A PARTIAL SURVEY OF THE QUR'AN

by David Ross

14 April 2002 - 16 Feb 2003

Introduction

I recently managed to acquire a Saudi translation of the Noble Qur'an, from the vaults of His Majesty King Fat - er, Fahd himself. The text is notoriously complex, but fortunately the editors have flagged their more interpretive flourishes behind brackets. Even so, the translation is of a Wahhabi bent, so I will use Ahmed Ali's translation as a control.

This project will cover Surahs 15 to 20. It is my first attempt to read and understand this book.

I chose those Surahs because I felt they would be a representative sample. Arthur Jeffrey assumed that the beginning surah and the ending two surahs are "liturgical additions" (The Origins of the Qur'an, p. 127), as indeed does almost everyone else. I read elsewhere that the Surah of the Cow (#2) was originally a separate work from the Qur'an.

In addition there are, or were, ancient Qur'ans with their own order of Surahs. Two of these are the codex of Ibn Mas'ud - which incidentally lacks the three liturgical Surahs mentioned previously - and the codex of Ubai (or "Ubayy") b. Ka'b. They do not survive, but their orders of contents are each preserved in both the Fihrist of Ibn an-Nadim and the Itqan on the Exegetical Sciences of the Qur'an of as-Suyuti, slightly less than three centuries after these Qur'ans were compiled. To trace an isnad of my own, I have that from the authority of Ibn Warraq's The Origins of the Qur'an pp. 126-131, including pp. 1-18, 20-24, 114-116, 182-184 of Arthur Jeffery's "Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur'an", Leiden, EJ Brill 1937. It in turn refers the reader to Flügel, p. 26 for Fihrist and A. Sprenger, p. 156 for Itqan (the last edited in Calcutta, 1857; Bibliotheca Indica).

They largely agree against Fahd's Qur'an - credited to the caliph Uthman - in the order of their first eleven Surahs (1,2,4,3; 6-7 in either order; 5,10; 8?; 9; 16?; 11). In placing 10 in seventh place after sura 1 they are joined by Tabari, Annales, I, 2963 (The Origins of the Qur'an, p. 375 n. 49). Note also that 8's position before 9 was not original even to Uthman's codex, whose school preserved this hadith: "I joined them without writing the line containing `In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful,' and put it among the long suras". Beyond that all three codices differ so wildly that the Surah-placement seems almost random. But all agree that Surahs 15-20 appear near the front, if scattered.

Ultimately I have to start somewhere, and the beginning-to-middle part seems, like the inner part of an onion, to be representative of the whole.

I have put into bold face the sections that, in my view, qualify as haggadic, halakhic, or parabolic (that is: para-biblical stories, Islamic laws, and edifying parables).

The Survey

What Is It?

To define the genre of the Qur'an, first I will have to define the terms I use for other theological works: prophetic and apocalyptic.

I define a prophetic book as a collection of logia attributed to a prophet, in verse and/or prose, for use in exhortative sermons. Isaiah and Malachi qualify; Daniel and Jonah do not.

Apocalyptic has many definitions, but I define it as "revelations" concerning the end of the world and of cosmology granted to the author of the book in visions. Daniel and Revelations qualify, and arguably Ezekiel; Isaiah and Jeremiah, whose visions are intended as metaphor for secular matters, do not.

What one notices immediately about the above Surahs is the sheer extent of heaven-and-hell speeches. They permeate everything. Heaven and Hell are not part of the core Jewish scriptures, and are but one option among many in the Christian Bible (which also, remember, promotes Daniel to Prophetic status).

These speeches are typically to be found at the beginning and the end of a Surah. Elsewhere they appear in between the stories, commandments, and parables; in the way the speech in 16.17-64 breaks up the speech (hymn?) of God's blessings in 16.3-81.

The homiletic portions concern heaven and hell, the Day of Judgement, the necessity of belief, how Allah sees all and determines all, and how Allah has provided proofs for "Islamic monotheism" (as King Fahd puts it). Some defend Muhammad from contradictory verses, and from the lack of signs in the here and now.

I conclude, as a preliminary observation (but Allah knows everything... *koff* sorry), that the speeches are the Qur'an: that is, the book is structured as a series of sermons, like Isaiah; and not as a story, like the Torah and Gospels.

The Qur'an assumes the reader is familiar with the Judaeo-Christian tradition, in the way Isaiah 10:26 alluded to the traditions of Judges and Exodus: "The Lord Almighty will lash them with a whip, as when he struck down Midian at the rock of Oreb; and he will raise his staff over the waters, as he did in Egypt" (NIV). Both the Qur'an and Isaiah use their respective traditions to exort the audience to believe and act in a certain way.

The Qur'an goes beyond Isaiah's view of the end times. As well as looking to a time when God will punish the nations on Earth, it looks to eternal paradise and hell. In this it follows such apocalyptic works as Enoch.

Christianity has apocalyptic sections of books (Mark 13) and one entire book (Revelations). It does not however have a prophetic book as defined above. But according to liberal scholarship, it once did: the "Synoptic Sayings Source", Q, is a collection of parables and logia, attributed to Jesus, which even occasionally refers to Jewish scripture (Luke 11:29-32). And it, too, is prone to apocalypticism (Luke 6:46).

What Does It Preserve?

The Qur'an retells a number of canonical and apocryphal accounts known to the Jews and Christians of the seventh century CE.

There is a retelling of Luke's "Infancy Gospel" in 19:1-34. The Arabs had accepted that Jesus was "son of Mary" and were beginning to accept him as a lawgiver already by Umar's time. 19:1-34's inclusion meant that the Arabs no longer had to defer to Christian scripture over such claims, for now it was approved Arabic scripture.

There is also a list of past prophets in 19:41-58. If the intent was to show Muhammad as the seal of the prophets, this passage must post-date Umar and probably the Safyanids too, who to claims of prophecy were hostile and apathetic, respectively.

16:3-81 surely started out as a hymn praising God for His blessings. But it has a number of alterations that disguise this, most blatantly the intrusion of 17-64. 16:67 happens to applaud Allah for creating alcohol. Since Muhammad banned alcohol, which even Sebeos admits, this hymn must predate Muhammad, or at least have developed independently of him.

The story of Iblis's rebellion is an abbreviation of 38:73-77. Prior to that, it also has an antecedent in the "Romance of Adam and Eve". Wilson Bishai believes the Coptic version of this is closest to the Qur'an ("A Possible Coptic Source of a Qu'ranic Text", What the Qur'an Really Says pp. 288-95).

How Did It Come To Be?

The author of these Surahs set out to create Islamic sermons. To that end, he took the variant sources, organised them, and edited them according to Islam and to his literary purpose. Thus 16:17-64.

16:101-103 must also be a late addition. The author of that Surah would not have said those words unless he were schizophrenic, or else fraudulently claiming the mantle of the Prophet to allow for one Surah's precedence over another. Assuming the latter, these verses amount to a defence of this Qur'an against its rivals. Those rivals may have been disbelievers in the Qur'an in theory, or they may have been other editions of the Qur'an - that much is unknowable from this Qur'an alone. But the inspiration for those verses is surely the Islamic abolition of wine, against verse 16:67.

Some Surahs begin with a series of letters; perhaps annotations that point to their origin. Nöldeke notes that with Surahs 29 and 30 excepted, such Surahs begin with "This is the book" ("The Koran", The Origins of the Koran p. 55). Surah 15 starts with ALR, like 10, 11, 12, and 14 (13 is ALMR). 19 is the lone KHY'S and 20 the TH. 16, 17, and 18 do not start with an annotation. The so-called "mysterious letters" are very ancient, and in the case of the second sura at least predate even the bismala (according to Bar Salibi's Syriac translation, noted by Alphonse Mingana).

The Strange Sura 18

Torrey notes, "the eighteenth sura holds a peculiar place in the Koran" ("The Jewish Foundation of Islam", The Origins of the Koran pp. 343-8). To be blunt, it derived from the most vulgar of Late Antique vulgar apocrypha. It cites the Christian legend of the Seven Sleepers (9-26), a couple of Jewish-Christian parables (32-44, 44-49), two legends of Alexander (60-82, 83-99), in addition to the standard reiteration of the Coptic Iblis legend (in a two-verse summary). "The Qur'an makes no allusion elsewhere to any part of its narrative material", including its take on Iblis. Nöldeke points out the sura also begins with "This is the book"; only three other Surahs have the beginning but no annotation. In the case of the Seven Sleepers, the sura eliminates its Christianity, instead adding a demand that the meat be "clean". Torrey thinks this Jewish kashrut but it may equally be late-Islamic halal. When this Surah defends itself, it does so not against rival Qur'anic passages or rival doctrines, but against other versions of the Sleepers with alternate numbers of Sleepers - that is, against non-scriptural, non-Islamic versions. Lastly, the sura is one of those missing from an-Nadim's list of Ibn Mas'ud's book (Warraq p.128), and despite its eminently debunkable nature the apologist Bar Salibi did not cite it as part of the Qur'an, in Syriac or Arabic.

Jeffrey relates that Goossen suspected 18 was connected with 19 (two KHY'S suras?). But I do not see the connexion between 18 and 19. They both mention Moses and Aaron, true; but 18 tells what is really not a Moses story while 19:41-58 is little more than a list, and shares real estate with 1-34 about Jesus besides. Lastly, as-Suyuti's list of Ibn Mas'ud's book does not have 18 near 19, and neither do the lists of Ali's, nor Ubai b. Ka'b's codices. The editor we call "Uthman" must have noticed 18's and 19's shared mention of Moses (however inaccurately in 18's part), and placed them together for that reason.

I think it most likely 18 was a late sura, postdating even the Mysterious Letters. Even if Ibn Mas'ud knew it, it is most likely he rejected it for inclusion, and that it came into his codex under pressure from rivals like Uthman's and Ubai's. It may have been too apocryphal for Bar Salibi's Syriac translation, even to the days of Bar Salibi himself.

Where Did It Come From?

I also note that the words of Muhammad do not deal with Mecca or Medina. The events he cites are all found in Genesis-Exodus, the Gospel of Luke, and the Judaeo-Christian apocalypticism associated with Enoch and Jubilees. If I knew nothing of Islam (and I really don't know much more than that), I would say that these Surahs constitute a collection of heavily-redacted works of various genre from sects of Christians and Jews.

As for the location of these Judaeo-Christians: A Bedouin nomad or even a Medinan trader would not care to listen to Surah 16's hymn to cattle, but a Syrian cowboy assuredly would. I would locate that Surah's target audience on the Near Eastern fringe of the Roman Christian world. Given that the "cow verses" must also derive from that region, I see no reason for a desert or Meccan/Medinan provenance for Surah 16's final edition.

Other Notes

Not only the suspect sura 18, but also 15 and 20 are absent from an-Nadim's list. Jeffery points out that 15 is the last ALR Surah, and and 20 is the only TH Surah. So maybe these were not part of all Qur'ans at the beginning.

However they are not missing from as-Suyuti's list, and an-Nadim seems not to notice that they are gone.

Conclusion

The Qur'an clearly has a textual history, and even before that a composite nature.

I have elsewhere tracked the progress of Islam, as a collection of compromises the Arabs made as a condition of absorbing other creeds into the Caliphate: Ismailite (Jewish Torah), Christian, Jewish prophetic, and apocalyptic.

The Qur'an refers to all these in order to make its point(s). But more than that; its composite nature reflects perfectly the composite nature of early Islam.

Any thoughts? e-mail me :^)

Other Links

• Back to The House of David

Bibliography

• Sebeos' History. Robert Bedrosian, transl. New York, 1985.
• The Origins of the Koran. Ibn Warraq. Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY, 1998.
• What the Koran Really Says. Ibn Warraq. Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY, 2002.
• The Armenian History attributed to Sebeos. RW Thomson. Liverpool University Press, 1999.

Miscellany

The first version of this project was written 29 March - 14 April 2002. 16 April, dug up Ibn Warraq. 2 Feb 2003, more Warraq, more detail, separate "Sources" section. 8 Feb: more Warraq on Surahs 18-19. 10 Feb: starting to reach a theory based on other projects. 15 Feb: sura 18 too weird to ignore. 16 Feb: Uthman's hadith.