History Of The Qur’an
By Immanuel | Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011
Muslim and Western scholars cling to the tradition that the Qur’an was memorized and transcribed by Muhammad’s bedouin tribe members before his death. Then compiled into one volume in the Arabic language, by Uthman (Uthmanic Recension), or Abu Bakr (depending on which post-hoc story, and which version you care to believe). Dates are untenable, and range from immediate, to over eighty years after Muhammad’s death in 632 AD. Historical accounts tend to lean towards eighty. I have found no objective written historical proof; only a mass of conflicting stories and tradition that have been passed down from Islamic commentaries made hundreds of years later.
There are several versions of the history of the Qur’an which are accepted in traditional Eastern and Western scholar camps. There are as many divisions on which story could possibly be real, and when these events took place. It’s my contention that these stories and traditions are fabrications which were created at a much later date to fill in the blank spaces in written history.
The first textual copies of the Qur’an would have been written in mixed Arabic-Syro-Aramaic, or Syriac (the written traders’ language of Mecca and Medina).
Tradition states that written Arabic made its debut with the Qur’an, and was the language given by Allah. The problem is, we have absolutely no evidence of the original Qur’anic text. By the latter part of the seventh century, Islam had expanded its holdings from Spain in the west to India in the east. The Qur’an was the centerpiece of their faith. Certainly within this enormous sphere of influence there would be some Qur’anic documents or manuscripts still in existence today. Yet, there is nothing, anywhere from that period at all.
Two of the earliest known manuscripts of the Qur’an (Topkapi and Samarkand Manuscripts), were written in Kufic script and could not have been written earlier than one hundred and fifty years after the Uthmanic Recension. The earliest known forms of written Arabic in the area of Mecca and Medina are Ma’il or Mashq scripts, from which the Kufic script was believed to have been derived. However, there is a copy of the Qur’an written in the Ma’il script, which is considered to be the earliest Qur’an in existence. It resides in the British Museum in London and is dated 790 AD.
Muhammad was an illiterate bedouin tribesman. From eighth century historical documents, he is believed to have been epileptic because he heard voices spoken to him by daimones (Koine Greek); demons in English. Then recounted to fellow tribesmen what the demons told him during a seizure, while lying on the ground. The illiterate tribesmen then memorized what was said to them and the stories were passed down to tribesmen who were literate and transcribed them. Jewish writers of the era commonly referred to Muhammad as ha-meshuggah (“the madman” or “possessed”), a title contemptuously used in the Hebrew Bible for impostors who think of themselves as prophets.
We have Islamic tradition which states that the Qur’an was compiled into one volume by Uthman or Abu Bakr after Muhammad’s death and all copies that didn’t meet their standards were burned. Disturbingly, not a trace of the Qur’an exists for the next one hundred and fifty years.
However, historical proof emerges about eighty years after Muhammad’s death. Islam had become so widespread in belief and power, they decided they needed a ‘book’ like the Christians and Jews, and set out to write one… by kidnapping a Nestorian Monk named Raheb (Sergius) Bahira and a Jewish Rabbi named Ovadia Ben-Shalom. After the book is written, both were killed. To this day, the Armenian Orthodox Church has a day commemorating the death of Raheb Bahira.
(See ‘A Christian Bahira legend’ – Richard Gottheil, 1903 – Arabic and Syriac translations. Please note these are large PDF scans of the original books, and will take a while to download. There is a Google online version, however, the page order seems to be reversed and you must start at the last page and move to the first.).
Fittingly, the Monk and Rabbi who wrote the Qur’an, also sabotaged it. Certain chapters (surah) in their ‘book’ begin with ‘Alif Lam Mim‘. One Islamic tradition states that the mysterious letters were inserted into the Qur’an by Ten Jewish Rabbis. There is no Arabic translation for the letters and Muslims believe them to be the unutterable words or divine secrets of Allah. However, in Hebrew, it’s a statement that says, ‘don’t believe it’ or ‘this means nothing’; i.e.:
“(002.001) Alif Lam Mim… (002.255) Allah! La ilaha illa Huwa…”
Credit for the inspiration and independent research done for this article belong to Avi Lipkin, Israeli Hebrew scholar and lecturer on the Five Decepetions Of Islam.