The development of the Quran

¶ … Qu'ran

The Qur'an, which is also known as Koran, Qur'an, or even Alcoran in some part of the world, is the most sacred and religious book of Muslim community throughout the world. This is a common belief among the Muslims that the Qur'an is the original preaching in the very own word of God and introduction of revelation of God towards 'mankind', which was exposed to the Prophet Muhammad for a duration of twenty-three years by the Angel Jibreel or Gabriel. Further, the holy Qur'an is a collection of chapters or suras running to about 114 chapters and a total verses or ayat of about 6,236. It was a traditional belief that Muhammad has only delivered the Qur'an orally during his entire life. Followers of Muhammad tried to record all the suras in written text before the death of Muhammad in 632 AD. Written records of numerous suras of his lifetime were regularly included in the traditions. (the Qur'an, Islam Religion Overview)

As per Islamic belief, the first complete assemblage of the Qur'an in a single complete volume was done by scholar Zayd ibn Thabit who assembled the Qur'an from varied records like 'pieces of bone' as well as 'parchments' and even a huge portion of the compilation was memory based. This original work was safely kept in the house of Hafsa bint Umar. But afterwards at the time of Uthman ibn Affan, different opinions were developed about the customs and proper use of many dialects or ahruf in the Qur'an, which was frequently used by the devotees. Some of the preachers and common mass were alarmed by this discrepancy and divergences in the recitation performed by the new generation of Muslims. Looking over this, Uthman decided to compile the whole work in a standard format and to codify it to maintain genuineness of the sacred text, and for this very purpose he developed a council of some great scholars that consisted of Zayd and several important and influential Quraysh members, to compile a genuine and standard work of text, which was very much based on the original collection. (the Qur'an, Islam Religion Overview)

Discussion

The scholars have bifurcated the development of Qur'an along with its detail study in two major schools of thought, and these two thoughts are the traditionalist view on the one hand and non-traditionalist on the other. According to the traditionalist view, the Qur'an, which is very, much based on the early Islamic literature and is thought to be the original and most believable work of Muhammad, which is said to be a revelation of divinity and was assembled in 610 AD. (Origin and development of the Qur'an) but the genuineness of the work is doubted and the argument behind this was that most of these preachings and revelations were based on memory and does not have any written record and most of them were not written down clearly during Muhammad's period. (MacDonald, 17)

Many of the revelations were gradually collected and were compiled in present format during 653/654 AD by caliph Uthman. And this was punctuated and carefully given vowel pointing during seventh and eighth centuries and the development phase started from here. But if we take a glance on the non-traditionalist view we can clearly see that it includes various schools of thoughts, with uncertainty and judge the declaration of the Qur'an as a text by critically analyzing the entire work. According to the both communities of Sunni and Shia, both share common view towards authentic traditions and thus both communities point out some disputes on the number of authentic hadith which had reference to the Uthmanic edition of the Qur'an. (Origin and development of the Qur'an)

Thus this development phase took shape during early 4th century when some confusion was raised over an unvowelled and unprinted script. Even though Uthman made several attempts to wipe out rival codices, the entire effort proved to be futile and variant readings anyhow were able to survive. Ibn Ishaq, 8th century edition was considered genuine, authentic and accurate. According to Wellhausen, while the new later work was a mere copy and alteration of 8th century work, it gave more fictitious details rather than original work. This was the period when most of the "sira" were developed in such a manner so that it could construct an 'ideal' past and could justify for contemporary exaggerated exegesis of the Qur'an. Even in the 9th century, many hadiths which was said to be the hard work of many rigorous collectors were said to be fictitious. The 'Umayyads' and their opponents both developed their hadiths to prove their respective work but this only started out quarrels between both and the result was same and the text was still lacking standardization. But the 10th century witnessed a new era of development and Ibn Mujahid was able to standardize the work to a great extent. (Herbert, 557)

Later Qur'an was translated into various languages, but Muslims doubt the translations of Qur'an to different languages from Arabic and did not consider it as a true imitation of Qur'an. (the Qur'an, Islam Religion Overview) in the year 1143, the first translation of Qur'an took place by Robert of Ketton into Latin. Hagrasim during 1977 as a result of some extensive research came out with "The Making of the Islamic World" and it has been regarded as the most important literal development. The jist and finding of this work revolve around the thesis that the preaching of Muhammad was based on message of Jewish Messianism and this proved to be a joint attempt by Jews and Arabs, and this was a totally new research and turning stone in the development of Qur'an. (Herbert, 557)

Even today seven canonical readings of the Qur'an and several uncanonical readings are there. This sevener-system was laid down by Ibn Mujahid. They are: "Nafi' of Madina (169/785), transmitted by Warsh (197/812); Ibn Kathir of Makka (120/737); Ibn 'Amir of Damascus (118/736); Abu 'Amr of Basra (148/770); 'Asim of Kufa (127/744), transmitted by Hafs (180/796); Hamza of Kufa (156/772); Al-Kisa'i of Kufa (189/804), transmitted by Duri (246/860)" (the Qur'an, Islam Religion Overview) Even today the development is still on and Qur'an tried to touch upon various complex and scientific topics like "geology, astronomy, archaeology, genetics, embryology, biology, etc." (Quran: A Teacher to Modern Scientists) and thus this shows that the development of Qur'an is carried through past and still it is keeping a parallel track with the coming generation and proving its existence in today's scenario. (MacDonald, 25) Several Muslim scholars of the modern era are of the view that Qur'an has to be renewed and many Muslims feel that the translated Qur'an is not genuine, however according to Qur'an itself "the archetypal or real Qur'an remains with God" and thus this development is a process, which will renovate itself during the coming time. (Barlas, 215)