Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

THE PRINCE OF MEDINA t 93
various written versions of the Quran. So it was done, and a standard
edition was produced. Copies were sent to all the Muslim
centers, with the order that older versions be destroyed. The latter
might seem like an impossible task in an early medieval society,
and so it evidently was since modern scholars have discovered in
very old manuscripts and the remains of ancient commentaries
various slightly different readings of quranic lines and verses.
None of these variants challenges the basic meaning of the received
text, but there are enough of them to cause us to believe that somewhat
differing versions of the Quran were in circulation long after
650, and to suggest to others the even more radical position that
the Quran as we know it, at least in the form we know it, did not
come into existence until well into the eighth century.
The Arrangement of the Suras
Though the collection of God’s revelations to Muhammad is selfdescribed
as al-Quran, or “The Recitation,” it also calls itself a
“Book,” though that word is to be understood in its symbolic
sense, in much the same way we use “Scripture.” These revelations,
the Quran asserts, are a Book in the same sense that the Jews
and Christians possess a Book, a Scripture. That Book came from
God, it is made clear, was delivered to Muhammad and pronounced
by him, but the actual physical book in the sense of pages
within covers came later and was produced by human beings. So
too was the order of the suras, which, as we now have them are
arranged, after a short introductory prayer (the Fatiha, or “Opening”)
that is reckoned as the Quran’s first sura, roughly in descending
length. This arrangement, whose original purpose we cannot
fathom, obviously tells us nothing about the order in which they
were actually revealed to Muhammad, but it is possible, based on
their changing style and differing content, among other things, to
discern somewhat generally their original chronological sequence.
From the point of view of prayer, ritual, or meditation, the chronological
order of the suras is of no concern whatsoever to Muslims,
who recite the work in its present nonchronological order,