The town of Mecca
According to Arabian traditions, and later confirmed by the Qur’an, the town of Mecca was established by the Patriarch Abraham and his son Ishmael. The location is not very far from the west coast of the Red Sea in a rocky valley with few agricultural resources.
There were at least two possible reasons for Abraham to have chosen that location to settle his son Ishmael in that arid valley. He was directed by God according to the Qur’an to rebuild the small square building called the Ka’ba, the ancient house that was built there by Adam for the sole purpose of worshipping God. Later the well of Zamzam would appear.
As Mecca happened to be on the caravan route from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean and with fresh water, it naturally became a trading post where people could hear about the faith of Abraham and carry it with them to wherever they were going. With the Ka’ba, the House of God, located in the center of town, Mecca became Arabia’s most important place of pilgrimage for all Arab tribes.
As time went by, tribalism influenced the way Arabs worshiped God. The Meccans claimed descent from Abraham through Ishmael, and their place of worship, the Ka’ba, was still called the House of God, but in time the chief objects of worship became a number of idols placed inside. These were used as intercessors. Each tribe adopted an idol that was viewed as the protector of that individual tribe, and by the 4th century, large numbers of pilgrims from all over the Arabian Peninsula and beyond visited Mecca on an annual pilgrimage. But this was not only for religious reason. People visited Mecca to celebrate, trade, recite poetry in poetry competitions, commit immoral acts, and worship the many idols inside and around the Ka’ba.
The birth of Mohammad
It was in the year 570 CE that Mohammad was born in Mecca. His father, Abdullah, belonged to the Hashemite family of Quraish. His mother, Amina, was a descendant from the same tribe. Returning with a caravan from Syria and Palestine, Abdullah stopped in Yathrib, an oasis to the north of Mecca, to visit relatives. There, he fell ill and died several months before his son’s birth.
It was customary to send the sons of Quraish into the desert to spend their early childhood with Bedouin tribes. Apart from considerations of health, this represented a return to their roots, an opportunity to experience the freedom that accompanied the vastness of the desert.
Mohammad was taken by Halima of the Banu Sa’d tribe, and spent four or five years with her family, tending the sheep and learning the Arabic language from the Bedouins, whose speech was proper Arabic.
When he was six, not long after he had rejoined his mother, she took him on a visit to town of Yathrib, where his father had died, and she herself fell ill with one of the fevers prevalent in that area, dying on the journey home. Mohammad now came under the guardianship of his grandfather, Abdul-Muttalib, chief of the Hashemite clan. When the boy was eight years old, Abdul-Muttalib died, and thus he entered the care of the new Hashemite chieftain, his uncle Abu Talib. During this time, the young Mohammad was still tending sheep. When he reached the age of nine, he was taken by his uncle on the caravan journey to Syria so that he could learn to lead a caravan and the art of trade.
He continued working as a merchant, making a reputation for himself. Among the wealthy merchants of Mecca was a wealthy widow named Khadijah. Impressed by what she heard of Mohammad, who was now commonly known as Al-Ameen (the trustworthy). She employed him to be in charge of her trade to Syria. Being impressed by his confidence and success in the way he handled her trade, his atypical competence and his personal charm, she asked him to marry her. By this time Mohammad was twenty-five, and Khadijah was forty. Khadija bore Mohammad six children. All of their children, but Fatima died during his lifetime.
For the next fifteen years or so Mohammad lived the life of a prosperous merchant. He was now a man of substance, respected in the community, admired both for his generosity and his wisdom. Yet he was spiritually troubled, and became increasingly so, as he approached middle age. He then developed one habit uncommon to merchants; from time to time he withdrew into the mountains surrounding Mecca to meditate and pray.
Mohammad was among the few who rejected the prevailing idol worship and longed for the faith of Abraham. Such seekers of the truth were known as Hunafa’, a word originally meaning “those who turn away” from idolatry. These people did not form a community, but rather each sought the truth by the light of their own inner consciousness. But with his continuous search for the truth, Mohammad increasingly felt the need to contemplate, and this lead him to seek seclusion in a cave on Mount Hira near Mecca. There, he would retreat for days to think, reflect and meditate. It was there that he was undergoing preparation for the enormous task which would be placed upon his shoulders, the task of prophethood and to convey the last revelations of God to his people and the rest of humanity.
The first revelation
The 7th day in the month of Ramadan that year (610 CE) was like any other day Mohammad spent in solitude in a cave high above Mecca. But that night changed his life. He had fallen asleep in the cave when he suddenly was awakened with an overwhelming feeling of a divine presence. An angel was there. Mohammad must have been terrified, especially when the angel enveloped him in a terrifying embrace so that it felt as though his very breath was being squeezed from his body. The angel gave him one command:
“Iqra’!” (“Read!”) Mohammad protested in vain that he could not read. But the command was issued twice more, and each time he would feel he was reaching the end of his endurance, and he uttered the same response. Finally, the angel released him, and Mohammad found divinely inspired words pouring out of his mouth:
“Recite in the name of your Lord who created; created the human being from a clinging substance. Recite! Your Lord is the Most Generous, who taught by the pen, taught the human being that which he knew not.” (Qur’an 96:1-5)
So the angel was not asking him to read but to recite the words God puts in his mouth[1].Thus began the magnificent story of God’s last testament to humanity.
The encounter of an Arab, fourteen centuries ago, with a being from the realm of the unseen was an event of such momentous significance[2] that it would affect the lives of hundreds of millions of men and women, building a great civilization and raising from the dust beauty and splendor previously unknown. The word Iqra’, echoing around the valleys of the Hejaz, broke the mold in which the known world was cast; and this man, alone among the rocks, took upon his shoulders a burden which would have crushed the mountains had it descended upon them.
Mohammad had reached an age of maturity. The impact of this tremendous encounter may be said to have cleansed his soul. The man who descended from the mountain was like gold refined by the fire and was not the same man who had ascended it.
For the moment, however, he was terrified as a man pursued. As he tumbled down the mountain, he heard a great voice crying, “Mohammad! You are the Messenger of God, and I am Gabriel!.” He looked upwards, and the angel filled the horizon. Wherever he turned, the figure was there, inescapably present. He rushed home, running, falling, crawling and shaking, he cried to Khadijah: “Cover me! Cover me!” She laid him down, placing a cloak over him, held him in her arms, soothing him and trying to calm him. As soon as he had recovered a little, he told her what had happened and shared his fears that he might be now possessed by a spirit. Mohammad was terrified. She held him close and comforted him:
“Never! By God! God will never disgrace you. You keep good relations with your relatives, help the poor, serve your guests generously, and assist those affected by calamities.” (Saheeh Al-Bukhari)
She saw in her husband a virtuous man—who is honest and just, given to helping the poor. The first person on the face of the earth to believe in the Message entrusted to Mohammad was his own wife, Khadijah. At once, she went to see an older male cousin, Waraqa, a Haneef, who had become a follower of Jesus and had studied the Scriptures. After hearing from her about Mohammad’s experience, Waraqa recognized him from the prophecies of the Bible to be the awaited prophet, and he confirmed that what had appeared to him in the cave was indeed the angel Gabriel:
“This is the Keeper of Secrets (Gabriel) who came to Moses” (Saheeh Al-Bukhari).
The Prophet continued to receive revelations for the remainder of his life, memorized and written down by his companions on pieces of sheepskin and whatever else was available.
The scribes
The revelation of the Qur’an was not an isolated event in the Prophet’s life. It was a constant stream of verses descending to him throughout the 23 years of his apostolic mission in Mecca and Medina. The Prophet appointed numerous companions of his to serve as scribes, writing down the latest verses as soon as they were revealed. The most notable among them were Zaid bin Thabit, Ubayy ibn Ka’b, Abdullah Ibn Mas’ud, Mu’awiyah ibn Abi Sufyan, Khalid ibn Al Waleed and Az Zubayr ibn Al Awwam[3]. For the most part, new verses would be written on bones, hide or parchment.
The scribes did not just write the new revelations, adding them next to the previous ones in chronological order, but they followed the Prophet’s instructions. The organization of the revelations into verses and chapters and their order was revealed by God to His Prophet through the Archangel Gabriel known to Muslims to be the Holy Spirit. Gabriel himself told the Prophet where to place each verse and in which chapter. It was a process much like putting together a huge puzzle that took 23 years to complete. The final result is the book we know as the Qur’an.
The logic followed in the structure and composition of the Qur’an is believed by Muslims to be God’s logic.
How the Qur’an is organized
With the death of the Prophet the revelations stopped. The last revelation[4] shortly before his death, was verse 281[5] of the second surah:
“Beware of a day when you are returned to God and every soul will be paid in full for what it has earned, and none will be wronged.”
Muslims found themselves alone without the Prophet to guide them, a new faith based on the Qur’an and the way the Prophet used to manage Muslims’ affairs and daily events called (in Arabic) the Sunna.
The Qur’an is composed of 114 parts or chapters of unequal length. Each chapter is called a surah in Arabic, divided into units, referred to as ayas, literally ‘signs’ or verses in English. These verses are not standard in length, but Muslims believe Mohammad was directed by God as to where each begins and ends. The shortest of the chapters (surahs) has ten words, and the longest, which is placed second in the Qura’nic text, has 6,100 words. The first chapter, the Al Fatihah (“The Opening”), is relatively short having just twenty-five words. From the second chapter onward, the chapters gradually decrease in length, although this is not a hard and fast rule. The last sixty chapters take up about as much space as the second. Some of the longer verses are much longer than the shortest chapters. All chapters, except one, begin with Bsimillah hir-Rahman nir-Rahim, (“In the Name of God, the Merciful to All, the Mercy Giver”). Each chapter has a name that usually refers to
a key word within it. For example, the longest chapter, Al-Baqara, or “The Cow”, is named after the story of God commanding the Jews to offer a sacrifice of a cow, which begins by God saying:
When Moses told his people, “God commands you to sacrifice a cow,” they said, “Are you making fun of us?” Moses answered, “God forbid that I should be so foolish.” (Qur’an 2:67)
Since the various chapters are of various lengths, the Qur’an was theoretically divided by scholars of the first century (Islamic Calendar) into thirty roughly equal parts, each part is called a juz’ in Arabic.
This organization of the revelations into chapters and verses was well-known to the companions[6]. Each Ramadan, the Prophet would repeat after Gabriel and or recite from memory the entire Qur’an in its exact order as instructed, in the presence of a number of his companions[7]. In the year of his death, he recited it twice[8]. Thereby, the order of verses in each chapter and the order of the chapters became reinforced in the memories of each of the companions present.
It is important to note that Mohammad would have the scribes read back the verses to him after writing them down so he could proofread them, making certain there were no errors.
To further ensure that there were no errors, Mohammad ordered that no one record anything else, not even his words, hadith, on the same sheet as the Qur’an. Regarding the sheets that the Qur’an was written down on, he stated “And whoever has written anything from me other than the Qur’an should erase it”. This was done to ensure that no other words were accidentally added to the text of the Qur’an.
As the companions spread out to various provinces with different populations, they took their recitations with them in order to instruct others[9]. In this way, the same Qur’an became widely retained in the memories of many people across vast and diverse areas of land.
It is important to know, however, that the Qur’an was not primarily preserved by writing it down. Arabia in the 600s was an oral society. Very few people could read and write, thus huge emphasis was placed on the ability to memorize long poems. Before Islam, Mecca was a center of Arabic poetry. Annual festivals were held that brought together the best poets from all over the Arabian Peninsula. Exuberant attendees would memorize the exact words recited by their favorite poets and quote them years and decades later.
Thus, in this type of oral society, the vast majority of the companions learned and retained the Qur’an by memorizing it[10]. Its rhythmic nature made it easy to memorize.
The recitation of the Qur’an was not heard by just a few select companions. It was heard and memorized by hundreds of people, many of them travelers to Medina. Thus, chapters and verses of the Qur’an quickly spread during the life of the Prophet to all corners of the Arabian Peninsula. Those who had heard verses from the Prophet would go and spread them to tribes far away, who would also memorize them. In this way, the Qur’an achieved a literary status known among the Arabs as tawator, or reaching a consensus on authenticity when various recitations confirm one another. This meant it was so vastly disseminated to so many different groups of people, who all had the same exact wording, that it is inconceivable that that any one person or group could have changed it. The entire Qur’an’s authenticity is confirmed through correlated recitation (mutawatir), because it was widespread during the life of the Prophet through oral tradition. Ibn Hisham, in his famous biography of the Prophet, Seerah Al-Nabi, stated that the Qur’an we have with us today has been handed down orally by a large number of the Prophet’s companions, with a consensus that this was the actual Qur’an that had been revealed to Mohammad.
Collection after the death of the Prophet
As reading the Qur’an became widespread across the Islamic world, it was impossible for verses to be changed without Muslims in other parts of the world noticing and correcting them. Furthermore, after the Qur’an was completed near the end of the Prophet’s life, Mohammad made sure that numerous companions knew the entire Qur’an by heart.
Shortly after the death of the Prophet, the first caliph, however, felt a need to have a central copy of the entire Qur’an for safe keeping. Abu Bakr, who ruled from 632 to 634 C.E., feared that if the number of people who had the Qur’an memorized dwindled, the community would be in danger of losing the Qur’an[11]. As a result, he ordered a committee be organized, under the leadership of Zaid bin Thabit[12], to collect all the written pieces of Qur’an that were spread throughout the community. The plan was to collect them all into one central place that could be preserved and protected long after those who had memorized the Qur’an had died.
Zaid accepted verses only from people he knew to be trustworthy. He only accepted verses written on pieces of parchment that had been written down in the presence of the Prophet. As well, there had to be witnesses who could attest to that fact. These fragments of Qur’an that he collected were each compared with the memorized Qur’an itself, ensuring that there was no discrepancy between the written and oral versions[13].
When the task was completed, a finalized collection of all the verses was assembled and presented to Abu Bakr, who secured it in the archives of the young Muslim state in Medina. Because of the numerous memorizers of Qur’an present in Medina at the time, it can be assumed with certainty that this copy that Abu Bakr had, matched exactly the revelations that Mohammad had received. Had there been any discrepancies, the people of Medina would have raised the issue. There is, however, no record of any opposition to Abu Bakr’s project or its outcome.
Later this collection representing the entire Qur’an went to Omar Ibn Al Khattab the second caliph (ruled from 23 August 634 to November 644 C.E.), who gave it to his daughter Hafsa, the Prophet’s widow, for safe keeping.
The Mushaf of Uthman
During the caliphate of Uthman (644 to 656 C.E.), a new issue regarding the Qur’an arose in the Muslim community: pronunciation. During the life of the Prophet , the Qur’an was revealed in seven different dialects – qira’as. The dialects differed slightly in their pronunciation of certain letters and words. These seven dialects were not an innovation resulting from corruption of the Qur’an in later years, as their authenticity was mentioned by the Prophet and recorded in the Hadith compilations of Bukhari and Muslim[14] and recognized by his companions. The reason for the different dialects was to make it easier for different tribes around the Arabian Peninsula to learn and understand the Qur’an.
During Uthman’s reign, people coming into the Muslim world at its periphery, in places like Persia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and North Africa were beginning to learn the Qur’an. An issue arose for them when it came to pronunciation of words, as they would hear different Arabs pronouncing the same verses differently. Although the different pronunciations were sanctioned by the Prophet and there was no inherent harm in people reciting and teaching them, it led to confusion among new non-Arab Muslims.
Uthman responded by commissioning a group to come together, organize the Qur’an according to the dialect of the tribe of Quraysh (the Prophet’s tribe), and spread that authorized copy throughout the world. Uthman’s team (which again included Zaid bin Thabit) compiled a complete written codex of the Qur’an with sheets of vellum (known as a mus’haf – from the word for page, sahifa) based on first hand manuscripts along with the memories of the best Qur’an reciters of Medina. This mus’haf was then compared with the copy that Abu Bakr commissioned, to make sure there were no discrepancies. Uthman then ordered numerous copies of the mus’haf to be made, which were sent to far off provinces throughout the world, along with reciters who would teach people to properly recite the Qur’an.
Because the Qur’an was now compiled and being reproduced on regular basis, there was no need for the numerous fragments of verses that people had in their possession. He thus ordered that those fragments be destroyed so they could not be used in the future to cause confusion among the masses. Although some Orientalists use this incident to try to claim that there were some discrepancies that Uthman wanted to eliminate, that claim lacks any supporting evidence. The entire community in Medina, including numerous eminent companions such as Ali ibn Abi Talib, willingly went along with this plan. Had he been eliminating legitimate differences, the people of Medina would have surely objected or even revolted against Uthman, neither of which happened. Instead, the Mus’haf of Uthman was accepted by the entire community as authentic and correct.
The script of the Qur’an
The Mus’haf of Uthman lacked any diacritical marks (dots that differentiated the letters and vowel markings). The letters seen in his mus’haf are thus merely the basic Arabic letters.
Uthman sent reciters with his copies of the mus’haf, to teach the people, especially non-Arabs, the proper pronunciation and recitation of the Qur’an. However, we must remember that the main way the Qur’an was preserved was orally, and the written copies were only meant to be a supplement to oral recitation. If someone already has a verse memorized, the basic letters in a copy of Uthman’s mus’haf serves only as a visual aid when reciting.
Over time, during the mid-700s, the Muslim world became an empire. Cities flourished, and written documents became a necessity for the young empire’s business. This is when diacritical marks began to be added to the mus’hafs throughout the world. This was done as the Muslim world shifted from an oral to a written society, to further facilitate reading from a copy of the Qur’an, and to eliminate errors.
According to tradition, it was for this reason that Muawiyah (602 – 680) of the Umayyad dynasty, ordered Ziad Ibn Abih, his wālī in Basra (governed 664–673), to find someone who would devise a method to transcribe correct reading. Ziad Ibn Abih, in turn, appointed Abu Al Aswad Al Du’ali (ca. 603CE – 688CE/69AH) for the task. Abu Al Aswad was a close companion of Imam Ali and according to some traditions he might have learned his system of dots to signal the three short vowels (along with their respective allophones) of Arabic from the Imam himself. This system of dots predates the i‘jām, dots used to distinguish between different consonants.
Fragments from a large number of Qur’an codices from the 8th and 9th century C.E. that we have today were written originally with the Kufic script and dots were added later.
Later, on the orders of the Umayyad Caliph ‘Abd al-Malik a Qura’nic text with diacritical marks was produced. This, to a certain extent, removed the difficulty of reading the Kufic script. Several difficulties however, remained. The diacritical marks for vowels, for example, were for a time only dots. Instead of a fathah, a dot was placed at the beginning of the letter and, instead of kasrah, a dot below and, for a dammah, a dot above at the end of a letter. This led to ambiguity. It was not untill Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718 – 786 CE) set about explaining the maddah, i.e. the lengthening of certain words, the doubling of letters, the diacritical marks of vowelling and the pause, that the difficulty of reading script was finally removed.
The Qur’an text most widely used today is based on the Rasm Uthmani (Uthmanic way of writing the Qur’an) and in the Hafs tradition of recitation, as approved by Al-Azhar University in Cairo in 1922. This is in fact the Arabic text that we translated.
Today, all modern mus’hafs include diacritical marks on the basic letters along with vowel markings to make reading easier.
Finally, as part of my passion to verify the authenticity of the currently printed copies of the Qur’an, I spent years searching the early original scripts thought to be from the late 1st century / early 2nd century (AH).
Fragments from a large number of Qur’an codices were discovered in Yemen in 1972. They are now lodged in the House of Manuscript in Sana’a. I presently own a copy of this manuscript thought to be the oldest copy of the Qur’an in existence.
One of the most famous of the Qur’an’s manuscripts is the one kept in the Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul, Turkey. It is an early manuscript of the Quran dated to the late 1st century / early 2nd century (AH). A number of copies were produced faithful to the original in every way in 2009, and I own one of them.
The third copy of an original manuscript that I own, is the one called the “Qur’ān Of ʿUthmān” that was displayed for some time at Al-Hussein Mosque, Cairo, Egypt, and thought by some people to be from 1st / 2nd Century (AH). However, paleographer Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Munajjid did not consider this manuscript to be from the time of caliph ʿUthmān. He said that, in all probability, it was a copy made on the order of the Governor of Egypt ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Marwān, brother of Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān (646-705). Therefore, it can be one of the oldest copies of the Qur’an written in Egypt in the second half of 1st century (AH).
A Koran fragment from the University of Tübingen Library has been dated to the 7th century – the earliest phase of Islam – making it at least a century older than previously thought. Expert analysis of three samples of the manuscript parchment concluded that it was more than 95 percent likely to have originated in the period 649-675 AD – 20 to 40 years after the death of the Prophet Mohammed. Such scientific dating of early Koran manuscripts is rare.
Perhaps the oldest certified manuscript of the Qur’an at this time is the one owned by the University of Tübingen in Germany. On10.11.2014, it was announced[15] that a Tübingen fragment was tested by the Coranica project, a collaboration between the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres Paris and the Berlin-Brandenburgischen Academy of the Sciences and Humanities, sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and France’s Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR). The project investigates the Qor’an in the context of its historical background using documents such as manuscripts and information derived from archaeological excavations.
The fragment in question is one of more than 20 in the University Library Collection written in Kufic script, one of the oldest forms of Arabic writing. The manuscript came to the University in 1864 as part of the collection of the Prussian consul Johann Gottfried Wetzstein.
[1] This might be what Deuteronomy 18:18 refers to “I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him” (Deuteronomy 18:18 – KJV). However Christians do not believe it refers to Muhammad.
[2] This experience is mentioned in the Quran 53:4-9.
[3] Ibn Hajar al-’Asqalani, Al-Isabah fee Tamyeez as-Sahabah, Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1978; Bayard Dodge, Mohammad ﷺ M. Azami, in Kuttab al-Nabi, Beirut: Al-Maktab al-Islami, 1974, in fact mentions 48 persons who were used to write for the Prophet (p).
[4] Sahih Al Boukhari, Al Manakib, Hadith Ibn Abbas about the compilation of the Qur’an.
[5] Ibid
[6] Ahmad von Denffer, Ulum al-Quran, The Islamic Foundation, UK, 1983, p.41-42; Arthur Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Quran, Leiden: Brill, 1937, p.31.
[7] Saheeh Al-Bukhari Vol.6, Hadith No.519
[8] Saheeh Al-Bukhari Vol.6, Hadith Nos.518 & 520.
[9] Ibn Hisham, Seerah al-Nabi, Cairo, n.d., Vol.1, p.199.
[10] Narrated Qatadah: I asked Anas Ibn Malik: ‘Who collected the Qur’an at the time of Prophet?’ He replied: ‘Four, all of whom were from the Ansar: Ubay Ibn Ka‘ab, Mu‘adh Ibn Jabal, Zayd Ibn Thabit and Abu Zayd.’(Bukhari, Kitab Fada’ilu’l-Qur’an)
[11] The main source of all accounts related to the collection of the Qur’an originate in Sahih Al Bukhari, Fadae’l Al Qur’an, section 6 named Jame’a Al Qur’an.
[12] Zayd ibn Thabit (زيد بن ثابت ) was the personal scribe of Muhammad and was from the Medina converts known as Ansar (Supporters).
When Zayd was 15 years old, he was among those chosen by Muhammad to write down the verses of the Quran. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zayd_ibn_Thabit
[13] Sahih Al Bukhari 6: 315 | 9
[14] In Islamic terminology, the term hadith refers to reports of statements or actions of Muhammad, or of his tacit approval or criticism of something said or done in his presence.
The two most accepted books on hadith are the two written by Imam Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muḥammad al-Bukhari known as Sahih al-Bukhari considered as one of the most sahih (authentic) of all hadith compilations.
The other compilation of hadith known as Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim is a collection of hadīth compiled by Imām Muslim ibn al-Hajjāj al-Naysāburi. His collection is considered to be one of the most authentic collections of the Sunnah of the Prophet.
[15] http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/en/news/press-releases/newsfullview-pressemitteilungen/article/raritaet-entdeckt-koranhandschrift-stammt-aus-der-fruehzeit-des-islam.html
Analysis showed that the Tübingen University fragment was written 20-40 years after the death of the Prophet Mohammad.
It can be viewed online at: