Part 27

The suras of the third Meccan period, which form a fairly large part of our present Koran, are almost entirely prosaic. Some of the revelations are of considerable extent, and the single verses also are much longer than in the older suras. Only now and then a gleam of poetic power flashes out. A sermonizing tone predominates. The suras are very edifying for one who is already reconciled to their import, but to us at least they do not seem very well fitted to carry conviction to the minds of unbelievers. That impression, however, is not correct, for in reality the demonstrations of these longer Meccan suras appear to have been peculiarly influential for the propagation of Islam. Mahomet's mission was not to Europeans, but to a people who, though quick-witted and receptive, were not accustomed to logical thinking, while they had outgrown their ancient religion.

Medinan Suras.

When we reach the Medina period it becomes, as has been indicated, much easier to understand the revelations in their historical relations, since our knowledge of the history of Mahomet in Medina is tolerably complete. In many cases the historical occasion is perfectly clear, in others we can at least recognize the general situation from which they arose, and thus approximately fix their time. There still remains, however, a remnant, of which we can only say that it belongs to Medina.

The style of this period bears a fairly close resemblance to that of the latest Meccan period. It is for the most part pure prose, enriched by occasional rhetorical embellishments. Yet even here there are many bright and impressive passages, especially in those sections which may be regarded as proclamations to the army of the faithful. For the Moslems Mahomet has many different messages. At one time it is a summons to do battle for the faith; at another, a series of reflections on recently experienced success or misfortune, or a rebuke for their weak faith; or an exhortation to virtue, and so on. He often addresses himself to the "doubters," some of whom vacillate between faith and unbelief, others make a pretence of faith, while others scarcely take the trouble even to do that. They are no consolidated party, but to Mahomet they are all equally vexatious, because, as soon as danger has to be encountered, or a contribution is levied, they all alike fall away. There are frequent outbursts, ever increasing in bitterness, against the Jews, who were very numerous in Medina and its neighbourhood when Mahomet arrived. He has much less to say against the Christians, with whom he never came closely in contact; and as for the idolaters, there was little occasion in Medina to have many words with them. A part of the Medina pieces consists of formal laws belonging to the ceremonial, civil and criminal codes; or directions about certain temporary complications. The most objectionable parts of the whole Koran are those which treat of Mahomet's relations with women. The laws and regulations were generally very concise revelations, but most of them have been amalgamated with other pieces of similar or dissimilar import, and are now found in very long suras.

Such is an imperfect sketch of the composition and the internal history of the Koran, but it is probably sufficient to show that the book is a very heterogeneous collection. If only those passages had been preserved which had a permanent value for the theology, the ethics, or the jurisprudence of the Moslems, a few fragments would have been amply sufficient. Fortunately for knowledge, respect for the sacredness of the letter has led to the collection of all the revelations that could possibly be collected--the "abrogating" along with the "abrogated," passages referring to passing circumstances as well as those of lasting importance. Every one who takes up the book in the proper religious frame of mind, like most of the Moslems, reads pieces directed against long-obsolete absurd customs of Mecca just as devoutly as the weightiest moral precepts--perhaps even more devoutly, because he does not understand them so well.

Mysterious Letters.

At the head of twenty-nine of the suras stand certain initial letters, from which no clear sense can be obtained. Thus, before ii. iii. xxxi. xxxii. we find [Arabic word] (_Alif Lam Mim_), before xl.-xlvi. [Arabic word] (_Ha Mim_). Nöldeke at one time suggested that these initials did not belong to Mahomet's text, but might be the monograms of possessors of codices, which, through negligence on the part of the editors, were incorporated in the final form of the Koran; he now deems it more probable that they are to be traced to the Prophet himself, as Sprenger, Loth and others suppose. One cannot indeed admit the truth of Loth's statement that in the proper opening words of these suras we may generally find an allusion to the accompanying initials; but it can scarcely be accidental that the first verse of the great majority of them (in iii. it is the second verse) contains the word "book," "revelation," or some equivalent. They usually begin with: "This is the book," or "Revelation ('down sending') of the book," or something similar. Of suras which commence in this way only a few (xviii. xxiv. xxv. xxxix.) want the initials, while only xxix. and xxx. have the initials and begin differently. These few exceptions may easily have proceeded from ancient corruptions; at all events they cannot neutralize the evidence of the greater number. Mahomet seems to have meant these letters for a mystic reference to the archetypal text in heaven. To a man who regarded the art of writing, of which at the best he had but a slight knowledge, as something supernatural, and who lived amongst illiterate people, an A B C may well have seemed more significant than to us who have been initiated into the mysteries of this art from our childhood. The Prophet himself can hardly have attached any particular meaning to these symbols: they served their purpose if they conveyed an impression of solemnity and enigmatical obscurity. In fact, the Koran admits that it contains many things which neither can be, nor were intended to be, understood (iii. 5). To regard these letters as ciphers is a precarious hypothesis, for the simple reason that cryptography is not to be looked for in the very infancy of Arabic writing. If they are actually ciphers, the multiplicity of possible explanations at once precludes the hope of a plausible interpretation. None of the efforts in this direction, whether by Moslem scholars or by Europeans, has led to convincing results. This remark applies even to the ingenious conjecture of Sprenger, that the letters [Arabic word] (_Kaf He Ye Ain Sad_) before xix. (which treats of John and Jesus, and, according to tradition, was sent to the Christian king of Abyssinia) stand for _Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judaeorum_. Sprenger arrives at this explanation by a very artificial method; and besides, Mahomet was not so simple as the Moslem traditionalists, who imagined that the Abyssinians could read a piece of the Arabic Koran. It need hardly be said that the Moslems have from of old applied themselves with great assiduity to the decipherment of these initials, and have sometimes found the deepest mysteries in them. Generally, however, they are content with the prudent conclusion that God alone knows the meaning of these letters.

Transmission of the Koran.

Zaid's First Koran.

It is probable (see above) that Mahomet had already caused revelations to be written down at Mecca, and that this began from the moment when he felt certain that he was the transmitter of the actual text of a heavenly book to mankind. It is even true that he may at some time or another have formed the intention of collecting these revelations. The idea of a heavenly model would in itself have suggested such a course and, only in an inferior degree to this, the necessity of setting a new and uncorrupted document of the divine will over against the sacred scriptures of the Jews and Christians, the people of the Book, as the Koran calls them. In any case, when Mahomet died, the separate pieces of the Koran, notwithstanding their theoretical sacredness, existed only in scattered copies; they were consequently in great danger of being partially or entirely destroyed. Many Moslems knew large portions by heart, but certainly no one knew the whole; and a merely oral propagation would have left the door open to all kinds of deliberate and inadvertent alterations. But now, after the death of the Prophet, most of the Arabs revolted against his successor, and had to be reduced to submission by force. Especially sanguinary was the struggle against the prophet Maslama (Mubarrad, _Kamil_ 443, 5), commonly known by the derisive diminutive Mosailima. At that time (A.D. 633) many of the most devoted Moslems fell, the very men who knew most Koran pieces by heart. Omar then began to fear that the Koran might be entirely forgotten, and he induced the Caliph Abu Bekr to undertake the collection of all its parts. The Caliph laid the duty on Zaid ibn Thabit, a native of Medina, then about twenty-two years of age, who had often acted as amanuensis to the Prophet, in whose service he is even said to have learned the Jewish letters. The account of this collection of the Koran has reached us in several substantially identical forms, and goes back to Zaid himself. According to it, he collected the revelations from copies written on flat stones, pieces of leather, ribs of palm-leaves (not palm-leaves themselves), and such-like material, but chiefly "from the breasts of men," i.e. from their memory. From these he wrote a fair copy, which he gave to Abu Bekr, from whom it came to his successor Omar, who again bequeathed it to his daughter Hafsa, one of the widows of the Prophet. This redaction, commonly called _al-sohof_ ("the leaves"), had from the first no canonical authority; and its internal arrangement can only be conjectured.

Othman's Koran.

The Moslems were as far as ever from possessing a uniform text of the Koran. The bravest of their warriors sometimes knew deplorably little about it; distinction on _that_ field they cheerfully accorded to pious men like Ibn Mas'ud. It was inevitable, however, that discrepancies should emerge between the texts of professed scholars, and as these men in their several localities were authorities on the reading of the Koran, quarrels began to break out between the levies from different districts about the true form of the sacred book. During a campaign in A.H. 30 (A.D. 650-651), Hodhaifa, the victor in the great and decisive battle of Nehaveand (see CALIPHATE; and PERSIA: _History_) perceived that such disputes might become dangerous, and therefore urged on the caliph Othman the necessity for a universally binding text. The matter was entrusted to Zaid, who had made the former collection, with three leading Koreishites. These brought together as many copies as they could lay their hands on, and prepared an edition which was to be canonical for all Moslems. To prevent any further disputes, they burned all the other codices except that of Hafsa, which, however, was soon afterwards destroyed by Merwan the governor of Medina. The destruction of the earlier codices was an irreparable loss to criticism; but, for the essentially political object of putting an end to controversies by admitting only one form of the common book of religion and of law, this measure was necessary.

The result of these labours is in our hands; as to how they were conducted we have no trustworthy information, tradition being here too much under the influence of dogmatic presuppositions. The critical methods of a modern scientific commission will not be expected of an age when the highest literary education for an Arab consisted in ability to read and write. It now appears highly probable that this second redaction took this simple form: Zaid read off from the codex which he had previously written, and his associates, simultaneously or successively, wrote one copy each to his dictation. These three manuscripts will therefore be those which the caliph, according to trustworthy tradition, sent in the first instance as standard copies to Damascus, Basra and Kufa to the warriors of the provinces of which these were the capitals, while he retained one at Medina. Be that as it may, it is impossible now to distinguish in the present form of the book what belongs to the first redaction from what is due to the second.

In the arrangement of the separate sections, a classification according to contents was impracticable because of the variety of subjects often dealt with in one sura. A chronological arrangement was out of the question, because the chronology of the older pieces must have been imperfectly known, and because in some cases passages of different dates had been joined together. Indeed, systematic principles of this kind were altogether disregarded at that period. The pieces were accordingly arranged in indiscriminate order, the only rule observed being to place the long suras first and the shorter towards the end, and even that was far from strictly adhered to. The two magic formulae, suras cxiii., cxiv. owe their position at the end of the collection to their peculiar contents, which differ from all the other suras; they are protecting spells for the faithful. Similarly it is by reason of its contents that sura i. stands at the beginning: not only because it is in praise of Allah, as Psalm i. is in praise of the righteous man, but because it gives classical expression to important articles of the faith. These are the only special traces of design. The combination of pieces of different origin may proceed partly from the possessors of the codices from which Zaid compiled his first complete copy, partly from Zaid himself. The individual suras are separated simply by the superscription: "In the name of God, the compassionate Compassioner," which is wanting only in the ninth. The additional headings found in our texts (the name of the suras, the number of verses, &c.) were not in the original codices, and form no integral part of the Koran.

It is said that Othman directed Zaid and his associates, in cases of disagreement, to follow the Koreish dialect; but, though well attested, this account can scarcely be correct. The extremely primitive writing of those days was quite incapable of rendering such minute differences as can have existed between the pronunciation of Mecca and that of Medina.

The Koran not complete.

Othman's Koran was not complete. Some passages are evidently fragmentary; and a few detached pieces are still extant which were originally parts of the Koran, although they have been omitted by Zaid. Amongst these are some which there is no reason to suppose Mahomet desired to suppress. Zaid may easily have overlooked a few stray fragments, but that he purposely omitted anything which he believed to belong to the Koran is very unlikely. It has been conjectured that in deference to his superiors he kept out of the book the names of Mahomet's enemies, if they or their families came afterwards to be respected. But it must be remembered that it was never Mahomet's practice to refer explicitly to contemporary persons and affairs in the Koran. Only a single friend, his adopted son Zaid (xxxiii. 37), and a single enemy, his uncle Abu Lahab (cxi.)--and these for very special reasons--are mentioned by name; and the name of the latter has been left in the Koran with a fearful curse annexed to it, although his son had embraced Islam before the death of Mahomet, and his descendants belonged to the noblest families. So, on the other hand, there is no single verse or clause which can be plausibly made out to be an interpolation by Zaid at the instance of Abu Bekr, Omar, or Othman. Slight clerical errors there may have been, but the Koran of Othman contains none but genuine elements--though sometimes in very strange order. All efforts of European scholars to prove the existence of later interpolations in the Koran have failed.

Of the four exemplars of Othman's Koran, one was kept in Medina, and one was sent to each of the three metropolitan cities, Kufa, Basra, and Damascus. It can still be pretty clearly shown in detail that these four codices deviated from one another in points of orthography, in the insertion or omission of a wa ("and") and such-like minutiae; but these variations nowhere affect the sense. All later manuscripts are derived from these four originals.

Other Editions.

At the same time, the other forms of the Koran did not at once become extinct. In particular we have some information about the codex of Ubay ibn Ka'b. If the list which gives the order of its suras is correct, it must have contained substantially the same materials as our text; in that case Ubay ibn Ka'b must have used the original collection of Zaid. The same is true of the codex of Ibn Mas'ud, of which we have also a catalogue. It appears that the principle of putting the longer suras before the shorter was more consistently carried out by him than by Zaid. He omits i. and the magical formulae of cxiii., cxiv. Ubay, on the other hand, had embodied two additional short prayers, which we may regard as Mahomet's. One can easily understand that differences of opinion may have existed as to whether and how far formularies of this kind belonged to the Koran. Some of the divergent readings of both these texts have been preserved as well as a considerable number of other ancient variants. Most of them are decidedly inferior to the received readings, but some are quite as good, and a few deserve preference.

Ibn Mas'ud.

The only man who appears to have seriously opposed the general introduction of Othman's text is Ibn Mas'ud. He was one of the oldest disciples of the Prophet, and had often rendered him personal service; but he was a man of contracted views, although he is one of the pillars of Moslem theology. His opposition had no effect. Now when we consider that at that time there were many Moslems who had heard the Koran from the mouth of the Prophet, that other measures of the imbecile Othman met with the most vehement resistance on the part of the bigoted champions of the faith, that these were still further incited against him by some of his ambitious old comrades until at last they murdered him, and finally that in the civil wars after his death the several parties were glad of any pretext for branding their opponents as infidels;--when we consider all this, we must regard it as a strong testimony in favour of Othman's Koran that no party found fault with his conduct in this matter, or repudiated the text formed by Zaid, who was one of the most devoted adherents of Othman and his family, and that even among the Shiites criticism of the caliph's action is only met with as a rare exception.

Later History of the Text.

But this redaction is not the close of the textual history of the Koran. The ancient Arabic alphabet was very imperfect; it not only wanted marks for the short and in part even for the long vowels, but it often expressed several consonants by the same sign, e.g. one and the same character could mean B, T, Th at the beginning and N and J (I) in the middle of words. Hence there were many words which could be read in very different ways. This variety of possible readings was at first very great, and many readers seem to have actually made it their object to discover pronunciations which were new, provided they were at all appropriate to the ambiguous text. There was also a dialectic licence in grammatical forms, which had not as yet been greatly restricted. An effort was made by many to establish a more refined pronunciation for the Koran than was usual in common life or in secular literature. The various schools of "readers" differed very widely from one another; although for the most part there was no important divergence as to the sense of words. A few of them gradually rose to special authority, and the rest disappeared. Seven readers are generally reckoned chief authorities, but for practical purposes this number was continually reduced in process of time; so that at present only two "reading-styles" are in actual use,--the common style of Hafs, and that of Nafi'; which prevails in Africa to the west of Egypt. There is, however, a very comprehensive massoretic literature in which a number of other styles are indicated. The invention of vowel-signs of diacritic points to distinguish similarly formed consonants, and of other orthographic signs, soon put a stop to arbitrary conjectures on the part of the readers. Many zealots objected to the introduction of these innovations in the sacred text, but theological consistency had to yield to practical necessity. In accurate codices, indeed, all such additions, as well as the titles of the sura, &c., are written in coloured ink, while the black characters profess to represent exactly the original of Othman. But there is probably no copy quite faithful in this respect. Moreover, the right recitation of the Koran is an art which even people of Arab tongue can only learn with great difficulty. In addition to the nuances of pronunciation already alluded to, there is a semi-musical modulation. In these matters also the various schools differ.

Manuscripts.

In European libraries, besides innumerable modern manuscripts of the Koran, there are also codices, or fragments, of high antiquity, some of them probably dating from the 1st century of the Flight. For the restoration of the text, however, the works of ancient scholars on its readings and modes of writing are more important than the manuscripts; which, however elegantly they may be written and ornamented, proceed from irresponsible copyists. The original, written by Othman himself, has indeed been exhibited in various parts of the Mahommedan world. The library of the India Office contains one such manuscript, bearing the subscription: "Written by 'Othman the son of 'Affan." These, of course, are barefaced forgeries, although of very ancient date; so are those which profess to be from the hand of 'Ali, one of which is preserved in the same library. In recent times the Koran has been often printed and lithographed, both in the East and the West. In Mahommedan countries lithography alone is employed.

Commentators.