Foundations of Islam Series- How the Qur’an Was Revealed and Compiled
By Hamza Yusuf | 2026-01-16T00:37:18.96333+00:00 | Topic: Iman
Foundations of Islam Series: How the Qur'an Was Revealed and Compiled
Beginning with Bismillah
Traditionally, Muslims begin anything that they do that's worth doing. There's a hadith that says anything worth doing should begin with
(بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ * الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ * الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ * مَالِكِ يَوْمِ الدِّينِ - bismillahi ar-rahmani ar-rahim * al-hamdu lillahi rabbi al-alamin * ar-rahmani ar-rahim * maliki yaum al-din)In Warsh:
مَالِكِ يَوْمِ الدِّينِ
In Hafs:
مَلِكِ يَوْمِ الدِّينِ
بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ
الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ
الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ
مَالِكِ يَوْمِ الدِّينِ
Now (Maliki) means "the possessor of the Day of Judgment." مَلِكِ (Maliki) means "the king."
So, the meaning is not changed. They're both - they're both - maybe you should write that word and make it secret.
Well, yeah, the difference here - same rules - and the difference would be in the Hafs, there's just a mark right there: مَلِكِ (Maliki). And in the Warsh: مَالِكِ (Maliki) like that.
So, there's only a few differences like that. The others will be more in pronunciation.
So it's time for Salah to pray.
**[End of Lecture]** (Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim), which is also the actual first statement in the Qur'an. If you open up any Qur'an, the very first thing that will be read is Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, which means: "In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate."
And الرَّحْمُنُ الرَّحِيمُ (ar-Rahman ar-Rahim) are derived from the same root, because Arabic words - and I'm probably going to talk about this a lot over this course of lectures - Arabic words are built on triliteral roots. The Semitic languages are root-based languages. So Hebrew has the same phenomenon.
The Nature of Arabic Language
You're dealing with a language in which a semantic field or a constellation of meanings emerges out of primitive root structures which are based on three letters generally, sometimes four. But the vast majority are three-lettered, which is interesting in terms of cosmology. Three is a very interesting number because it introduces the idea of multiplicity. From the one came the two, and from the two came myriad forms. So three
is literally the beginning of multiplicity. And so language, by its nature, which is almost inexhaustible in a sense and could in reality be considered inexhaustible, is built in the Arabic language on three.
The Word "Qur'an"
Now the Qur'an itself is a word which also comes from a root word, and there are some differences about it, but generally in English it's written like this, and now becoming more popular like this. Generally, the root words here are قاف، راء، ياء (qaaf, raa, and yaa). And these are three Arabic letters. Qaaf is really a letter that probably we don't have an equivalent. It's done by using something in your throat, by squeezing the upper portion of your throat together and ejecting this sound: qaaf, qaaf. It almost sounds like a crow. But the second, raa, is similar to our letter R, and then yaa.
At its root meaning, you get the word for city, which is interesting because it brings in the idea of civilization.
And traditionally, civilizations are built on books. The vast majority of human civilizations you will find that there is fundamentally a book at the core of the civilization.
Books at the Core of Civilizations
For the Greek civilization, it would probably be Homer. In other words, we can't really imagine a Greek civilization without Homer, given what we know about the Greeks. Plato is dependent on Homer. The playwrights are dependent on Homer. For the Hebrew people, it was certainly the Torah or their Bible. And this will become the foundational book for the Western peoples, the European peoples. The Bible really becomes a foundational book, first in Greek and then in Latin, and ultimately for the English-speaking people, the King James Bible.
For the Arabs, interestingly enough, there is no book in the Arabic language until the Qur'an. There is literally no book. They are an ancient people, and yet there is no book in the Arabic language until the Qur'an. Prior to that, the closest thing that you could consider literary was poetry that was done orally. And there were seven odes that were quite popular that were hung in the Kaaba, in the house in Mecca, and were honored by the Arabs, the pre-Islamic Arabs, as being the quintessence of eloquence and of the Arabic art form of poetry.
The Qur'an as Recitation and Book
So when the Qur'an comes to these people, this is a radical departure from any previous concepts within the culture of knowledge and the transmission of knowledge. The other root that you are going to find in here is the word "to recite" - قَرَأَ (qara'a). And qara'a in the Arabic language means two things: it means to read and it means to recite. So it has an oral and it has a written quality to it.
Now, interestingly enough, if you look at - there's a really wonderful book which I recommend, particularly all of you since you're teachers, if you haven't read it, it's really worth reading - which is called A is for Ox by Barry Sanders. And this book is talking about the fact that orality is the substratum of literacy. If you do not
have an oral tradition, you cannot have a literate tradition. And one of the things, one of his complaints, is that our culture is losing its orality.
The Importance of Oral Tradition
The oral tradition in this culture is dying out because of television and other forms of media in which visualization, and not orality, becomes the dominant means of raising our children. So if you look at children for the first five years of their life, they are oral creatures. They're in the oral world. They're not literate; they're in the oral world. And traditionally what would happen is they would hear stories and their imaginations would be ignited. And this was something that took place in all cultures.
Now in this culture, the recent phenomenon is children being raised in front of the television. So the mother is no longer transmitting the oral lore, the childish lore of the culture to these children, but in fact it's being experienced through the medium of visualization, which is a powerful medium but it has certain effects. And Sanders believes that one of the effects is the lack of humanization. That he believes that orality is a process of humanization.
The fact that the Arabs are an oral people is very significant. They're an oral people, and the Qur'an is a Qur'an before it's a book. In other words, the real meaning of Qur'an is the recital. It is the oral book.
And the next word that the Qur'an is identified as is كِتَاب (Kitab), which means "book." And كَتَبَ (Kataba), the root word, means "to join together." It means to join together.
The Birth and Early Life of Muhammad
So what happens with the Arabs is that in 570 of the Christian era, a boy is born in Mecca to a mother whose father dies prior to that during her pregnancy - Amina. And this boy is named مُحَمَّد ﷺ (Muhammad). And during this time, for the first few years of his life, he is sent to the desert to the desert Arabs to learn the language through this tradition of the Arabs in raising - the aristocratic Arabs would send their children to the desert Arabs because they considered that they were the most eloquent Arabs, and they wanted the children to absorb the language within the first five years of their life, because they recognized that children that were raised amongst these people who spoke in very powerful Arabic would have also strong Arabic, even if they spent the later portion of their life in the city.
And so during this time, for the first 40 years of this man's life, really, from all - if we look at it just in terms of a human life, very little matters of significance occur in this man's life. By all intents and purposes, one would really say that had the Prophet not reached his 40th year, that he would have been known amongst his people perhaps for one thing only, which was that he was extremely trustworthy. He was a very quiet person. He did not speak much. He did not quote poetry. He was not a poet. He was not known to engage in discourse with the people. He was a contemplative person. He liked to go off and reflect on his own. He was known to be extremely kind to poor people, to orphans. This is all mentioned in the tradition.
Other than that, he had no aspirations of being a leader within his people as some people would. He was from an aristocratic clan, but he happened to be from a sub-grouping within that clan that was on bad times - Banu Hashim.
The First Revelation
Now, just prior to his 40th lunar year - because the Muslims, when they talk about years, they're talking about lunar years, which is about 11 days short of a solar year each year, so his 40th lunar year would probably be about 39 years of age in terms of solar, a little less probably - at the age just before his 40th birthday, he began to see some dreams in the tradition. But he would go off to a mountain just outside of Mecca which is called جَبَلُ النُّورِ (Jabal an-Nur) the mountain of light. And during that time, the word that was used to describe what he was doing was تَحَنُّثٌ (Tahannuth). And in Arabic جِنْثٌ (Hinth) is polytheism. Tahannuth means to avoid polytheism, to avoid idols. So he was going out to this place and he would meditate in this cave.
And we really don't have a description of the actual practices that he was doing, but there was a tradition amongst the Arabs called the حُنَفَاء (Hunafa) or the حَنِيف (Hanif) and these were people who were inclined towards a type of monotheism. They did not worship the idols. They did not believe in the idols, but they did not necessarily speak out against the idols of the Jahili Arabs or the Arabs prior to the Prophet Muhammad's mission.
So he would go to this cave, and in the 40th year, in the month of Ramadan, he had an experience.
Orientalist Views and Modern Perspectives
Now there are many ways to look at this experience, and Western orientalists generally said wretched things about the Prophet if you read early traditional literature coming out of Europe - just really not very nice things. They've become a lot nicer recently since oil was discovered in the Arabian Peninsula. There needs to be diplomacy when we talk about people's beliefs and traditions when you have interests involved there. So orientalists have definitely become - that's a cynical way of looking at it. I think maybe there's been some growth as well within the academic community.
And certainly the impetus for attacking Islam prior to that was often based on an almost evangelical type of Christianity that existed, particularly within the Protestants in England, the Anglican Church and others, who really felt it their duty to Christianize the world. There was a very strong ideal that we should civilize the world, and certainly the Arabs needed it just like anybody else.
And then you have a long history within the Western tradition of just a type of antagonism between the Islamic forces - because they were a world power for centuries - and the Christian forces in Europe. I mean, that tension really - they were coexisting with a lot of tension, with few exceptions in different places, like periods of time in Sicily, for instance, during the time of King Roger of Sicily, where there was a lot of interpenetration going on between the Arabs and the Christians.
The Experience in the Cave
So in the 40th year, anyway, these orientalists basically would traditionally say things almost that he had epileptic fits, this type of thing. The more recent orientalists, and not just orientalists but even theologians like Hans Küng, wrote an interesting book called Christianity and the World Religions. One of the things he says in there is that we have to stop speaking derogatorily about the Prophet Muhammad, because whatever was taking place there, it was certainly, by all accounts that we have, a sincere phenomenon. In other words, he is not willing to accept - and that's his prerogative - that this was a revelation, but he is willing to accept that the person was sincerely deluded, which is a big difference from simply saying that he was insane or that he had mal-intention.
The experience was basically this: It's come down in the tradition that at the age of 40, he was in the cave and a being came to him. It was in the form of a man, and he said:
اقْرَأْ
"Iqra!" - "Recite!" or "Read!"
This was the first word. Now اقْرَأْ (iqra) can be interpreted two ways: it can be interpreted "recite" or "read."
Now the Prophet Muhammad was not - he was neither a reciter of poetry nor could he read. And he said at that point, he said: "I don't know how to recite" or "I don't know how to read." It could be interpreted both ways.
Generally it's interpreted that he did not know how to read.
اقْرَأْ (Iqra!) a second time. اقْرَأْ (Iqra) a third time.
And then, in the tradition, it says that he was actually squeezed until he thought that his sides would burst. And then he said:
اقْرَأْ بِاسْمِ رَبِّكَ الَّذِي خَلَقَ * خَلَقَ الْإِنْسَانَ مِنْ عَلَقٍ * اقْرَأْ وَرَبُّكَ الْأَكْرَمُ * الَّذِي عَلَّمَ بِالْقَلَمِ * عَلَّمَ الْإِنْسَانَ مَا لَمْ يَعْلَمْ
"Read in the name of your Lord who created, created the human being from a clinging substance. Read, and your Lord is the Most Generous, who taught by the pen, taught the human being that which he did not know."
(Quran 96:1-5)
And this is the beginning of this phenomenon that will take place for the next 23 years of his life before he dies.
The revelation said: "Read in the name of your Lord who created the human being from a clinging tissue. Read in the name of your Lord, the Most Generous, who taught the human being with the pen and taught the human being that which he did not know." That's not a very eloquent translation, but I'm just doing that directly from the Arabic, and I'm sure the text will have a better interpretation there.
The Prophet's Concern and Khadijah's Comfort
At this point, the Prophet was concerned. He did not know what was happening to him. He went down to his wife and explained to her what happened. His wife comforted him - (خَدِيجَةُ الْكُبْرَى - Khadijah al-Kubra). She said to him - she was an older woman, and her uncle had been an Arab who converted to Christianity - she was familiar with revelation. She said: "You are a good person. You take care of the orphan. You take care of the widows. You take care of the needy. And I don't think something bad would happen to you like this," because he thought that this might be like some kind of evil spirit or something. I mean, he really did feel that.
Waraqah ibn Nawfal's Confirmation
She takes him to her uncle, (وَرَقَةُ بْنُ نَوْفَلٍ - Waraqah ibn Nawfal), who had some knowledge of previous books. And he says a very interesting thing. He said: "This is the (نَامُوسُ - namus)." Now for people that know Greek, namus comes from nomos, right? And nomos means "the law." So in other words, he was saying: "This is namus that came to Musa (Moses)." In other words, "You are being given a revelation. That's what this is."
And he told him: "Your people, when they find this out, will become your enemies and drive you from this city."
And he said: "Would they do that?" Because he had never done anything wrong to them before that.
And he said: "They will do that, and I wish that I was a young man, that I might be by your side during this."
The Beginning of Revelations
Now during the next period of time, he begins to get these revelations. The next one:
"O you who wraps himself [in clothing]!" (Quran 73:1)
Because he used to wrap himself when he would meditate, wrapped in a cloak. And these revelations begin to come with a regularity.
Now the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, in a description, he said that sometimes the revelation came like a bell, like the ringing of a bell. In other words, it began as a vibration, and then it would move into letters and then into the actual words.
The Muqatta'at - Mysterious Letters
And it's interesting because when you hear, for instance - there's a group of letters that many of the chapters of the Qur'an begin with. Nineteen chapters in the Qur'an begin with these letters. They're called مُقَطَّعَات (muqatta'at). And if you hear them recited:
أَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ * بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ * الم
"I seek refuge in Allah from Satan the outcast. In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Alif-Lam-Mim." (Quran 2:1)
Now you can hear the vibratory force there, and this is how some of these revelations were beginning - literally like a vibration moving into the material world from another realm, according to the Muslim tradition.
The First Believers
During this time, he began to tell close people. And Khadijah is the first person who believes him - his wife, which is interesting. She didn't, you know, abandon him. She was right there and she said: "I believe this."
His nephew, who was his cousin who was living in his house from his uncle, the son of his uncle - he was taking care of him - (عَلِيُّ بْنُ أَبِي طَالِبٍ - Ali ibn Abi Talib), who was a young boy at that time, but he also says that he believes, tells him that he believes in the tradition.
And then other people from very close people that knew him - (أَبُو بَكْرِ الصِّدِّيقُ - Abu Bakr as-Siddiq) was a very close person.
Warning His Family
But at a certain point, he's commanded to warn his family. So he gathers them all together and he says to them:
"What would you say if I told you that there was an army on the other side of the mountains of Mecca waiting to attack you?"
And they said: "We would believe you because you're (الْأَمِينُ - Al-Amin) you're the trustworthy one."
And he said: "What would you say if I was a messenger of God and I was sent to you?"
And they said: "We don't believe you." And they rejected that.
The Quraysh's Reaction
And then as more people begin to come into Islam, the Quraysh began to get worried. And it's very interesting what they said. They said about the Prophet, they said:
يُسَفِّهُ أَحْلَامَنَا
"He makes us look stupid," because he was saying: "Do you worship pieces of wood and stone that can't hear or speak or benefit you?"
And so that bothered them.
The Story of Ibrahim and the Idols
And there's an interesting analogy in the Quran with Ibrahim (Abraham), where there's all these idols that his people worshipped. And one night he goes in - he was only about 12 or 13 - he goes in and he smashes all of the idols except for one of them, and he puts the axe in the big one, and then he leaves.
And they come back and they find all their idols smashed. So they say: "Ibrahim was talking about this." They go get him and they say: "Who did this?"
And he said: "Ask the big one."
And they said: "What do you think we're stupid? He can't say anything!"
And he said: "Then why are you worshipping them?"
And then it's a very interesting verse in the Quran that says:
"Then they returned to themselves [in reflection]." (Quran 21:64)
They became self-reflective. Very interesting. They became self-reflective. Suddenly they said: "He's got a point here."
Now this became troublesome for them, because at that point a window opens, and it can close very quickly. And somebody shouted: "Get rid of him!" And then it becomes a mob scene: "Let's not think about this, let's kill him!"
Heidegger's Concept of Thrownness
There's an interesting German philosopher, Heidegger, who has a theory about what he calls "thrownness" - that human beings are thrust into a certain environment, and they literally take on all of these qualities not based on their own individual reality but based on what everybody else has told them. And so we learn about "the them" very quickly, and there's certain expectations within the context of "the them, the other."
Like, we don't belch in public, right? I mean, we learn quickly that there's certain things we don't breach, and they're not things that we chose. They're things that are imposed on us. And obviously they have purpose, and we're civilized people, right? We don't do certain things.
But also there's a type of what Heidegger felt was a type of inauthenticity that went with that, because people really hadn't reflected about who they were in their essence or their essential nature. They were really simply only confirming what had been reflected back to them from their culture and their society.
And people that break these models - in England they would be called eccentrics, right? People that don't - and the English actually kind of allow for that within their culture - that you have to be rich, that's a prerequisite, because if you're poor they call you mad.
But Heidegger felt that a person who had never come to terms with this - he called it an undifferentiated person - they really hadn't ever thought that the only reason I'm the way I am is because I grew up in a certain culture and environment, and this culture and environment has completely imposed upon me a way of viewing the world, a language that involves a worldview. All of these things are literally superimposed upon us, and we submit to them without reflection, by and large.
Now Heidegger's solution to it was he said the only authentic act that you could really do once you realized this was die. In other words, nobody's going to teach you how to die. Nobody's going to - you will do that very authentically. So he said you become a being unto death.
The Qur'an's Challenge to the Arabs
But for the Muslim, and I really think that the Quran really did this to these people, it forced them to look at what Heidegger would call their thrownness. In other words, why are we worshipping these idols? Why are we burying our baby girls alive? Because people didn't think about it. You see, it's like in certain cultures - I mean, in this culture we have a very serious crisis where there's reflection on both sides with the abortion issue. I mean, you know, there's people who say this is wrong, and we hear that and we have to think about it. Whereas in that culture, nobody was there saying it was wrong. They were saying it was perfectly acceptable.
Now here comes a man who starts saying: "This is wrong." That's a very strong thing for a people who have not given a lot of reflection to themselves or their culture.
The Meccan Period: Themes of Tawhid
So the Quran begins to literally question things very deeply. And the first period, which is 13 years, is called the Meccan period. Now during the Meccan period, the dominant themes within the Quran are primarily what in Arabic is called توحيد Tawhid
Now Tawhid is sometimes translated as "monotheism," which is - I don't like that translation. The actual word in Arabic means "to make one." If you translated it quite literally, it would be "the making of one." But the word means, from a Quranic perspective, is worshipping Allah or God with absolutely no association in that worship. Nothing is associated in that worship with God, nothing whatsoever.
And this is - if you want one word that will give you the theme of Quran, it's this word. And this is why the Muslims have, in the Western comparative religious tradition, been called "radical monotheists" more so than the Jewish tradition and more so than the Christian tradition. The Muslims are considered radical monotheists.
One: there is absolutely no anthropomorphism in Islam. There is no association of God with creation. And probably one of the most definitive verses in the Quran about the nature of Tawhid is:
"There is nothing like Him." (Quran 42:11)
The early community said: "Whatever occurs to your intellect, God is other than that."
The companion of the Prophet, Abu Bakr, the second Khalifa - or the first Khalifa after the Messenger - said: "Your inability to comprehend God is your comprehension of God. Your inability to comprehend God is your comprehension of God." That is the essence of Tawhid.
The Knowability of God
Now here is where we get in a problem. We say: "If God is unknowable, then how do we know God?" Right?
Now it's interesting, because within the Christian tradition, the first person to really deal with this issue - I mean, there is probably Tertullian, you might have some inklings of - but the first person really to deal with this issue is probably Kierkegaard, who is a very interesting philosopher, because Kierkegaard recognizes suddenly that the knowability of God, there is definitely a problem there.
Now the way the Christians have tended to deal with that is through Christ. Christ becomes the object of God's knowability - that God becomes man so that man can understand God, right? I mean, this is an element of the Christian theology.
For the Muslim, the knowability of God is through the creation itself. And this is why much of the Quran is focused on telling people to explore the creation itself, because the creation is seen as a theater of manifestation, of divine manifestation. That God is not entering in, is not incorporated, is not becoming - He is not becoming, embodying Himself into the creation, like incarnation is becoming the flesh.
And likewise, what Montgomery Watt would like to suggest is that somehow God has "imbibliated" Himself - nice fancy PhD work - that God became book, right? Which is not true. The Muslims do not look at that, even though they do believe that the Quran is an attribute of God. That this Quran that we have here, we do not say: "This is God on earth," or something like that. No. Although we do believe that the Quran is the speech of God, and we believe it's the uncreated speech of God in the eternal meanings that move into the vehicle of language - the intentions of God. That is the speech of God.
So Tawhid is a very important theme.
The Concept of Akhirah
The next idea is the idea of آخِرَة (Akhirah). And Akhirah means "what comes after." It means the end, the
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hereafter.
The interesting thing about the Arabs is the Arabs did not believe in a hereafter. Many traditions have a hereafter. The Arabs did not believe in a hereafter. They thought: "This is it. When you die, it's over."
And they said: "If we're bones and dust, will we be brought back to life?"
The Quran says:
"Is not He who created the heavens and the earth able to create the likes of them?"
"The one who brought you, who created you the first time, is capable of creating you a second time." In other words, the fact that you've come into existence one time, a second time, even by our own logic, would seem to be easier, because if you've made something one time, it's generally easier the second time around, right? So there's the logic behind that.
So the Arabs denied this idea of Akhirah or the next world.
Now the next world in the Quran is quite descriptive, and traditionally the Europeans often have a difficult time with it, because there are aspects of it that are quite sensual, right? The idea of gardens under which rivers flow, of fruits, of maidens, of beautiful youth, and these type of things. So this idea of an Akhirah is being introduced into the Arabian culture.
Now they obviously had some - they're meeting the Christians and the Jews on their caravan routes and they're hearing about these things - but they really had an attitude that was basically characterized as disbelief. They did not believe in some other world. They thought: "This is it."
And for them, the world was what they called مُرُوءَۃ (muru'ah) - was virility, manhood, chivalry, poetry, women, wine. This was really the environment of the era, and they praised these qualities and they praised these aspects of the world. And much of their poetry is about wine and women, and this is what they were interested in.
Suddenly you have a book that's radically challenging that worldview, radically challenging it. Very powerful experience for these people that are forced to begin to think about these things.
Persecution in Mecca and Memorization
Now for the first 13 years, the Prophet is persecuted in Mecca. During this time, these people were learning the Quran that was being revealed by memory. The Quran was not revealed linearly, which is important, because it's not a linear book. And that's something - if you really want to understand the Quran or be able to read it, you have to surrender your desire for linearity, right?
Plato would probably have been able to read the book. Aristotle, definitely not. He would have had a very hard time with this book, because it does not begin in the beginning and end in the end. It just doesn't work like that.
So in a sense, what the Quran really is demanding from people is that they submit to the book itself.
The Opening Letters: Alif-Lam-Mim
And I think it's very fascinating that the first verse of Quran after the opening chapter is three letters. Nobody knows what they mean. Every commentator on the Quran will ultimately say about these three letters: "God knows what they mean."
Now it's a very interesting phenomenon - to open up a book and the first three letters that you read, nobody knows what they mean. And I think part of the message there is to let us know that there's a lot of things that we don't know. And if we're not going to admit that as a starting point, we're not going to benefit from this book. If we're going to go to the book filled with ourselves and we're going to superimpose upon the book our own ideas, then we're not going to get anything out of the book.
The Structure of Meccan and Medinan Revelations
So the book - for the 13 years, these Meccan verses are being revealed. Now if you look at the Meccan verses, they are - even though there are 85 of the chapters in the Quran are Meccan, 39 of them are Medina - only 11 out of the 30 parts of the Quran, equal parts, are from Mecca. Only 11. Nineteen are from Medina.
So the Meccan suras or chapters are very short, and they tend to fall towards the end of the book, even though they were revealed in the beginning of this dispensation. So although the Meccan verses are the first verses, they are generally the ones that are found at the end of the book, which is very interesting. And when Muslims learn the book by heart, they will generally begin at the end. That's where they'll begin. They'll begin with the last 30th of the Quran.
The Concept of Sa'ah (The Hour)
Now the next idea that is being introduced is the idea of what's called الساعة (Sa'ah). And Sa'ah means "the end of time."
Now the Prophet Muhammad, his understanding of himself was that he was the first sign of the beginning of the end of the worldly existence of this Adamic species. He actually viewed himself as the first sign. In other words, all traditions that were based on revelation, according to the Islamic tradition, were basically indicating that the human experience will come to an end.
And this is why within the Jewish tradition you have an apocalyptic vision. Within the Jewish tradition you have an apocalyptic vision. Within the Hindu tradition you have an apocalyptic vision - the Kali Yuga period, the last period of man. Within the Buddhist tradition you have an apocalyptic tradition. And in many of the
more tribal-based traditions, within the Hopi tradition, the Kwanaskazi, the last period in the Hopi tradition when everything gets out of control. Within the Mayan - all these different peoples had an idea of some apocalyptic end.
The apocalyptic ending in the Quran is talked about in terms of a Sa'ah, which is the last moment. It's the last moment. And the Prophet Muhammad talked about signs, and the Quran mentions signs of this time. And so this was also - now ultimately, the end of time for the Muslim, in reality, is the end of our own individual life. That is our end of time. When I die, my worldly time is over. And so in a sense, the Quranic view was trying to bring people into a type of presence of the imminence of death - that death is imminent, that death is not something in some distant future.
So for 13 years, this was the focus.
Memorization of the Qur'an in the Oral Tradition
After 13 years, the Quran is basically being memorized. And if you live with oral peoples, people that really still maintain these traditions - and I know Dr. Sulayman Nyang, who is from Africa and knows in the West African oral tradition, there are peoples that will recite epic poems of tribes. If they don't recite them exactly as they learned them, then they literally lose their job. They can't be a storyteller.
So the Arabs were people that memorized poetry and related poetry exactly. To them, they had phenomenal memories. And I've lived with Mauritanians in West Africa whose memories are extraordinary, like the young man who is here with us - phenomenal, the amount of information that he retains exactly.
Now for people that don't understand this oral tradition, they find it very hard to imagine that a human being can memorize this entire text, the Arabic text, and not make a mistake. Now I can bring that young man here, and I can read the Quran, and I can purposely leave out a verse, and he'll correct me immediately.
The Self-Correcting Nature of the Qur'an
Now the other thing that's interesting about the Quran is for people who memorize it - and even parts of it - will quickly learn that the Quran is a self-correcting book, because it has a very unusual rhythm that if you find a verse moves out of sync, suddenly you're aware: "I've said something wrong."
And I'll give you an example. Last week I read the Subh prayer, and it was a rather long surah that I read. And at the end of it, I said a verse that is actually out of the Quran, but it wasn't the verse that went in that place. And it used almost the same words. And that morning, probably for the next half hour, something was bothering me. And then I realized what it was - I said the verse wrong, and I corrected myself. Nobody corrected me in the prayer, but I corrected myself.
And it's very interesting when you memorize the Quran, because I've tried to memorize a lot of things, like, you know, I used to memorize some poetry. I went to prep school and you had to memorize poems and memorize
like some piece of Shakespeare and things like that. The really interesting thing about it is is that the Quran, one, is facilitated - it's very easy to memorize. It's not hard to memorize for many, many people. And the other thing is it's actually quite difficult to forget it. If you will recite it within reasonable time limits, repeat it every once in a while, it's very difficult to forget.
Becoming a Hafiz
But the حَافِظ (Hafiz), or the one who preserves the Quran, is somebody who has memorized it by rote. It usually takes about - in the Indian subcontinent they'll do it between a year and a half to two and a half years. In Mauritania they have more rigorous standards because they have other things to learn than just rote memorization. They usually take about four years doing it, and they do it with their children.
The Arabs, they say: "Memorization in youth is like carving in stone, and memorization in old age is like painting on water."
And one of the scholars, they said: "It's not that the memory is gone, it's that we've got too many worries when we get older." Children, you know, they don't have to worry, so it all just sticks there. Whereas you get older, you're thinking about a lot of other things. But it's still phenomenal what we memorize.
So during these 13 years, the Quran is being memorized this way. It's also being written by the few people who know how to write it, because most of the Arabs were illiterate.
The Illiterate People
And the Prophet Muhammad said in a sound transmission, he said:
(Sahih al-Bukhari 1913, Sahih Muslim 1080)
"We are an illiterate people. We don't read and we don't calculate."
So he was admitting that about his people.
The Quran itself says:
"He is the one who sent amongst the illiterates a messenger that he recites to them his signs, and he purifies them, and he teaches them the book and wisdom, even if they were in clear error before that."
So the Prophet is seen as a messenger, first and foremost, to the Arabs who were an illiterate people.
The Migration to Medina
Now after 13 years of oppression, he makes a migration to Medina, right? It's actually a flight. It's called the
هِجْرَة (hijrah). He flees there because they actually tried to kill him at that point. And he goes there, and many people begin to become Muslim.
Now the discourse, the Quranic discourse, radically changes from the Meccan period to the Medina period. You will see a change between these two. The focus of the verses moves away from these topics to the social environment - how to implement, once these have been internalized, interiorized, how are they implemented in social behavior?
If you believe in God, what is that going to do to alter your character, to alter your behavior? How will that change you as an individual, as a person? So the focus becomes on character, on building a community, on building a society.
So you will see many of the verses revealed in Mecca begin: يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ ("O humanity, O humankind"). But in Medina they begin:: يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا ("O you who have accepted"). In other words, the call in Mecca was to people. From amongst those people there were those who responded. And now the revelation is going to focus on creating an environment in which this teaching will manifest at the societal level, not simply at the individual level.
And so the next 10 years are Medinan period. For 10 years, you call it the Medinan period.
Meccan and Medinan Verses Intermixed
Now the interesting thing about the Quran is within Meccan verses are Medinan verses, and within Medinan verses are Meccan ayat. In other words, there are sections - because over the 23-year period, according to the tradition of the Sunni Muslims, during this period, it's our belief that جِبْرِيل (Jibril) or Gabriel was coming to the Prophet and telling him the order that the Quran should be in. So it was revealed non-linearly, but now it begins to move into a type of sequence and beginning, mostly with the Medinans in the beginning and the Meccans at the end.
The Writing of the Qur'an
After 1
The Battle of Yamamah and the Need for Collection
Now in 633, there was a battle called the Battle of Yamamah. And it was actually fighting people in the Najd area who had - there was a man there who claimed that he was a prophet. And Abu Bakr sent an army to these people, and there was a battle that ensued. And many of the Quran reciters were killed - people that knew the Quran by heart were killed in that battle.
So at that point, Umar wants the entire book to be collected. And he goes to Abu Bakr and he says: "You have to collect this Quran."
And Abu Bakr says: "I'm not going to do something that the Prophet didn't do himself. In other words, the Prophet didn't put it in a book collected together, and I don't want to do that."
And Umar kept telling him: "You have to do this. This is a good thing. You must do this. What if people die? The Quran will get lost."
And he said: "Finally, he said, 'I became convinced of that which Umar was convinced of.'""
The First Collection Under Abu Bakr
He decides to collect the entire Quran. He gets one of the most learned people of the Quran, and he tells him: "You need to gather the Quran. I want you to gather the Quran."
Zayd says: "How can you do something that the Prophet didn't do?"
They were very worried about introducing - because much of the Quran is talking about how previous revelations were changed, that the people came after, they changed the teaching of the Prophet. So there was a real fear within the first community of doing anything that their Prophet hadn't done.
So he continues to tell Zayd until Zayd finally says: "I realized that what Abu Bakr and Umar were saying was true."
The Criteria for Collection
So they begin to collect it, and they have a criterion. And the criterion is that each piece of the Quran must be brought that had been written in the presence of the Prophet with two witnesses. This is the criterion. And this takes place during that period. It took them a while to do this, and they did this.
And there is only one verse - there are two verses at the end of سُورَةُ التَّوْبَةِ (Surah at-Tawbah), which is the chapter of repentance, that they could not find two witnesses. They only had one - خُزَيْمَةُ (Khuzaymah).
Now Khuzaymah, who was a Sahabi from the people of Medina, there is a tradition that says that a man from the people of the book came to the Prophet, and he disagreed with the Prophet about something, and there were no witnesses. And Khuzaymah said: "I'll bear witness for you, O Messenger of God."
And the Prophet looked at him and he said: "Were you there that you should believe me?"
And he said: "We believe a revelation comes to you from God, so we won't believe you about a business transaction?"
And so the Prophet said:
(Sunan Abi Dawud 3607)
"The witnessing of Khuzaymah is like two people."
And so Khuzaymah's - those two verses, which were known by other companions, but it was the written in the presence of two witnesses that they wanted - they were accepted as part.
The Mushaf of Hafsah
And this was made into one مُصْحَف (Mushaf), which literally comes from صحيفة (sahifah), which is tablets. And it was done generally - they used papyri and gazelle skin leather, things like that. Prior to that, they've been using palm fronds, and they were using the shoulder blades from camels that are quite large to write verses and things like this with ink. They would use a type of ink, and this is how they were writing the Quran.
They put the entire Quran, and it was kept - Umar kept it, and then it was given to حَفْصَة (Hafsah).
Uthman's Standardization
Now during the time of عُثْمَان (Uthman), who is the third caliph, there is a campaign in Azerbaijan. And during this time, there began to be some differences amongst the Muslims about the recitation of the Quran, because one of the things about the Quran is that it was being written - there was no standardized writing. So the Quran was literally being written, for instance, like this. There were no dots. These are called diacritical marks. There were no diacritical marks. There were no vowels. And so the book is like this. So you don't know if this is كَتَبَ (kataba) or it is كِتَابٌ (kitabun).
Now because of this reason, there were many people who memorized and knew what it was, but there were other people that were beginning to learn it with the sheets and beginning to differ. So Uthman wanted to standardize the writing of the Quran.
And this is done - 658 - the Prophet dies in 632. So Uthman begins to set out and standardize the Quran. And again, Zayd and three companions prepare - they go back to this Mushaf of Hafsah, and they prepare the Quran according to Uthman's recommendations.
And one of them was: "If you differ about anything, then take the language of the Quraysh," because there were different ways of pronouncing words. For instance, the Quraysh say مُؤْمِن (Mu'min), and the Banu Tamim said مُؤْمِن (Mu'min) like that. It's a difference. So there are different ways.
The Quraysh said:
(Quran 93:1-2)
And other tribes said:
So you got differences of pronunciation.
The Uthmani Codex
So Uthman has this project carried through and then sends copies, identical copies, to the various centers of the Muslims and the governors, and demands as the head of the Muslim government that all of the Qurans be burnt except these that were based on this writing.
Now this is very early, because I mean, if you look within the Jewish tradition, the Bible, the Old Testament, is really - it's gathered over about 900 years, according to modern scholarship. And you have - there's four dominant versions, like the Jehovist, the Abelian, the Sacerdotal, and you'll get some very - you'll get some big differences.
Within the Christian tradition also, the final codification is already 325 when there's an agreement on the four Gospels at the Council of Nicaea.
The companions of the Prophet himself were the ones that gathered and did this, and they were people who memorized the entire Quran from the Prophet based on this oral tradition.
The Priority of Oral Transmission
So the Quran itself - and this is really important to understand - the written Quran is not the primary source in which the Quran is protected. It is protected through oral transmission. This is used, one, for people who don't memorize the Quran, and two, as a crutch for people who memorize it to go back and be reminded if their teacher isn't there or somebody else who isn't a hafidh.
But I guarantee you, when they finish a printing of Quran, they send it to people who memorize the Quran orally to check it. They don't check it against other Qurans. They send it to several خُفَّاظ (huffaz the people who memorize the Quran, and they will look at it.
Imam al-Qurtubi's Story
Imam al-Qurtubi tells a very interesting story in his tafsir, in his commentary on the Quran, under the words when the Quran says:
"We have revealed this reminder, and we have taken it upon ourselves to protect it." (Quran 15:9)
Imam al-Qurtubi says that there was a Jewish man who wanted to find out from the three traditions about their books. And so he took a Torah and he copied the entire Torah in Hebrew, and he put mistakes in it specifically. He went to a rabbi and he gave him the Torah and he asked him to read the entire Torah and tell him if it was a good edition. When he came back, the man said it was an excellent edition, even though he knew there were mistakes in it.
When he went to the Christian, he did the same thing with the Gospels, and the Christian also said that it was an excellent edition of the Gospels.
He did the same thing for the Quran, and he went to a Muslim scholar and asked him to read it, and he had his mistakes in there. And the Muslim scholar told him when he came back: "You have to burn this because there are mistakes in it."
Now if this is like an apocryphal story, I don't know its historical validity, but I think the point is very well made - that the Muslims really do view the Quran, and rightly and justifiably so, as a book that is preserved since this early time.
Existing Manuscripts
Now in terms of what exists today, the Quran - we definitely, without any doubt, by even the consensus of orientalists, have several parts of the Quran from early first-century Islam. There would be some debate amongst orientalists whether there is actually an edition of the Quran that goes back to this original Uthmani edition.
The Muslims would say that there are two, possibly four. There is a copy now which is called the Samarkand copy, or Samarqand, which used to be southern Russia, which is now in Tashkent. And it is definitely a first century. But is it one of the original Uthmani? The Muslims believe it is.
And there is also one in Egypt that definitely goes back to the year 68 after Hijra, without a doubt. It's on gazelle leather, which lasts an incredibly long time.
And then you also have an edition which is in Najaf in Iraq, which says at the end of it - and it is written in an authenticated Kufic script from that first period - it says again that this was written by Ali, the fourth caliph.
So we believe that we do have original text from this first period. But even if we didn't, there is no doubt in a Muslim scholar's mind - and the vast majority of orientalists that have really examined this situation, like R.A. Nicholson in his book called The Literary History of the Arabs - he was a Cambridge scholar, teacher of A.J. Arberry, who translated the Quran, or interpreted it into English.
Nicholson says: "There is really no doubt about the authenticity, the historical authenticity of the Quran." Now this is not somebody who believes in the revelation, but he is accepting that the book is intact in terms of its historical authenticity - that this is the book that this original community was hearing and was seeing.
Questions and Answers Session
Question about the use of "We" when God is speaking:
In Arabic language, it's called جَمْعُ التَّعْظِيمِ (jam at-tahim), which means the plural of the one who's exalting himself. So from an Arab's perspective, if God's using it, it's acceptable. But when an individual uses it, it's arrogance. And you do find individuals in the Arab world that'll say: "We ate a lot today," and he's talking about himself. And it's actually - it's considered bad manners. But this is the way it's - it's actually never seen as indicating more than one God, absolutely not.
The Mormons, for instance, do believe that the "we" in the Old Testament is used to mean a multiplicity of gods. And so the Christians have believed that the "we" of the Old Testament was used also to indicate the Trinity, for instance, and you'll find this in many books, Christian books.
For the Jews, the Jews understand the same way that the Arabs do - it's just a plural that's used majestically. It's a stronger form.
Now the interesting thing about the Quran, to me - and Cleary points this out, I think it's a really valid insight - Cleary says that one of the really interesting things about the Quran is the shift in perspectives. Because sometimes the Quran is saying: لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا أَنَا ("There's no God but I). Sometimes: لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا أَنتَ ("There's no God but You"). Sometimes: لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا هُوَ ("There's no God but He").
So it's shifting constantly, this change in perspective. Sometimes it's plural, sometimes it's singular. And it's a very fascinating phenomenon.
Question about the Samarkand Quran and missing pages:
Yeah, they say that a few of the leaves were stolen. And they also say - interesting - in the Treaty of Versailles, I think it's like in the article 246, one of the conditions of surrender to the Germans was that they would return the Uthmani copy of the Quran that was in their trust from the Ottomans. And that's a text that apparently just disappeared.
Question about the description of Paradise:
When heaven is described as there being maidens and beautiful attendant youths, is this to be taken literally?
Yes and no. Now don't you teach philosophy? Are you a teacher of philosophy? Yes. So philosophers generally can deal with a "yes or no" answer.
There's a type of paradox here. On the one hand, we don't say that it doesn't not mean that. On the other hand, we certainly don't say that it means like we understand here, right?
The paradise, according to the Muslim, it says the best description of it according to the revelation is:
"What no eye has seen and no ear has heard and has never occurred to the human mind." (Sahih al-Bukhari 3244, Sahih Muslim 2824)
So there's an idea that we really can't understand what it is, but we know that it is. It is going to be the greatest experience of felicitousness. It's called (سَعَادَة - sa'adah).
And one of the 13th-century scholars actually said that the sexual pleasure was the highest physical pleasure that God has given the human being - not the highest mental, because they believed that was higher - but it was the highest. And he actually said that this was to give the human being a taste, just for a moment, a glimpse of the approximation of the delights of paradise.
So the Muslims, I don't think, have ever been like prudish about those types of things. You know, I mean, the Prophet ﷺ was not a sensualist by any means, and people that say that, it's a gross disservice to his character, because he was not. And he certainly could have been, and I don't think even had he been, he would not have been faulted by his people. But he was not. His wives were elderly women, widows and orphans, with the exception of one.
Statement about Torah scribes and mistakes:
I have a statement. It's not really a question. You talked about the Torah and the Gospel being written, and there are clearly some mistakes. In our Torah, there's a tradition of our scribes in the Torah, which are always handwritten, who always have a mistake put into the Torah to show man's imperfection. It would be arrogant for a Hebrew scribe to ever try to say: "This is perfect. There's only God."
Well, see, this is - that's a really good - I'm glad you brought that up. I'm glad you brought that up. I think that's a really good point. Just a sin of arrogance.
Because see, the Muslims believe that the Quran is the divine word of God, and therefore they believe that to put a mistake in it would be of the greatest transgression. In other words, that it is a sacred trust. And in fact, the Quran says:
"We offered this trust to the heavens, to the earth, and to the mountains, and they refused to bear it, but the human being bore it." (Quran 33:72)
Now it's interesting, because according to the Quran, the Jews and the Christians said that they were given the task themselves of protecting their books, and they fell short. That's what the Quranic version is. But then it says about the Quran, because it's the final one - there would be no prophet after the Prophet to clarify that there were mistakes - it says that God alone has taken it upon God, the Divine, to protect this book.
So the Muslims actually believe that it is divinely protected for that very reason. And I'm really glad you brought up that point, because I think it's a really - it's a very pertinent point.
Comment about deliberate mistakes in carpets:
I just had a close look at that because when the Arabs do their carpet work, they make a deliberate mistake, right? A carpet with a mistake is worth a lot more than a carpet that's made by a machine in Belgium.
Question about how many people know the Quran:
I'm curious - how many people approximately know the entire Quran?
I would say it's probably - it's probably, if not in the hundreds of thousands, I would say it's - you know, it would be hard to estimate. But I'll give you an example. When I was in Mauritania, the tribe that I stayed with - and there's several thousand of them - none of the men do not know the Quran by heart. It's like a prerequisite for that tribe. The tribe that man's from, they all memorize the Quran. And the women, some of them memorize the entire Quran. Most of them memorize at least like a third.
I mean, if you go to Mecca, it's very interesting. When you're at Mecca, there's a million people there. And I feel sorry for the imam. He's got a microphone. If he makes a mistake, right? I would say he'll make a mistake - boom! You just hear voices from all over, breaking in and correcting him from everywhere. Really.
And it's actually - it's not encouraged to do that. You're supposed to give the imam a break, let him correct himself. But people are so overzealous, it's like a knee-jerk response. They hear a mistake and they're like: "Ah, made a mistake!" And it's an interesting phenomenon.
And at my mosque where I pray, there's about seven or eight that are huffaz, which is in America. So that's a small number. But if you go to Pakistan, filled with people that memorize the Quran. West Africa, filled with people. Egypt, filled with people that memorize the Quran. Many women in Syria - there's been a recent phenomenon of women memorizing the Quran in Syria, many, many women. Turkey, all over the Muslim world you have - and many of the best Quran reciters are non-Arabs. In fact, some of the best are Malaysian women.
Comment about bookshops:
I'm sorry to interrupt. You're doing the practical. I don't know when I'm working on my work. If I need to know something, I went out to a bookshop in London, and I just say to the girl on the desk: "Can you just have a shout? Is there an office in the shop?" And she would say: "Is everybody here memorizing the Quran in the classrooms?"
Yes, I know. Yeah, it's very common. It really is. It's very common. I mean, if you're in a mosque praying, you'll at least have one or two that memorize the entire Quran and many that memorize large portions of it.
And it really - it is the book that has created literacy in the world. I mean, it's - you know, if you go to a country and they say that people are illiterate, the vast majority of people traditionally in the Muslim world could read and recite the Quran, and many could understand it, because Arabic was it was like the lingua franca. It was the Latin of the Muslim world. It's the sacerdotal language.
Question about the seven variants (Qira'at):
You mentioned last night that your teacher that has memorized it was like the seven versions. There's seven variants.
I'm glad you mentioned that, because I forgot to mention that. There are seven variants which are dialectical. In other words, some of the Arabs could not pronounce the Prophet's language, and so the Quran was revealed in different variants based on the different tribes. And they're all accepted. There's seven of them, and it's a hadith that's written.
It does not change the meaning by consensus. You will find no doctrinal change in the Quran. For instance, I learned according to Imam Warsh, who's the African reciter. And there are other people who recite - the vast majority of Muslims recite by Hafs, who's originally from Kufa.
If they hear me reciting and they're ignorant, they might think I'm making mistakes, you see? They might think. But if they're educated, they'll know right away: "He's reading a sound variant."
So, just to give you an example, if I said in (سُورَةُ الْفَاتِحَةِ - Surah al-Fatihah), I would say: