Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

56 t CHAPTER THREE
patterns, short verse units, and recurrent formulaic themes. More,
the putative occasions of those suras correspond to the circumstances
of oral composition: a society of mixed orality-literacy in
which, although writing was known and practiced by a few, oral
composition or performance was still the standard form of expression.
The earliest setting of the Quran was preaching: the Meccan
suras constituted a message for the society as a whole and delivered
to a public audience that noted the resemblance to the compositions
of oral bards and seers in that society.
The revelations of the Quran were memorized, the tradition assures
us and which we have no reason to doubt. But under what
circumstances were those inspired utterances committed to memory
by their audience? Here we may invoke the word “Quran”
itself. The Arabic derives from qeryana, “recitation,” a Syriac
word with distinct liturgical connotations, and it may safely be
assumed, in the light of the Quran’s own remarks (17:78; 75:16–
18) that almost from the beginning parts of what had been revealed
were memorized, doubtless under Muhammad’s own direction,
for purposes of liturgical recitation. This is the most plausible
guess as to the trajectory of the Quran’s transmission history: that
Muhammad’s followers—perhaps certain professional reciters, or
rawis, as they were called in Arabia—memorized portions of his
“oracles,” which were then recited in private gatherings as a form
of prayer.
At Medina the circumstances of the Quran were drastically
changed. As we shall see, Muhammad was no longer simply a
preacher in the style of Jesus or John the Baptist but the Solemn
Pontiff of a religio-political community of believers whose chief
needs were confirmation, regulation, instruction. It is near impossible
to determine the exact sequence of the Medina suras, a fact
that renders somewhat problematic any attempt to unfold the various
quranic meanings of the oft used word for “book” (kitab) and
its synonyms. One use is certainly that of “Scripture,” that is, the
Book of God. In one telling passage, God tells Muhammad to seek
confirmation of the truth of this revelation by questioning “those
who recite the Book before you” (10:95), that is, the Jews and
Christians, and he is further instructed (13:43) to give that same