Understanding the Qur'an

Themes and Style

Muhammad Abdel Haleem

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780857730374
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

The tenets of Islam cannot be grasped without a proper understanding of the Qur'an. In this important new introduction, Muhammad Haleem examines its recurrent themes - life and eternity, marriage and divorce, peace and war, water and nourishment - and for the first time sets these in the context of the Qur'an's linguistic style. Professor Haleem examines the background to the development of the surahs (chapters) and the ayahs (verses) and the construction of the Qur'an itself. He shows that popular conceptions of Islamic attitudes to women, marriage and divorce, war and society, differ radically from the true teachings of the Qur'an.

1

The Qur’an

‘Read in the Name of your Lord’. These were the first words of the Qur’an revealed to Muhammad. The revelation came to him during a period of retreat and meditation in a cave outside Mecca in 610 CE. He was already forty years old; he was not known to have had a gift for poetry or rhetoric like many of his contemporaries, or to have engaged in any discussion of religion. His account survives of the extraordinary circumstances of this revelation, of being approached by an angel who commanded him: ‘Read!’ When he explained that he could not read, the angel squeezed him strongly, repeating the request twice, and then recited to him the first two lines of the Qur’an in which the concepts of ‘reading’, ‘learning/knowing’ and ‘the pen’ occur six times (96:1–5).

The Qur’an does not begin chronologically like the Old Testament, nor genealogically like the New Testament, but – as modern Muslim writers on education point out – by directly talking about reading, teaching, knowing and writing.¹ Nor does the beginning of the Qur’an resemble the beginning of any earlier work known in Arabic literature. Until the first revelation came to him in the cave, Muhammad was not known to have composed any poem or given any speech. The Qur’an employs this fact in arguing with the unbelievers:

Say, ‘If God had so willed, I would not have recited it to you, nor would He have made it known to you. I lived a whole lifetime among you before it came to me. How can you not use your reason?’

10:16

You never recited any Scripture before We revealed this one to you; you never wrote one down with your hand. If you had done so, those who follow falsehood might have had cause to doubt.

29:48

The word qur’ān lexically means ‘reading’ and came to refer to ‘the text which is read’. The Muslim scripture often calls itself ‘kitāb’: lexically this means ‘writing’ and came to refer to ‘the written book’. Thus the significance of uttering and writing the revealed scripture is emphasised from the very beginning of Islam, and is locked in the very nouns that designate the Qur’an.

The first piece of revelation consisted of two lines in Arabic, which began the Qur’an and the mission of the Prophet, after which he had no further experience of revelation for some while. Then another short piece was revealed, and between then and shortly before the Prophet’s death in 632 AD at the age of sixty-three, the whole text of the Qur’an was revealed gradually, piece by piece, in varying lengths, giving new teachings or commenting on events or answering questions according to circumstances. For the first experience of revelation Muhammad was alone in the cave and he reported it. After that the circumstances in which he received revelations were witnessed by others and recorded. Visible, audible and sensory reactions were witnessed by those around the Prophet when he experienced the ‘state of revelation’. His face would brighten and he would fall silent and appear as if his thoughts were far away, his body would become heavy as if in sleep, a humming sound would be heard about him, and sweat would appear on his face, even on winter days. This stage would last for a brief period and as it receded he would immediately recite new verses of the Qur’an. This state was reported clearly not to be the Prophet’s to command: it would descend on him as he was walking, sitting, riding, or giving a sermon, and there were occasions when he waited anxiously for it for over a month to answer a question he was asked, or comment on an event. The Prophet and his followers understood these signs as the experience accompanying the communication of Qur’anic verses by the Angel of Revelation (Gabriel). The Prophet’s adversaries explained it as a sign of his ‘being possessed’, or magic. (In this regard, the Qur’an has itself recorded all claims and attacks made against it and against the Prophet in his lifetime.)

The first word in the Qur’an, and in Islam, was, as seen above, an imperative addressed to the Prophet, linguistically making the authorship of the text outside Muhammad. This mode is maintained throughout the Qur’an. It talks to the Prophet or talks about him and does not allow him to speak for himself. The Qur’an describes itself as a book which God ‘sent down’ to the Prophet: the expression ‘sent down’, in its various derivations, is used in the Qur’an well over 200 times. In Arabic this word conveys immediately, and in itself, the concept that the origin of the Qur’an is from above and that Muhammad is merely a recipient. God is the one to speak in the Qur’an: Muhammad is addressed, ‘O Prophet’, ‘O Messenger’, ‘Do’, ‘Do not do’, ‘They ask you . . . ’, ‘Say’ (the imperative form of the word ‘say’ is used in the Qur’an well over 300 times). The Prophet is censured sometimes in the Qur’an.² His status is unequivocally defined as ‘Messenger’ (rasūl) and he is often reminded that his duty is the communication (balāgh) of the Message to the community.

To the Prophet himself, the Qur’an was ‘sent down’ and communicated to him by ‘the faithful Spirit’, Gabriel, and it was categorically not his own speech. Stylistically, Qur’anic material which the Prophet recited following the states of revelation described above is so evidently different from the Prophet’s own sayings (ḥadīth), whether uttered incidentally or after long reflection, that they are unmistakably recognisable as belonging to two different levels of speech. With every new addition to the Qur’anic body, the Prophet would recite it to those around him, who would learn it and, in turn, recite it to others in an environment which had long been known to be eager to receive any new literary material.³ Throughout his mission the Prophet repeatedly recited the Qur’an to his followers in prayers and speeches. An inner circle of his followers wrote down verses of the Qur’an as they learned them from him and he was faithful in having the Qur’an recorded even in the days of persecution, acquiring scribes for this purpose (29 have been counted in the Medinan period).

The book itself, as printed today, covers less than 500 small pages. It was revealed over 23 years, which means a rough average of less than 25 pages a year, or two pages a month. Even in our word-processing days, vast numbers of children in Muslim countries learn the entire Qur’an during the early years of their education. In keeping with his care to record and preserve every new piece of the Qur’an, Muhammad tried to ensure that not even his own sayings interfered with this, and ordered, ‘Whoever has written anything from me other than the Qur’an, let him erase it.’ One consequence of this was that the reports of his own sayings and reported actions later suffered from forgery. Muslim scholars had to sift this ḥadīth material through an elaborate system of attestation, rejecting numerous ḥadīths on the grounds of forgery, and declaring others weak in their chain of transmission (mā yuradd li sanadihi) or in the text itself (mā yuradd li matnihi). All this arose originally from concern for the authenticity of the Qur’anic material. By the end of the Prophet’s life (10/632) the entire Qur’an was written down in the form of uncollated pieces. Large numbers of followers learnt parts of it by heart, many learned all of it⁴ from the Prophet over years spent in his company. They belonged to a cultural background that had a long-standing tradition of memorising literature, history and genealogy.

With every new piece the Prophet requested his followers, ‘Place this in the sūra that talks about such and such.’ Material was thus placed in different sūras, not in chronological order of appearance, but in sūras as they were to be read by the Prophet and believers, appearing on examination as if fitting into a pre-existing plan.⁵ Over the years, in his prayers and in teaching his followers, he read the material in the order that it appeared in the sūras of the Qur’an. The form of the Qur’an still, to this day, follows this original arrangement without any alteration or editing. It is not historical in its arrangement, nor biographical, nor in the form of lectures or of a book edited and arranged by scholars.

During the second year after the Prophet’s death (12/633) and following the battle of Yamāma, in which a number of those who knew the Qur’an by heart died, it was feared that, with the gradual passing away of such men, there was a danger of some Qur’anic material being lost. Therefore the first caliph, Abu Bakr, ordered that the Qur’an should be collected in one written copy which was kept with him. This copy remained locked away until the time of ‘Uthman, the third caliph, when a problem arose. The urgency is summarised in the appeal of Hudhayfa bin al-Yaman, who demanded of ‘Uthman, on returning from battles in Azerbaijan (25/645), ‘Quick! Help the Muslims before they differ about the text of the Qur’an as the Christians and Jews differed about their scriptures.’ Hudhayfa had become perturbed when he saw Muslim soldiers from different parts of Syria and Iraq meeting together and differing in their readings of the Qur’an, each considering his reading to be the correct one. The only full official written copy had been kept first with Abu Bakr, then with ‘Umar, and after his death with his daughter Hafsa, a widow of the Prophet. Responding to the urgent demand for help, ‘Uthman sent word to Hafsa, asking for the copy in her possession to be sent to him. He ordered that a number of copies be made and distributed to different parts of the Muslim world as the official copy of the Qur’an. This prevented the possibility of different versions evolving in time, as Hudhayfa had originally feared. The ‘Uthmanic codex has remained as the only canonical text of the Qur’an that exists, recognised by Sunnis and Shi‘is alike throughout the Muslim world, for the last 14 centuries.

Muslims have remained so faithful to the ‘Uthmanic form through the ages that, although in a few cases certain features of Arabic orthography have changed, it is still adhered to in manuscripts and printed copies of the Qur’an, in spite of calls for change in accordance with what young students are used to in their study of everyday Arabic. Along with modern word forms, students are taught to recognise the age-old, venerated forms as distinctly belonging to the writing of the Qur’an. It has thus acquired sanctity in its very orthography.⁶

The Qur’anic material that was revealed to the Prophet in Mecca is known as the Meccan material of the Qur’an, while that revealed in Medina is known as Medinan. The Mecca sūras set out the basic belief system of Islam, parts of which the Arabs found very difficult to accept. They had difficulty in believing in the existence of one God, a belief encapsulated in the first creed of Islam – ‘There is no god but Allah’ – as they came from a mainly pagan polytheist culture. In their rejection of this they referred, for instance, to the Christian belief in the Trinity (38:7). The Qur’an, in its turn, argued that both Heaven and Earth would have collapsed if they were created and governed by more than one god (21:23; 23:91). In response to the belief that God has daughters or had a son, the Qur’an asserts, ‘He begot no one nor was He begotten. No one is comparable to Him.’ (112:1–4). The second belief is in the Prophethood of Muhammad. They could not conceive how someone who eats and goes to the marketplace could be a prophet (25:7). They demanded of Muhammad that he bring an angel with him, or perform all varieties of miracles in order to prove that he was truly a prophet. The Qur’an retorted that if there were angels living on the Earth, then an angel-prophet would have been sent (17:95). The Prophet Muhammad was always commanded to say to them: ‘I am only a human being, like yourselves, to whom revelation has come’ (17: 90–95; 18:110). The Qur’an cites the example of former prophets, like Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus, who preached the same beliefs, the various responses of their communities, and how in the end prophets were vindicated.

But the most insurmountable difficulty for the Arabs was the fundamental belief in resurrection and judgement. Their incredulity at this was frequently recorded in the Qur’an as they could not conceive how, when they had become rotten bones, they could be exhumed, get up and walk again and be judged by God. The Qur’an, in its turn, argued for the possibility and inevitability of Resurrection.⁷ Naturally, it would not have been suitable for the Qur’an to introduce to the small Muslim community living under constant persecution in Mecca teachings in the area of civil, criminal and international law, or to command them to fight back to defend themselves. This came in the Medinan parts of the Qur’an. Much of the material placed towards the end of the Qur’an is from the Meccan era, whereas much of that in the long sūras at the beginning belongs to the Medinan era.

Quantitatively speaking, beliefs occupy by far the larger part of the Qur’an. Morals come next, followed by ritual, and lastly the legal provisions. Thus, the entire Qur’an contains around 6,200 verses. Out of these, only 100 deal with ritual practices. Personal affairs take up 70 verses, civil laws 70, penal laws 30, judicial matters and testimony 20.⁸

The Qur’an is not like a legal textbook that treats each subject in a separate chapter. It may deal with matters of belief, morals, ritual and legislation within one and the same sūra. This gives its teachings more power and persuasion, since they are all based on the belief in God and reinforced by belief in the final judgement. Thus, the legal teachings acquire sanctions both in this world and the next. This will be elaborated upon further in discussions about marriage and divorce below, as well as in the chapters dealing with the style of the Qur’an.

Qur’anic material is divided into sūras, or sections, conventionally translated into English as ‘chapters’. This is an unhelpful designation, since a sūra might consist of no more than one line, such as Sūras 108 and 112, whereas Sūra 2, the longest in the Qur’an, consists of just under 40 pages. There are 114 sūras in all and each sūra consists of a number of verses, each known in Arabic as an āya (sign from God). With the exception of Sūra 9, each one begins with ‘In the name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful’. Some sūras contain Meccan and Medinan āyas. The heading of each sūra contains its serial number, title, whether it was Meccan, Medinan or mixed, and which verses belong to which era. The order of material in each sūra was determined by the Prophet, who is believed to have been acting on the instruction of the angel of revelation himself, who delivered the Qur’anic material to him. Western scholars – and even some Muslims in the past – have taken the view that the compilers of the Qur’anic material, after the death of the Prophet, determined the order of the sūras mainly according to decreasing length. However, stronger evidence shows that it was all done by the Prophet who read it in this order over many years. His companions, judging by their attitude to the Prophet and Qur’anic material, would not have taken the liberty of changing anything that they had learned from him, as the word of God should not be changed in any way.⁹

The Wider Influence of the Qur’an

The collected written text of the Qur’an was the first book in the Arabic language. It was also the starting point around which, and for the service of which, the various branches of Arabic studies were initiated and developed. Thus, it was in order to ensure accurate reading of the Qur’an that Arabic grammar ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Author biography
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 The Qur’an
• 2 Al-Fātiha: The Opening of the Qur’an
• 3 Water in the Qur’an
• 4 Marriage and Divorce
• 5 War and Peace in the Qur’an
• 6 Tolerance in Islam
• 7 Life and Beyond
• 8 Paradise in the Qur’an
• 9 The Face, Divine and Human, in the Qur’an
• 10 Adam and Eve in the Qur’an and the Bible
• 11 The Story of Joseph in the Qur’an and the Bible
• 12 The Qur’an Explains Itself: Surat al-Rahmān
• 13 Dynamic Style: Iltifāt and Some Other Features
• Conclusion
• Notes