robert spencer-did muhammad exist__ an inquiry into islams obscure origins-intercollegiate studies institute (2012) (1)

The First Mention of the Qur'an
If the canonical stories about Zayd ibn Thabit and Uthman were true, one would expect to see references
to the Qur'an in other records. But no such references are to be found in the historical records of the midseventh
century. As we have seen, the coinage of the early caliphate and the edifices that survive from that
period bear no Qur'anic inscriptions, quotes, or references of any kind. And although the Arab invaders
poured through the Middle East and North Africa, the peoples they conquered seemed to have no idea that
the conquerors, whom they called “Hagarians,” “Saracens,” “Muhajirun” or “Ishmaelites,” had a holy
book at all. Christian and Jewish writers of the period never made even the smallest reference to such a
book.
Not until the early part of the eighth century did mentions of the Qur'an begin to appear in the polemical
literature of non-Muslims and Muslims alike. The first reference to the Qur'an by a non-Muslim occurred
around the year 710—eighty years after the book was supposedly completed and sixty years after it was
supposedly collected and distributed. During a debate with an Arab noble, a Christian monk in the Middle
East cited the Qur'an by name. The monk wrote, “I think that for you, too, not all your laws and
commandments are in the Qur'an which Muhammad taught you; rather there are some which he taught you
from the Qur'an, and some are in surat albaqrah and in gygy and in twrh.” 25
By this point Arab armies had conquered a huge expanse of territory, stretching from North Africa,
across the Levant, Syria, and Iraq, and into Persia, and yet those eight decades of conquest had produced
scarcely a mention of the book that supposedly inspired them. And when the Qur'an finally was
mentioned, it appears that the book was not even in the form we now know. Surat albaqrah (or al-
Baqara) is “the chapter of the Cow,” which is the second, and longest, sura of the Qur'an. The eighthcentury
monk thus quite clearly knew of a Qur'an that didn't contain this sura; he considered surat
albaqrah to be a stand-alone book, along with gygy (the Injil, or Gospel) and twrh (the Torah). It is
unlikely that the monk simply made an error: Who ever mistakes a chapter of a book for a separate book?
If the Qur'an's largest sura was not present in the Muslim holy book by the early eighth century, it could
not have been added by Muhammad, Zayd ibn Thabit, or Uthman.
There is other evidence that the “chapter of the Cow” existed as a separate book and was added to the
Qur'an only at a later date. As noted, John of Damascus, writing around 730, referred to the “text of the
Cow” (as well as the “text of the Woman” and the “text of the Camel of God”), giving the impression that
it existed as a standalone text. Even Islamic tradition points to the “chapter of the Cow” as a separate
book. The Islamic chronicler Qatada ibn Diama (d. 735) made one of the earliest references to any part of
the Qur'an by a Muslim. He recorded that during the Battle of Hunayn in 630, during the lifetime of
Muhammad, Muhammad's uncle al-Abbas rallied the troops by crying out, “O companions of the chapter
of the Cow [ya ashab surat al-Baqara]!” 26 Qatada ibn Diama did not have al-Abbas saying, “O
companion of the Qur'an,” but instead fixed on one sura of the Muslim holy book, albeit its longest and
arguably most important one. This suggests that even by Qatada's time, the Qur'an was not yet fixed in its
present form.