How was the Divine Revelation received and committed to writing?
The Prophet was in a trance-like state when he received revelations; immediately thereafter he recited to his believers what had been revealed to him. But how were these messages turned into a book? Umm al-kitāb, “The Mother of Books,” or “the well-preserved table,” as it is called in the Holy Qur’an (43: 4; 85: 22), is written by noble scribes, namely, angels (68: 1; 80: 15-16), on pure and venerable sheets with the celestial reed pen. “It is sent down” by the angel Gabriel, and is recited to the Prophet in Arabic, little by little as time and opportunity serve, in the ingenious form of rhymed prose. By being granted a share in the wisdom of the revelation, the Arabs are raised to an equal footing with Jews and Crhristians, “ the People of the Book,” Ahl al-kitāb, who had been admitted to “the Book’s” secrets earlier on; but he was the last recipient of the Word and the revelation attained its final and conclusive shape in Arabic.
What is meant by the term “ummī”?
The Prophet of Islam himself did not write down the Divine Revelations. It is the general opinion of Muslim scholars that he would have been unable to do so because he was illiterate. They find this evidenced in the Qur’an’s description of him as a “layman,” ummī (7: 157-158). Apparently, the context shows that the term denotes him as one who has no share in the revelations of the Jews and Christians, for which reason the word is also used of the Arabs in general (62: 2). We may be faced here with an assertion shining clearly through the explanations of the exegets, rooted in the notions that the Prophet’s credibility as an instrument of revelation will be corroborated by his inability to read the revelations of others, and that the miraculousness of his own revelatin is that much the greater. So, as we said, the Propeht recited the Divine Revelation to a number of believers until they were able to repeat it. The fragments began at a very early stage to be written down on whatever material lay to hand – the bones of camels or asses, flat stones, or palm leaves. A number of scribes compiled the fragments, ‘Alī b. Abī Tālib (A.S), Zayd b. Thābit are mentioned among the scribes. Abū Bakr is said to have commissioned Zayd to make an authentic compilation by making use of written records and oral reports of persons who know the texts by heart, the bearers of the Qur’an. It is said that it was under ‘Uthman that a definitive text was arrived at by a commission which is the form available to us.
What is the position of the Holy Qur’an in Arabic literature?
Muslims believe that it is God who speaks in the Qur’an in an incomparable tongue and its coming into existence in the Arabic language is a miracle, the greatest that had ever happened. So, Arabic literature started off with an unattainable expemplar, and this was of paramount importance to the Islamic book. It was established at once that the Arabic tongue was a perfect instrument for dealing with the very highest topics, and the form of the language represented by the Qur’an, that is, the one prevailing in the Hijāz around the year 600, stood above the rest; all other Arabic dialects were thereby relegateed to the background.
What about its position in the Islamic culture and civilization?
We may briefly note that the vast energies expended later in producing sumptuously worked eidtins of the Qur’an reflect the reference nourished for the Holy Book. A handsome copy of the Qur’an was and still is a joy to behold, but more than that it drew forth blessings upon its owner – and still does so – by virtue of his possession of it. The written Qur’an was ncessary in order to fix the correct text and thus establish a check on deviations. But otherwise the Qur’an has continued to be transmitted from generation to generation by rote learning, just as in its early days. Every Muslim of a certain level of education knows at least large parts of the Qur’an by heart, and for a larned man it is a matter of course that he kows it all. For example, the candidate’s ability to recite the whole of the Qur’an without falterning is a conditin of acceptance as a pupil in the Azhar Mosque, and these are lads of about ten years of age. An adult recites the holy text, and the boy repreats it after him until he has mastered it.
So, throughout the history of Islam, oral transmission of “the Book” proceeds alongside the written.
That’s right. Muslims say that even if every copy of the Qur’an were to be burnt, the Qur’an would still live, for it dwells in the hearts, that is, memories, of the faithful. It is a peculiarity of Islam that despite the great respect paid to the Book, written exposition is not regarded as an independent mode of expression, valuable in its own right, but as a representation of oral communication. To an Arab, therefore, reading always means reading aloud. He recites what the letters tell him, swaying his upper body from side to side in rhythmic movements. If one enters the Azhar mosque during the afternoon, for example, when the students are sitting reading their lessons, the sound of their voices is like the polyphonic roaring of the ocean. The conception of the written word here described is clearly observable in the scholarly tradition of Islam, and in legal actions a written document does not carry the same inherent evidential weight as with us but merely furnishes corroboration of the memory. It has proved impossible to maintain this position with total consistency.
What is the role of the Holy Qur’an in creating political unity after the spread of Islam?
The spread of the Islamic faith over the neighboring lands is one of the marvels of world history. By about 20 years after the demise of the Prophet in 632, not only Arabia but also Syria, Iraq, and the Persian Empire had come under the dominion of the caliph, and in another 20 years after that Egypt and North Africa had been won. Shortly after 700, Spain was conquered in the west and further territories secured in the east, so that the caliph’s empire now extended from the Atlantic to the frontiers of China. Although political unity could not be sustained, but a common culture, whose kernel was Islam, was created over this vast region, and with Islam came the Arabic tongue. The Aramaic, Greek, Coptic, Persian, Turkish, and Berber languages were all forced to yield before it, and even in those lands where the national dialects survived beneath the surface and became powerful again later on – as in the three last mentioned cases – Arabic continued to be the langugae of religion, scholarship, and higher culture until the most recent times. The Persian language alone, from about A.D. 1000, achieved some measure of importance as a literary language alongside Arabic, notably in the domain of poetry, and gradually also of historical writing, but it was now full of loan words from Arabic. The Arabic alphabet was and still is used, and many of the most important Arabic authors were Persians.
So, Arabic turned into a world language.
Yes, and in a short time an immense body of Arabic literature was born. Copious use was made of the Arabic script in the public service, where much work was done on its form, and this too was of importance to the development of books. There emerged an Islamic branch of scholarship whose first task – immediately after the determination of the Qur’anic text – was to collect and arrange the traditions of the Prophet’s deeds and words, setting norms for every action of a Muslim. This led to the creation of great systems encompassing at once doctrine, law, ethics, and standards of behavior – the while being ermed fiqh.
How did the science of kalām, i.e. theology, came into being?
The struggle with Christendom and the other forms fo religion, especially Gnosticism, led to the development of an Islamic theology, with an entire literature of its own, showing strong indications of having evolved in a milieu frequented by Christian thinkers. Hellenistic learning lived on and now became embodied in the new Arabic-stamped culture. Systems of thought were derived from Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. Hellenistic natural science, especially medicine, found its continuation among scholars who wrote Arabic.
What about scientific literature?
The bulk of the ancient Arabic scientific literature mainly consisted of translations from Greek, which were promoted at academies such as the one established by the caliph al-Ma’mūn at the beginning of the 9th century. Many books were translated from Persian as well; a single author, Ibn Marzubān (d. 921) is said to have been responsible for over fifty (Yāqūt’s Irshād al-arīb ilā ma’rifat al-adīb, Margoliouth, 1907-26, VII, 105), but little of this translated literature has survived. Ibn al-Nadīm, who lived in the heyday of this activity, compiled a survey of the translations and original works then current in his Fihrist (the last quarter of the 10th century).
