Encyclopedia of Islam

Quran

  

571  J

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and punishments people have experienced in 

history because of their belief or disbelief. In 

several chapters linked to the Medinan period of 

Muhammad’s life, the Quran calls upon believers 

to fight “in the path of God” against disbeliev-

ers and p

eople

 

oF

 

the

  b

ook

 opposed to them, 

which has led non-Muslims to conclude that 

violence and hatred are significant themes in the 

Quran. Although some Muslims have chosen to 

interpret their scripture in this limited way, it is 

also important to point out that many Muslims 

do not accept this understanding, pointing to 

verses that uphold the values of peaceful coex-

istence and acceptance of religious and cultural 

differences. Moreover, some modern commenta-

tors and reformers have argued that the more 

militant verses in the Quran pertained only to 

specific circumstances faced by Muhammad and 

his small community in their struggle for survival 

in m

edina

, and that they were not intended to be 

universally applicable.

The themes of God’s oneness, 

revelation

, 

prophecy, individual accountability, and the Last 

Judgment would mean little if they were not 

connected to a code of 

ethics

 

and

 

morality

 that 

links individuals to society. The Quran calls upon 

people to perform acts of charity, especially for 

orphans and the needy, and oppose greed, oppres-

sion, and wrongdoing. It also affirms family life 

by legislating on matters of marriage, 

adUltery

, 

divorce

, and inheritance. The pre-Islamic Ara-

bian practice of slaying infant girls was prohib-

ited, as was usury and gambling. The Quran also 

provides rules governing worship, lawful and 

prohibited 

Food

 

and

 

drink

, relations with non-

Muslims, as well as the division of the spoils of 

war. Although the number of legislative verses, 

found mainly in the Medinan suras, is small in 

comparison with nonlegislative ones, the Quran 

is one of the fundamental “roots” of the 

sharia

,

or Islamic law.

The Quran’s accounts of prophets before 

Muhammad attribute miraculous signs to them. 

It states that people of Muhammad’s time chal-

lenged him to produce similar wonders, to which 

the Quran replies, “Is it not sufficient that we 

have revealed to you (Muhammad) the book that 

is recited to them? In that there is a mercy and 

reminder for a people who believe” (Q 29: 50–

51). From this and similar declarations the 

Ulama

developed the doctrine of the Quran’s miraculous 

nature, or inimitability (ijaz). They said it was 

miraculous because its language and style could 

not be replicated in ordinary human speech, its 

chapters and verses were uniquely arranged, it 

spoke of past and future events of which Muham-

mad had no knowledge, it revealed God’s names 

and attributes, its laws and commandments were 

universal in application, and, unlike other 

holy

books

, it has remained unaltered since it was 

revealed to Muhammad. Some Muslims today 

assert that the Quran also speaks to modern 

scientific theories, such as those concerning the 

origin of the universe and the genetic code. Such 

beliefs have been contested by non-Muslims and 

Euro-American scholars, as well as skeptical 

Muslims. Nevertheless, the consensus reached by 

many Muslims through the ages has been that the 

Quran is Muhammad’s chief 

miracle

 and proof of 

the truth of his prophethood.

Belief in the Quran’s miraculous nature, taken 

together with a desire to place its origins on a par 

with Jewish belief in the revelation of the Torah on 

Mt. Sinai and Christian belief in Jesus as the word 

of God incarnate, has inspired the belief held by 

many Muslims that the angel g

abriel

 revealed the 

entire Quran to Muhammad on the n

ight

 

oF

 d

es

-

tiny

 (laylat al-qadr), one of the last nights in the 

month of r

amadan

. This belief, not stated by the 

Quran itself, is in tension with the view endorsed 

by Islamic historical sources that the Quran 

was revealed piecemeal during Muhammad’s life, 

between 610 

c

.

e

. and 632 

c

.

e

., and that it was col-

lected into a physical book (mushaf) only after his 

death. Early commentaries and Islamic historical 

sources support this understanding of the Quran’s 

early development, although they are unclear in 

other respects. They report that the third 

caliph

, 

K  572  

Quran

---

U

thman

 

ibn

  a

FFan

 (r. 644–656) ordered a com-

mittee headed by Zayd ibn Thabit (d. ca. 655), 

Muhammad’s scribe, to establish a single authori-

tative recension of the Quran. Uthman reportedly 

had divergent versions, which were being used in 

different parts of the early Muslim community, 

destroyed. To avoid disputes, everyone was to use 

a single version of the Quran, known as the Uth-

manic codex, its technical name, which Muslims 

believe to be the canonical version used today. 

The first copies were sent from Medina to the 

cities of Mecca, d

amascUs

, Basra, and Kufa (the 

latter two are in Iraq).

Islamic sources indicate that during Muham-

mad’s lifetime his Companions had both memo-

rized the revelations and written them on palm 

branches, stone tablets, and the shoulder blades 

of animals. They also state that there was a pre-

Uthmanic version of the Quran in the hands of 

his predecessor a

bU

  b

akr

 (r. 632–634), which 

had been collected out of a concern that the 

verses would be lost or forgotten when Muham-

mad’s Companions died. Abu Bakr’s copy was 

passed on to Hafsa, one of Muhammad’s widows 

and daughter of the caliph U

mar

 

ibn

 

al

-k

hattab

(r. 634–644). This was probably one of the main 

copies used in the creation of Uthman’s codex. 

Nevertheless, evidence from coins, early inscrip-

tions, and texts tells us that there continued to 

be non-Uthmanic versions of the Quran circulat-

ing in the Muslim community after the seventh 

century. A 10th-century source (Abu Dawud 

al-Sijistani, d. 929) indicates that there were 

as many as 28 codices at that time. Moreover, 

because early Arabic manuscripts of the Quran 

were often written without vowels and markings 

to differentiate consonants, variant “readings” of 

the Uthmanic codex arose in the far-flung lands 

of the Arab Muslim empire. At the apex of the 

a

bbasid

 c

aliphate

 (10th century), the consensus 

was that there were seven authorized readings. 

The standard edition printed today was first 

published in 1923 in c

airo

; it is based on the 

eighth-century “reading” of Kufa in i

raq

. The 

numbering of verses in the Cairo edition has 

become the standard for most modern printings 

of the Quran.

The Quran holds a place of primary impor-

tance in the history of Islam and in the daily life 

of Muslims. It is considered a foundational docu-

ment in matters of 

edUcation

, law, 

theology

, and 

history. Children begin their religious education 

by learning how to read and recite it in Arabic, 

believed the unadulterated language of God’s 

revelation. All Muslims must memorize short 

chapters of the Quran in order to perform their 

daily prayers. Some choose to memorize the entire 

book. The ulama have had to go even greater 

lengths to gain advanced levels of expertise in its 

language and rhetoric. Indeed, a work of religious 

scholarship would be considered inadequate if it 

were to omit quranic quotations. Consequently, 

a sizeable body of literature about the Quran has 

been produced through the centuries by ulama 

working in the major centers of Islamic learning. 

Perhaps the most important genre of writings con-

cerning the Quran is that of