Qurʾān

Qurʾān

Sacred scripture of Islam, regarded by Muslims as the infallible word of God, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad.

The book, first compiled in its authoritative form in the 7th century, consists of 114 chapters (sūrahs) of varying length, written in Arabic. The earliest sūrahs call for moral and religious obedience in light of the coming Day of Judgment; the ones written later provide directives for the creation of a social structure that will support the moral life called for by God. The Qurʾān also provides detailed accounts of the joys of paradise and the terrors of hell. Muslims believe that the God who spoke to Muhammad is the God worshiped by Jews and Christians but that the revelations received by those religions are incomplete. Emphasis on the stern justice of God is tempered by frequent references to his mercy and compassion. The Qurʾān demands absolute submission (islam) to God and his word, and it serves as the primary source of Islamic law. It is regarded as immutable in both form and content; traditionally translation was forbidden. The translations available today are regarded as paraphrases to facilitate understanding of the actual scripture.

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▪ sacred text
Introduction
Arabic“Recitation”also spelled  Quran  and  Koran  
 the sacred scripture of Islam (Islām) and, for all Muslims, the very word of God, revealed through the agency of the archangel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad. Although most modern Muslims know it as the Holy Qurʾān, many of them still refer to it as al-Qurʾān al-karīm or al-Qurʾān al-majīd, which can best be translated as “the Noble Qurʾān” or “the Glorious Qurʾān.” The Qurʾān, which is the central theophany (divine manifestation) of Islam, is written in Arabic (Arabic language), which is Islam's sacred and liturgical language. Because of Arabic's sacred status, the Qurʾān is, strictly speaking, untranslatable, though the text has been rendered into nearly every other language.

Names and structure
      The name Qurʾān is derived from the term al-qurʾān, meaning “the recitation.” The scripture has many other names, each of which suggests an aspect of its significance for Muslims. Among those found in the text itself are al-furqān (“discernment”),umm al-kitāb (the “mother book,” or “archetypal book”), al-hudā (“the guide”), dhīkrallāh (“the remembrance of God”), al-ḥikmah (“wisdom”), and kalāmallāh (“the word of God”). Another term found in the Qurʾān is al-kitāb (“the book”), though it is also used in both the Qurʾān and the Arabic language for other scriptures, such as the Torah and the Gospels. The term musḥāf (“written work”) is usually used to refer to particular manuscripts of the Qurʾān but is also used in the Qurʾān to identify earlier revealed books. The term al-Qurʾān is given as the main name of the text in the work itself and is explicitly identified as an Arabic word. Some Western scholars believe that the term originated in the Syriac language and entered Arabic before the rise of Islam. In any case, it had become an Arabic term by Muhammad's lifetime.

      The Qurʾān has long been considered the supreme standard of eloquence in the Arabic language. Qurʾānic Arabic has been studied by non-Arab Muslims all over the world, because the daily prayer recited by all Muslims consists primarily of Qurʾānic verses in Arabic. Muslims believe that the Arabic language of the Qurʾān is indispensable in conveying God's message because it was chosen by God himself. In the same way that everything concerning Christ is sacred for Christians, everything concerning the Qurʾān is sacred for Muslims. In keeping with the verse, “None toucheth [the Qurʾān] save the purified” (sura 56, verse 79), most Muslims perform ritual ablutions before touching the Qurʾān, which is always found in a place of honour in the home or the mosque.

      The text of the Qurʾān seems outwardly to have no beginning, middle, or end; its nonlinear structure is like that of a web or a net. It consists of 114 chapters called sura (surah)s, a term mentioned several times and identified as units or chapters of the revelation. The title of each sura is derived from a name or quality discussed in the text or from the first letters or words of the sura. Muslims believe that the Prophet himself, on God's command, gave the suras their names. The opening chapter, Al-Fātiḥah (fātiḥah) (The Opening), is the heart of the Qurʾān and is repeated in daily prayers and on many other occasions. The second sura, Al-Baqarah (The Cow), is the longest, and subsequent chapters are arranged according to length, with chapters becoming shorter as the text proceeds. All suras except one, Al-Tawba (Repentance), begin with the formula BismiʾLlāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm (“In the Name of God, the Infinitely Good, the All Merciful”), which is the formula pious Muslims use whenever they consecrate something. The suras are further subdivided between those that were revealed to Muhammad in Mecca and those that were revealed to him in Medina. According to traditional Islamic authorities, the ordering of the chapters also was revealed to the Prophet and is not an ad hoc arrangement made by later scribes, as is claimed by many Western scholars, who do not accept the revealed nature of the Qurʾān.

      Each sura is divided into verses called āyahs, from a term originally meaning a sign or portent sent by God to reveal an aspect of his wisdom. The number of āyahs in each sura ranges from three or four to more than 200, and an individual āyah may be as brief as one or two words or as long as several lines. The verses of the Qurʾān, however, should not be understood as poetry in the ordinary sense. Although the Qurʾān is extremely poetical, its āyahs are unlike the highly refined poetry of the pre-Islamic Arabs in their content and distinctive rhymes and rhythms, being more akin to the prophetic utterances marked by inspired discontinuities found in the sacred scriptures of Judaism and Christianity.

      Since the beginning of Islam, the proper number of āyahs has been a topic of dispute among Muslim scholars, some recognizing 6,000, some 6,204, some 6,219, and some 6,236, although the words in all cases are the same. Indeed, the study of the enumeration of the verses of the Qurʾān developed very early in Islamic history at the schools of Mecca, Kufa, Basra, and Sham (see below Commentaries and Qurʾānic sciences (Qurʾān)). The most popular edition of the Qurʾān, which is based on the tradition of the school of Kufa (Kūfah), contains 6,236 āyahs.

      Complementing the organization into suras and āyahs, there is a crosscutting division into 30 parts, juzʾs, each containing two units called ḥizbs, each of which in turn is divided into four parts (rub ʿal-aḥzābs). These divisions facilitate the reading of the Qurʾān over periods of different lengths. For example, since Muslims believe that the Qurʾān was first revealed during the holy month of Ramadan (Ramaḍān), a time of prayer and fasting, many people recite one juzʾ each day and therefore complete the reading of the Qurʾān during the month. The Qurʾān is also divided into seven stations, or manāzils, for those who wish to recite the whole text during one week.

      There is a vast difference between the Islamic understanding of the revelation of the Qurʾān and modern historical accounts of the composition of the text by mostly Western scholars, who reject the idea that it was divinely revealed. This has been the view of Western interpreters since the 12th century, when the Qurʾān was first translated into Latin by Robert of Ketton under the aegis of Peter The Venerable so that Christians would be better able to refute Islam. Although there have been some notable exceptions, the majority of Western scholars have tended to consider the Qurʾān to be the work of Muhammad himself. Although Western scholars of the Qurʾān, with certain exceptions, have not accepted the revealed nature of the sacred text, they have also differed greatly among themselves. Since the 19th century, when Orientalism in its modern form began in the West, there have been many Western theories about the origin and structure of the Qurʾān. Drawing from a variety of intellectual developments—the rationalism of the Enlightenment, the historicism of the 19th century, contemporary European philosophy, and the findings of Semitic philology—some scholars have considered the Qurʾān to have been based on what the Prophet Muhammad heard from the Jews and Christians around him. Other scholars have pointed out the similarity of some Qurʾānic terms with words existing in Aramaic, Syriac, and other Semitic languages and have identified older models from which the text of the Qurʾān was drawn. In the late 20th century some revisionist Western scholars even sought to refute completely the historical context of the appearance of the Qurʾān and claimed that the Qurʾān was assembled in its present form much later than the 7th century.

 Traditional Muslims believe that the Qurʾān exists eternally with God in the Guarded Tablet (al-lawḥ al-maḥfāẓ)—a tablet in the spiritual world on which the text of the Qurʾān was inscribed before its descent into this world—as God's word and that through the divine will the book was revealed to the Prophet word for word and sentence by sentence through the agency of the archangel Gabriel. Muhammad received his first revelation in the cave of Ḥīrā near Mecca in 610 and continued receiving revelations until 629. Muslims believe that Muhammad was unlettered (al-ummī) and that he did not alter the revelations by a single word. Despite Muhammad's passive role, Muslims believe that something of his soul is present in the Qurʾān; Muhammad may have believed this himself, since he said that Muslims should remember him after his death by reciting the Qurʾān.

      The Qurʾānic revelation was also a sonoral; that is, it was heard as a sound and not seen as a written text. Muhammad first heard the Qurʾān before uttering it and writing it down. Even today, while the Qurʾān is primarily understood as a book, the great majority of Muslims experience it through recitation. Most Muslims are not Arabs and do not know Arabic, and among Arabs a large number are not literate; nevertheless, throughout the Islamic world the Qurʾān is present on nearly every occasion through its being chanted according to traditional norms dating to the origin of the religion, its chanting constituting one of the sacred Islamic arts. A Muslim who knows the Qurʾān by heart, of whom there are many, is called a ḥāfiẓ, which means “one who has memorized the sacred text.”

Compilation
      In the 19th century the Danish scholar Theodor Nöldeke (Nöldeke, Theodor), in his influential Geschichte des Qorans (1860; “History of the Qurʾān”), largely rejected the Islamic understanding of the process whereby the text of the Qurʾān was compiled. Since then others, such as I. Goldziher, Richard Bell, and Jeffrey and W.M. Watt, have challenged the traditional Islamic perspective, while more recently John Wansbrough and John Burton have completely rejected pious traditions concerning the compilation of the Qurʾān. Although Burton believed that Muhammad himself sanctioned a complete text of the Qurʾān before his death, Wansbrough argued that there was no definitive text until the 9th century. The various Western views have all been addressed by contemporary Muslim scholars, who have based their responses on the earliest historical sources and archaeological evidence as well as on oral tradition, but these views still dominate much of the academic study of the Qurʾān in the West.

      According to the Sunni understanding, during the lifetime of the Prophet many people memorized the Qurʾān, and parts were also written down on whatever was at hand, including the bodies of believers, the shoulder bones of camels, tablets, and palm fronds, some of which have survived to this day. During the caliphate of Abū Bakr (632–634), Zayd ibn Thābit, who had recorded some of the Qurʾān during Muhammad's lifetime, was asked to compile a written version of the whole text. The completed text was passed to ʿUmar (Umar Iʿ), Abū Bakr's successor, and later kept by ʿUmar's daughter Ḥafṣah. During ʿUthmān (Uthmān ibn ʿAffānʿ)'s reign as caliph, a quarrel broke out among soldiers from different areas concerning the reading of certain verses. ʿUthmān chose Zayd ibn Thābit to prepare a definitive version, which he did with the help of three natives of Mecca. A copy was kept in Medina, and others were sent to Damascus, Kufa, Yemen, and possibly Basra. Copies containing alternate readings were destroyed, and ʿUthmān's edition became the standard text of the Qurʾān and has remained so ever since.

      The Shīʿite view, as well as that of some Sunnis, holds that Alīʿ, one of the first converts to Islam and the fourth caliph, retired from public life after the death of the Prophet and compiled a complete version of the Qurʾān, which was later shown to the people of Medina. Although a few Shīʿite scholars discount the role of Zayd ibn Thābit in the Qurʾān's preparation, the vast majority reject this view. Apart from minor differences over the numbering of verses and the interpretation of certain words and phrases, orthodox Sunni and Shīʿite scholars generally agree on the canonical text of the Qurʾān.

      Although a standard text thus emerged very early in Islamic history, there were variations among different versions in orthography, vocalization, and pronunciation. There were also different interpretations of some verses, which naturally affected their theological significance. In the 10th century the theologian Ibn Mujāhid refined the orthography, which resulted in greater uniformity in the text. He reduced the numerous interpretations of certain verses or sequences of words of the Qurʾān to seven possibilities, and gradually the interpretation of ʿĀṣim (died 744), as transmitted by Ḥafṣ (died 805), came to be preferred. The meaning of a word can change through altering the punctuation. In the Qurʾān some verses also acquire another meaning if the sentence ends with a certain word and not another. There developed, in fact, a whole Qurʾānic science concerning this issue.

Levels of meaning
      The Qurʾān, as attested by many of the sayings of Muhammad (Hadith (Ḥadīth)), has many levels of meaning. The existence of outward and inward levels of meaning is indicated in the text itself, which speaks of God as being both the Outward (al-Ẓāhir) and the Inward (al-Bāṭin). As the word of God, therefore, the Qurʾān also possesses a ẓāhir and several levels of bāṭin. Commentaries dealing with the ẓāhir of the text are called tafsīr (“commentary”), and hermeneutic and esoteric commentaries dealing with the bāṭin are called taʾwīl (“interpretation” or “explanation”), which involves taking the text back to its beginning. Esoteric commentators believe that the ultimate meaning of the Qurʾān is known only to God.

      Certain verses of the Qurʾān, as well as the “mysterious letters” that appear at the beginning of certain suras—e.g., the letters alif (a), lām (l), and mīm (m), which are found at the beginning of The Cow—can be understood only esoterically, it is held, and their meanings are connected with the numerical values associated with the relevant letters of the Arabic alphabet. The Islamic science of the numerical values of letters, called jafr, corresponds to the Kabbalistic and Hassidic study of the Hebrew (Hebrew language) letters of the Torah in Judaism (see Kabbala). The study of jafr is thought to reveal a mathematical structure that underlies the whole text. For example, certain phrases are repeated in a mathematical pattern.

      The verses of the Qurʾān are also divided into the explicit (muḥkamāt) and the implicit, or ambiguous (mutashābihāt). The latter category includes verses whose meanings are known only to God and to those who are “firm in knowledge” (al-rāsikhūn fīʾl-ʿilm). According to Sunni and Sufi commentators, knowledge of these meanings is received from the Prophet and his spiritual descendants; Shīʿite commentators hold that it is inherited from the Prophet, the Imams, and certain sages.

Content
 As the sacred scripture of a world religion, the Qurʾān contains all the guidance necessary for Muslims, and there is practically no aspect of life with which it does not deal. Above all, the Qurʾān is concerned with the ultimate nature of reality, or God (Allah (Allāh)); Muslims believe that the Qurʾān's exposition of this reality is the most complete possible. The Qurʾān emphasizes the oneness of God, or the doctrine of tawḥīd (tawhid), in verses such as “Allah, there is no god but He” (2:255–3:2). God is both completely transcendent and completely imminent; his closeness to humans is asserted in the verse, “We are nearer to him than his jugular vein” (50:16). Although the supreme name of God is Allah, he has many other names, which humans are invited to use: “To God belong the Most Beautiful Names. Call Him by them” (7:180). Religion is considered to be inseparable from human existence, and indeed it is ingrained in humanity's primordial nature (al-fiṭrah).

      The Qurʾān asserts a direct relation between God and humans, without any priestly intermediary; each man and woman is seen as God's “vicegerent” on earth. Despite this direct relationship, humans are portrayed as forgetful beings and are therefore commanded to obey God's laws. Submission to God's will is of primary importance—the name of the religion, al-islām, is derived from the root slm, meaning “surrender” or “peace.” Men and women are expected to be virtuous, to pray, and to perform their duties to family, to society, and indeed to creation as a whole.

      The Qurʾān contains specific laws and legal principles for governing Islamic society, such as laws of inheritance; Islamic law in its systematized form is known as Sharīʿah. Rights are treated as secondary to the individual's obligations to God and to creation. Throughout the Qurʾān a balance is created between the rights and obligations of the individual and the community, in light of God's laws and commandments, as well as between man's duties toward God and his duties toward society and the world of nature. For example, human beings are given freedom by God, and they are obligated to pray to God. They have the right to own property but not what is of a public nature. Society must in turn protect the property of its members. Human beings also can make use of various creatures in nature but must also protect animals and plants and not squander natural resources.

      The Qurʾān also deals extensively with the cosmos and the world of nature. No sacred scripture, with the possible exception of the Chinese Daodejing, speaks as often about nature as the Qurʾān does. The phenomena of nature are called āyāts, or signs of God, which are similar to the vestigia Dei of Christian thought. Islamic thinkers from the 9th and 10th centuries onward referred to the cosmos itself as the “cosmic Qurʾān” (al-Qurʾān al-takwīnī), which complements the written Qurʾān (al-Qurʾān al-tadwīnī).

      One of the major themes of the Qurʾān is the meaning of ethical action and the battle between good and evil. All human actions have consequences for the soul beyond its earthly life, and therefore discussion of good and evil is inseparable from the consideration of eschatology. In fact, questions pertaining to eschatological realities, including the most vivid descriptions of the paradisal and infernal states, constitute a very crucial part of the Qurʾānic message. Some of the earliest suras revealed to Muhammad (which actually appear at the end of the Qurʾān) are concerned especially with the Last Day and other eschatological matters. The early suras, it should be noted, come at the end of the Qurʾān; the suras, after the first, are arranged according to length and not chronology.

      The Qurʾān asserts that belief in the unit of God is at the heart of all authentic religions, and it uses the singular rather than the plural when referring to religion. At the same time, it states explicitly that there are no people to whom God has not sent a messenger, and it mentions some of the prophets of Judaism and Christianity by name. The Qurʾān presents a universal perspective on religion, maintaining that all revealed books are contained in the umm al-kitāb (“archetypal book”). According to the Qurʾān, there is oneness of the truth, but there is also diversity in religions because of the diversity of humanity. The Qurʾānic doctrine of the universality and diversity of religions is perhaps best summarized in the following verse:

For each We have appointed a divine law and a traced-out way. Had Allah willed He could have made you one community. But that He may try you by that which He hath given you (He hath made you as ye are). So vie one with another in good works. Unto Allah you will return and He will then inform you of that wherein you differ. (5:48)

      Muslims, therefore, are asked to accept the Torah, the Gospels, and other books; the Qurʾān asserts, “I believe in whatever Book God may have revealed” (42:15). Muslims also must respect the followers of other religions, such as Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity (which the Qurʾān considers to be the “People of the Book,” Ahl al-Kitāb) and must recognize that there are virtuous people in other religious communities. The idea of the “People of the Book” was applied later by Muslims in India to Hinduism and in some cases to Buddhism and in China to Confucianism. The Qurʾān invites followers of different religions to meet on the basis of the oneness of God (3:64). Although it rejects the divinity of Christ—whose miraculous birth and exalted position among prophets it nevertheless confirms explicitly—it asserts that, among all other religions, the one closest to Islam is Christianity.

Commentaries and Qurʾānic sciences
      In the Islamic world, all intellectual disciplines—including not only theology and mysticism but also philosophy, jurisprudence, and even the natural sciences—have been concerned with the Qurʾān and have sought to establish their foundations in its teachings. Sunni, Shīʿite, and Sufi scholars have written commentaries that explore dimensions of the Qurʾān pertinent to these and other studies. Among the most notable commentaries is that of al-Zamakhsharī (Zamakhsharī, Abu al-Qāsim Maḥmūd ibn ʿUmar al-) (1075–1144), on the rhetoric of the Qurʾān; that of al-Qurṭubī, which treats jurisprudence; and that of al-Ṭabarī (Ṭabarī, aṭ-) (c. 839–923), which examines the early sacred history of Islam and the chain of early narrators. The Shīʿite tradition of commentaries began with the Imams and includes many major works, the most comprehensive of which is that of al-Ṭabarī, which brought together several different schools of tafsīr (see above Levels of meaning (Qurʾān)). The numerous Sufi commentaries include those of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādīq (699/700–765), Sulamī (937–1021), Rūzbihān Baqlī Shīrāzī (1128–1209), Ibn ʿArabī (1165–1240), Rashīd al-Din Maybudī (12th century), and ʿAbd al-Razzāq Kāshānī (d. c. 730). Among extant philosophical commentaries, the most significant is that of Mullā Ṣadrā in the 17th century. In addition, many major commentaries appeared in the 20th century, including those of Mawlānā Abuʾl-Kalām Āzād, Mawlānā Mawdūdī, Sayyid Quṭb, and ʿAllāmah Ṭabāṭabāʾī.

      The ʿulūm al-Qurʾāniyyah (“Qurʾānic sciences”) encompass a host of disciplines devoted to the general interpretation and history of the text or to the elucidation of specific aspects. The topics studied range from proper pronunciation and reading and chanting to the enumeration of verses, the underlying mathematical structure of the text, the circumstances in which various verses were revealed, and the outer and inner meanings of certain passages.

Translations
      Although Muslims considered it ultimately untranslatable, efforts were made as early as the last part of the 7th century to translate the Qurʾān into other languages. A 7th-century Persian translation was followed in the 9th century by a translation into Sindhi and somewhat earlier Gujarati, and the text later appeared in the languages of all the other regions where Islam was established as the majority religion. The first translation into a European language, as noted above, was the 12th-century Latin paraphrase of Robert of Ketton. The first English translation was made by A. Ross in the 17th century from the French; the first English translation directly from the original Arabic was made by William Bedwell in 1615. Today translations of the Qurʾān are found in nearly every language of the world, and numerous editions are available in English.

The significance of the Qurʾān
 It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the Qurʾān in the life of Muslims. Verses of the Qurʾān are recited to Muslims at birth, the psalmody of the text surrounds them at the time of death, and, at all points in between, their lives are imbued with its presence. Those who can read the text do so regularly, and others listen to it constantly. For each Muslim the Qurʾān is like a person with whom he or she becomes more intimate as he or she grows older.

      The verses of the Qurʾān are thought to have power over body and soul, healing both. The sense of the protective power of the Qurʾān is so great that many Muslims carry small copies of it with them almost always. Many Islamic cities had—and a few still have—a copy of the Qurʾān at the top of their gates, so that travelers who enter will receive the blessing of its protection.

      The Qurʾān is also the wellspring of the sacred Islamic arts and specifically the so-called Qurʾānic arts of psalmody, calligraphy, and illumination. Every part of the Islamic world, from Arabia and Persia to Senegal and Indonesia, has created beautiful manuscripts of the Qurʾān and developed penetrating styles for its recitation. Traditional Islamic mosque architecture is also closely related to the Qurʾān, in that it seeks to create proper spaces in which the sound of Qurʾānic recitation may reverberate.

      Despite the diversity of the Islamic world, belief in the sacredness of the Qurʾān in all of its aspects—from the sound of its recitation to the paper upon which it is written—is universal. All Muslims recite the Qurʾān in a state of reverence, usually while facing their qiblah—that is, the direction of the Kaʿbah. The Qurʾān is the foundation of Islam as a world religion and the basis upon which Islamic civilization was created. It is also for Muslims the ultimate link between the individual and God, a net cast by God into the world in order to ensnare the wandering soul and bring it back to Allah, the One, who is the beginning and end of all things.

Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Additional Reading
Mahmoud Ayoub, The Qur'an and Its Interpreters, 2 vol. (1984–92). Richard Bell, Introduction to the Qur'ān, rev. and enlarged by W. Montgomery Watt (1977). John Burton, The Collection of the Qurʾān (1977). Kenneth Cragg, The Event of the Qurān: Islam in Its Scripture (1971, reissued 1994). Fadhlalla Haeri, Journey of the Universe as Expounded in the Qur'an (1985). Toshihiku Izutsu, God and Man in the Koran: Semantics of the Koranic Weltanschauung (1964, reprinted 1980), and Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qur'ān (1966, reissued 2002). Martin Lings, The Quranic Art of Calligraphy and Illumination (1976). Ernest G. McClain, Meditations Through the Quran: Tonal Images in an Oral Culture (1981). Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Ideals and Realities of Islam, new rev. ed. (2000). Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'ān, 2nd ed. (1989). Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations, trans. by Michael Sells (1999). ʿAllāmah Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabātabāʾī, The Qur'an in Islam: Its Impact and Influence on the Life of Muslims (1987; originally published in Arabic, 1973). John Wansbrough, Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (1977, reissued 2004).Seyyed Hossein Nasr

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