Preservation and Literary Challenge of the Qur’an

As Sir William Muir states, “There is probably no other book in the world which has remained twelve centuries (now over fourteen) with so pure a text.”¹⁸

At the outset, it is inconceivable that an unlettered man from 7th-century Arabia could spend 40 years of his life preoccupied with shepherding and trade and then bring the world—overnight—a linguistic masterpiece with intricate details of lost knowledge from the bellies of books that never existed in his age, and from the books that would only be written more than a millennium later? Let us examine how.

Memorization (Hifdh)

Michael Zwettler¹ relates, ‘In the ancient times, when writing was scarcely used, memory and oral transmission was exercised and strengthened to a degree now almost unknown’. It was in to this 'oral' society that Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was born.

During its revelation, which spanned twenty three years, not only did the Prophet teach the Qur’an, he memorized it entirely himself as did many of his Companions. The Angel Gabriel would spend every night in the month of Ramadhan with the Prophet, on a yearly basis, to refresh his Qur’anic memory.

The lives of Muslims revolved solely around the Qur’an; they would memorize it, teach it, recite portions from it every day for their obligatory Prayers – and many would stand a third of the night in prayer reciting from it. There existed so many memorizers of the Qur’an, that it was considered strange to find a family without someone amongst them who had not memorized the Qur’an entirely, which in itself is a testimony to this day.

As time progressed, literally thousands of schools were opened devoted specifically to the teaching of the Qur’an to children for the purpose of memorization. The teachers in these schools would have unbroken Tazkiya’s [authoritative chains of learning] going back to the Prophet himself through his many Companions – and this system exists even today.

Indeed, we live in a world where there are millions of memorizers of the Qur’an, scattered in every city and country spanning the whole globe. These memorizers range from ages 6 and up; males, females, Arabs, non-Arabs, blacks, whites, Orientals, rich and poor. God Almighty says:

“And indeed, We have eased it [the Qur’an] on your tongue that they might be reminded.” (The Qur’an, Chapter 44, Verse 58)

There does not exist a single book, secular or religious, which has as many memorizers of it, as the Qur’an. In reality, if one considers the ‘greatest’ writings of the world; Old and New Testament, Aristotle, Plato, Shakespeare, Orwell, Marx, Dickens, Machiavelli, Sun Tzu etc. – one may ask, how many people have memorized them? Seldom do we find a single individual.

Hypothetically, if we were to lose all the books of the world, by throwing them into the sea for instance, the only book we could resurrect entirely word-for-word would be the Qur’an – and, amazingly, it could be done simultaneously in every country of the world within twenty-four hours.

Kenneth Cragg writes, “This phenomenon of Qur’anic recital means that the text has traversed the centuries in an unbroken living sequence of devotion. It cannot, therefore, be handled as an antiquarian thing, nor as a historical document out of a distant past.”

The fact of Hifdh (Qur’anic Memorization) has made the Qur’an a present possession through all the lapse of Muslim time and given it a human currency in every generation never allowing its relegation to a bare authority for reference alone.”²

Written Text

The entire Qur’an was in writing at the time of revelation from the Prophet’s dictation by some of his literate companions, the most prominent of them being Zayd ibn Thabit. ³ Others among his noble scribes were Ubayy ibn Ka’b, Ibn Mas’ud, Mu’awiyah ibn Abu Sufyan, Khalid ibn Waleed and Zubayr ibn Awwam.⁴ The verses were recorded on leather, parchment, scapulae (shoulder bones of animals) and the stalks of date palms.⁵

The codification of the Qur’an (i.e. into a ‘single book form’) was done soon after the Battle of Yamamah (11AH/633CE), after the Prophet’s death and during the Caliphate of Abu Bakr. Many companions became martyrs in that battle, and it was feared that unless a written copy of the entire revelation was produced, large parts of the Qur’an might be lost with the death of those who had memorized it. Therefore, at the suggestion of Umar to collect the Qur’an in the form of writing, Zayd ibn Thabit was requested by Abu Bakr to head a committee which would gather together the scattered recordings of the Qur’an and prepare a mus-haf - loose sheets which bore the entire revelation on them.⁶ To safeguard the compilation from errors, the committee accepted only material which had been written down in the presence of the Prophet himself, and which could be verified by at least two reliable witnesses who had actually heard the Prophet recite the passage in question.⁷

Once completed and unanimously approved of by the Prophet’s Companions, these sheets were kept with the Caliph Abu Bakr (d. 13AH/634CE), then passed on to the Caliph Umar (13- 23AH/634-644CE), and then Umar’s daughter and the Prophet’s widow, Hafsa.⁸

The third Caliph Uthman (23AH-35AH/644-656CE) requested Hafsa to send him the manuscript of the Qur’an which was in her safekeeping, and ordered the production of several bounded copies of it (masaahif; sing: Mus-haf). This task was entrusted to the Companions Zayd ibn Thabit, Abdullah ibn Az-Zubair, Sa’eed ibn As-’As, and Abdur-Rahman ibn Harith ibn Hisham.⁹ Upon completion (in 25AH/646CE), Uthman returned the original manuscript to Hafsa and sent the copies to the major Islamic provinces.

A number of non-Muslim scholars who have studied the issue of the compilation and preservation of the Qur’an have also stated its authenticity. John Burton, at the end of his substantial work on the Qur’an’s compilation, states that the Qur’an as we have it today is:

“…the text which has come down to us in the form in which it was organized and approved by the Prophet…. What we have today in our hands is the mus-haf of Muhammad.”¹⁰

Kenneth Cragg describes the transmission of the Qur’an from the time of revelation to today as occurring in “an unbroken living sequence of devotion.”¹¹

Schwally concurs that: “As far as the various pieces of revelation are concerned, we may be confident that their text has been generally transmitted exactly as it was found in the Prophet’s legacy.” ¹²

The historical credibility of the Qur’an is further established by the fact that one of the copies sent out by the Caliph Uthman is still in existence today. It lies in the Museum of the City of Tashkent in Uzbekistan, Central Asia.¹³ According to Memory of the World Program, UNESCO, an arm of the United Nations, ‘it is the definitive version, known as the Mus-haf of Uthman.”¹⁴

A copy of the mus-haf sent to Syria (duplicated before a fire in 1310AH/1892CE destroyed the Jaami’ Masjid where it was housed) also exists in the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul¹⁶, and an early manuscript on gazelle parchment exists in Dar al-Kutub as-Sultaniyyah in Egypt.

This manuscript held at the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul can be dated back to the late 1^st century Hijri.

More ancient manuscripts from all periods of Islamic history, found in the Library of Congress in Washington, the Chester Beatty Museum in Dublin (Ireland) and the London Museum, have been compared with those in Tashkent, Turkey and Egypt, with results confirming that there have not been any changes in the text from its original time of writing and is proof that the text of the Qur’an we have in circulation today is identical with that of the time of the Prophet and his companions.

The Institute for Koranforschung, for example, in the University of Munich (Germany), collected over 42,000 complete or incomplete ancient copies of the Qur’an. After around fifty years of research, they reported that there was no variance between the various copies, except the occasional mistakes of the copyist which could easily be ascertained. This Institute was unfortunately destroyed by bombs during WWII.¹⁷

Thus, due to the efforts of the early companions, with God’s assistance, the Qur’an as we have it today is recited in the same manner as it was revealed. This makes it the only religious scripture that is still completely retained and understood in its original language.

Indeed, as Sir William Muir states, “There is probably no other book in the world which has remained twelve centuries (now over fourteen) with so pure a text.”¹⁸

The evidence above confirms God’s promise in the Qur’an:

“Indeed, it is We who sent down the Qur’an and indeed, We will be its guardian.” (The Qur’an, Chapter 15, Verse 9)

The Qur’an has been preserved in both oral and written form in a way no other book has, with each form providing a check and balance for the authenticity of the other.¹⁹

(ﷺ- Salutations in Arabic Calligraphy- May peace and blessings of God be upon him)

References:

1- Zwettler, Michael –The Oral Tradition of Classical Arabic Poetry, p. 14.

2- Cragg, Kenneth - The Mind of the Qur’an, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973, p.26.

3- Suyuti, Jalal al-Din - Al-Itqan fee ‘Uloom al-Qur’an, Beirut: Maktab al-Thiqaafiyya, 1973, Vol.1, p.41 & 99.

4- al-’Asqalani, Ibn Hajar - Al-Isabah fee Taymeez as-Sahabah, and in Azami, M.M. Kuttab al-Nabi – list 48 persons who used to write for the Prophet (saw).

5- al-Muhasabi, al-Harith - Kitab Fahm al-Sunan, cited in Suyuti, Al-Itqan fi ‘Uloom al-Qur’an, Vol.1, p.58.

6- Bukhari, Vol.6, hadith no. 201 & 509 and vol.9, hadith no.301.

7- al-’Asqalani, Ibn Hajar - Fath al-Bari, vol.9, p.10-11.

8- Bukhari, vol.6, hadith no.201.

9- Bukhari, vol.4, hadith no.709 and vol.6, hadith no.507.

10- Burton, John - The Collection of the Qur’an, Cambridge University Press, 1977, p.239-40.

11- Cragg, Kenneth - The Mind of the Qur’an, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973, p.26.

12- Geschichte des Qorans, Schwally - Leipzig: Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1909-38, Vol.2, p.120.

13- al-Nur, Yusuf Ibrahi - Ma’ al-Masaahif, Dubai: Dar al-Manar, 1st ed., 1993, p.117; Makhdum, Isma’il -

Tarikh al-Mushaf al-Uthmani fi Tashqand, Tashkent: Al-Idara al-Diniya, 1971, p.22ff.

14- http://www.unesco.org - I. Mendelsohn, “The Columbia University Copy Of The Samarqand Kufic Qur’an,”

The Moslem World, 1940, p. 357-358. A. Jeffery & I. Mendelsohn, “The Orthography Of The Samarqand Qur’an

Codex,” Journal Of The American Oriental Society, 1942, Volume 62, pp. 175-195.

15- Image courtesy of Memory of the World Register, UNESCO.

16- al-Nur, Yusuf Ibrahim - Ma’ al-Masaahif, Dubai: Dar al-Manar, 1st ed., 1993, p.113.

17- Hamidullah, Mohammed - Muhammad Rasullullah, Lahore: Idara-e-Islamiat, n.d., p.179.

18- Sir William Muir, Life of Mohamet, London, 1894, Vol.1, Introduction.

19- http://www.islamreligion.com/articles/18/