Qurán formed a part of every act of public worship, and as such recital was an act of great religious merit, every Muslim tried to remember as much as he could. He who could do so best was entitled to the highest honour, and was often the recipient of a substantial reward. The Arab love for poetry facilitated the exercise of this faculty. When the Prophet died the revelation ceased. There was no distinct copy of the whole, nothing to show what was of transitory importance, what of permanent value. There is nothing which proves that the Prophet took any special care of any portions. There seems to have been no definite order in which, when the book was compiled, the various Súras were arranged, for the Qurán, as it now exists, is utterly devoid of all historical or logical sequence. For a year after the Prophet's death nothing seems to have been done; but then the battle of Yemana took place in which a very large number of the best Qurán reciters were slain. Omar took fright at this, and addressing the Khalíf Abu Bakr, said, "The slaughter may again wax hot amongst the repeaters of the Qurán in other fields of battle, and much may be lost therefrom. Now, therefore, my advice is that thou shouldest give speedy orders for the collection of the Qurán."

Abu Bakr agreed, and said to Zeid who had been an amanuensis of the Prophet:—"Thou art a young man, and wise, against whom no one amongst us can cast an imputation; and thou wert wont to write down the inspired revelations of the Prophet of the Lord, wherefore now search out the Qurán and bring it all together." Zeid being at length pressed to undertake the task proceeded to gather the Qurán together from "date leaves, and tablets of white stone, and from the hearts of men." In course of time it was all compiled in the order in which the book is now arranged. This was the authorized text for some twenty-three years after the death of Muhammad. Owing, however, either to different modes of recitation, or to differences of expression in the sources from which Zeid's first recension was made, a variety of different readings crept into the copies in use. The Faithful became alarmed and the Khalíf Osmán was persuaded to put a stop to such a danger. He appointed Zeid with three of the leading men of the Quraish as assistants to go over the whole work again. A careful recension was made of the whole book which was then assimilated to the Meccan dialect, the purest in Arabia. After this all other copies of the Qurán were burnt by order of the Khalíf, and new transcripts were made of the revised edition which was now the only authorised copy.

As it is a fundamental tenet of Islám that the Qurán is incorruptible and absolutely free from error, no little difficulty has been felt in explaining the need of Osmán's new and revised edition and of the circumstances under which it took place; but as usual a Tradition has been handed down which makes it lawful to read the Qurán in seven dialects. The book in its present form may be accepted as a genuine reproduction of Abu Bakr's edition with authoritative corrections. We may rest assured that we have in the Qurán now in use the record of what Muhammad said. It thus becomes a fundamental basis of Islám. It was a common practice of the early Muslims when speaking of the Prophet to say:—"His character is the Qurán." When people curious to know details of the life of their beloved master asked 'Áyesha, one of his widows, about him, she used to reply:—"Thou hast the Qurán, art thou not an Arab and readest the Arab tongue? Why dost thou ask me, for the Prophet's disposition is no other than the Qurán?"

Whether Muhammad would have arranged the Qurán as we now have it is a subject on which it is impossible to form an opinion. There are Traditions which seem to show that he had some doubts as to its completeness. I give the following account on the authority of M. Caussin de Percival. When Muhammad felt his end draw near he said:—"Bring ink and paper: I wish to write to you a book to preserve you always from error." But it was too late. He could not write or dictate and so he said:—"May the Qurán always be your guide. Perform what it commands you: avoid what it prohibits." The genuineness of the first part of this Tradition is, I think, very doubtful, the latter is quite in accordance with the Prophet's claim for his teaching. The letter of the book became, as Muhammad intended it should become, a despotic influence in the Muslim world, a barrier to freethinking on the part of all the orthodox, an obstacle to innovation in all spheres—political, social, intellectual and moral. There are many topics connected with it which can be better explained in the next chapter. All that has now to be here stated is that the Qurán is the first foundation of Islám. It is an error to suppose it is the only one: an error which more than anything else has led persons away from the only position in which they could obtain a true idea of the great system of Islám.

The Shía'hs maintain, without good reason, that the following verses favourable to the claims of 'Alí and of the Shía'h faction were omitted in Osmán's recension.

"O Believers! believe in the two lights. (Muhammad and 'Alí).

'Alí is of the number of the pious, we shall give him his right in the day of judgment; we shall not pass over those who wish to deceive him. We have honoured him above all this family. He and his family are very patient. Their enemyis the chief of sinners.

We have announced to thee a race of just men, men who will not oppose our orders. My mercy and peace are on them living or dead.

As to those who walk in their way, my mercy is on them; they will certainly gain the mansions of Paradise."