The Qur'an: Revelation and Compilation

What you need to know

• The Qur'an is the word of Allah revealed to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) through the angel Jibril over a period of about twenty-three years, roughly thirteen years in Makkah and ten in Madinah.
• The first revelation was the opening verses of Surah Al-Alaq in the Cave of Hira on Jabal an-Nur during Ramadan, beginning with the command to read in the name of the Lord who created, and teaching that Allah taught man by the pen what he did not know. After a pause in revelation came Surah Al-Muddaththir, calling the Prophet to rise and warn.
• Revelation came down piecemeal rather than all at once. The reasons normally given are that it strengthened the Prophet's heart in the face of opposition, answered questions and events as they arose, made memorisation easier for a largely unlettered community, and allowed laws to be introduced in stages, as with the gradual prohibition of intoxicants.
• Makkan surahs are generally shorter, with a rhythmic style, and concentrate on the oneness of Allah, the resurrection and judgement, the stories of earlier prophets and the correction of moral failings. Madinan surahs are generally longer and deal with law, the organisation of the community, family matters, treaties, warfare and the behaviour of the hypocrites.
• The Qur'an contains 114 surahs divided into ayat, and the arrangement is by divine instruction rather than by order of revelation. Surah Al-Baqarah is the longest and Surah Al-Kawthar the shortest, and every surah except Surah At-Tawbah opens with the basmalah.
• During the Prophet's lifetime revelation was preserved in two ways at once. Many companions memorised it, and designated scribes, among them Zayd ibn Thabit, Ubayy ibn Ka'b and Mu'awiyah, wrote it on materials such as palm stalks, thin white stones, pieces of leather, parchment and shoulder blades of animals. The Prophet would indicate where each new passage belonged.
• Jibril is reported to have reviewed the Qur'an with the Prophet each Ramadan, and in the final year the review was done twice, which the scholars take as the settling of the final arrangement.
• The first collection into one volume took place in the caliphate of Abu Bakr. After the Battle of Yamamah, in which a large number of huffaz were killed, Umar ibn al-Khattab urged Abu Bakr to have the Qur'an gathered. Abu Bakr hesitated at first because the Prophet had not done it in that form, then accepted, and appointed Zayd ibn Thabit, who collected the written pieces and verified them against the memory of the companions, requiring witnesses for what was written.
• The resulting single copy was kept with Abu Bakr, passed to Umar after him, and then to Umar's daughter Hafsah, a widow of the Prophet.
• The standardisation took place in the caliphate of Uthman ibn Affan. Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman, returning from campaigns in Armenia and Azerbaijan, reported that Muslims in different provinces were disputing over recitation. Uthman sent for Hafsah's copy, appointed a committee headed by Zayd ibn Thabit with several Qurayshi companions, and had standard copies written out, with the instruction that where the committee differed they should write in the dialect of Quraysh.
• Copies were sent to the main centres of the Muslim world with a qualified reciter for each, and other personal manuscripts were ordered to be destroyed so that the community would read from one text. This standard text is known as the Mushaf Uthmani, and Uthman is remembered as Jami al-Qur'an, the unifier of the Qur'an.
• The earliest script had no dots to distinguish similar letters and no vowel marks. These were added later during the Umayyad period to prevent error in recitation, a work associated with scholars such as Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali and continued by others; the division into juz and ahzab was also introduced to help regular recitation.
• The major themes of the Qur'an are tawhid, the oneness of Allah and the rejection of shirk; risalah, prophethood and the unity of the message brought by all the prophets; akhirah, the resurrection, judgement, Paradise and Hell; ibadah, the forms and spirit of worship; and the moral, social, economic and legal guidance by which a community is to live.
• The Qur'an presents itself as a miracle in its language and content, challenging those who doubted it to produce a surah like it, and Muslims hold that no one has met the challenge. Its recitation is itself an act of worship, done with wudu, beginning with ta'awwudh and the basmalah, and observing the rules of tajwid.