How
the Quran was compiled
Shaykh
Hamza Yusuf
Source: Unknown.
Found on ShaykhyNotes Blog.
Anything worth doing should begin with Bismillah
Semitic languages have words with have a three letter root
Three is the beginning of multiplicity
The word Quran comes from a root word to mean city, Qaaf,
Raa, Ya
And also the word Qa, Ra, Ah which means to recite
Every civilisation is rooted in a book
The Greeks would base theirs on Homer
For the Arabs, there was no book until the Quran
Children are in the oral world for the first five years of their lives. They
hear stories and their imagination come to live
Now we have the children being brought up by the television and this link is
severed
Arabs are an oral people
The real meaning of the word Quran is the recital
It is know as a book and the word Ka, Ta Ba means to
join together
Arabs used to send their children to bedions out side the city areas because they where
very eloquent
The Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him) was born in this culture, in a
tribe called Hashim. Before his fourteenth birthday
he would enjoy isolation in the cave of hira
Orientalists changed their stance on Islam when oil
was found in the Arab region
An angel come to him (peace and blessings be upon him) during his time in the
cave and the first word the angel said was, “Read” He said, I am not a reader
After this event the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him ) went to his
wife, she comforted him and then went to her uncle Warwa
ibn Nawful who said this is
the Namus which means angel and its Greek root means
law
This is the beginning of the revelation
The first thirteen years is known as the Meccan
period, the dominate themes of the Quran
The Quran is a non-linear book, you have to surrender your desire for linarity
19 Juz revealed in Medina and 11 in Mecca
The Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him) saw himself as the first sign of
the end of time
There are still people who are people able to memorise
the Quran
The Quran is being memorised and written in the Meccan stages
The Meccan suras start with
o’ humanity and the medina o’ you who have accepted (believers) these were the
people who responded
The focus is one character, building a society
The entire Quran was written down in during his lifetime (peace and blessings
be upon him)
In 633, after the battle of Yammam, many Quran reciters had been killed and Umar
asked Abu Bakr to collect the Quran
During the caliphate of Uthman, he noticed that some
of the Muslims had begun to differ on the recitation of the Quran as it was
initially written without dots or vowels
He makes a master copy from the gathered text and copies where
sent to every major city in the Muslim world
It was protected by oral recitation
Qurtabi narrates a story about a man who copies the
old testament in beautiful calligraphy with mistakes and sends it to a Jewish
Rabbi. Who after reading it, sends it back and says it’s a wonderful copy and
he does the same with new testament and the Christian
doesn’t notice the mistakes and says it’s a wonderful copy. When
he does this to the Quran. The Muslim scholar says to burn it as its got
mistakes.
It’s a historically correct document
The word “we” in the Quran is used for greatness. This
is appropriate for Allah Subhanu wa ta’ala but not for
people. This is a plural of magnification and doesn’t not indicate to plural
gods as some people refer to
There are seven dialectal ways recitation (another three are unconfirmed) of
the Quran, it doesn’t not change the meaning