Fetching
One moment.
Fetching
One moment.
Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1In the present recension of the Qur’4n there are comparatively few various readings recognised, but it is clear that great variations existed from the very first. On more than one occasion Mohammed himself dictated the same passage to different persons with different readings; and the ‘traditional saying’ ascribed to him, that ‘the Qur’an was revealed according to seven modes of reading,’ shows what latitute he himself allowed. The other interpretation of this tradition, namely, that ‘the Qur’4n may be read according to the seven Arabic dialects,’ was obviously invented to check the tendency to perversion of the text according to individual fancy, and is plainly refuted by the fact that the persons to whom the saying was uttered, INTRODUCTION. lix and who had appealed to the prophet to decide upon the reading of a certain text, were both of the tribe of Qurais. At length, some twenty years afterwards, the Caliph Othman, alarmed at the bitter feelings and open quarrels which these differences of reading and interpretation had already engendered, determined to prevent the Muslims from differing amongst themselves in their way of reading the word of God as the Jews and Christians did. He accordingly appointed a commission, consisting of Zaid, the original editor, with three men of the Qurdis (Mohammed’s own tribe), to decide, once for all, upon the text and to fix the reading definitely according to the pure Qurais idiom. When this edition was completed, Othm4n sent copies to all the principal cities in the empire, and caused all the previous copies to be burned. These copies were perhaps not themselves free from small discrepances ; the few slight various readings which have, as I have shown, crept in, are most of them mere matters of orthography, and the rest are unimportant to the general sense. The last named will be found mentioned in the notes to the passages in which they occur in the course of the following translation. Othmén’s recension has remained the authorised text, and has been adopted by all schools of Mohammedan theologians from the time it was made (A.D. 660) until the present day. In this no further attempt was made at chronological arrangement than in the preceding one. The individual Sfrahs have prefixed to them the name of the place, Mecca or Medinah, at which they were revealed; but this indication, though derived from authentic tradition, is not a sufficient guide, since in many places verses have been inserted in a Meccan Sfrah which were evidently revealed at Medinah, and vice versA. To clear away this difficulty, and to propose an intelligible chronological arrangement of the Sfrahs, has been the aim of scholars, both Arabic and European; but no one has treated the subject in so lx THE QUR’AN. critical or masterly a manner as Noldeke, and his arrangement may be taken as the best which Arabic tradition, ‘combined with European criticism, can furnish.
2critical or masterly a manner as Noldeke, and his arrangement may be taken as the best which Arabic tradition, ‘combined with European criticism, can furnish. To arrive at a decision on this point we must consider first the historical event, if any, to which each text refers ; next, the style generally; and lastly, the individual expressions used. Thus, in addressing the Meccans the words yé aiyuha ’nnds, ‘O ye folk!’ occur, while the expression y4 aiyuha ‘llaDHin Amand is used in speaking to the people of Medinah; though sometimes the former phrase occurs in a verse of a Medinah Sarah. The Sfrahs resolve themselves into two great classes, those revealed at Mecca and those revealed at Medinah after the flight; and these are easily distinguished both by their style and subject-matter. The earlier ones especially are grander in style, and testify in every verse to the mental exaltation of the prophet and the earnest belief which he certainly had at this time in the Teality and truth of his divine mission. The Qur’an falls naturally into these two classes, which répresent, in fact, the first development of Mohammed's prophetic office at Mecca, and the later career as a leader and lawgiver after the flight at Medinah. Sdrahs belonging to the first period of his career are therefore ascribed to Mecca, and those of the latter period .to Medinah, although the actual place at which they were delivered may be in certain cases doubtful. One of the next earliest Sfrahs is that entitled Abu Laheb. Mohammed had at length called together his clansmen, the Bani Hashim, and bade them accept the new doctrine of Allah’s unity. Hereupon ‘Abd el ’Huzzah, surnamed Abu Laheb, ‘he of the flame,’ indignantly exclaimed, ‘ Perdition to you! is that what thou hast called — us for?? Mohammed then proclaimed the Sfrah bearing Abu Laheb’s name, in which he enunciates a terrible curse against him and his wife Umm Gemil, and made of him an irreconcilable foe. The CVIth Sarah also belongs undoubtedly to an early INTRODUCTION. Ixi period. In it Mohammed bids the Qurdis ‘serve the Lord of this House,’ for the two trading caravans they yearly sent out in winter and summer respectively. In the Meccan Sfrahs Mohammed’s one and steady purpose is to bring his hearers to a belief in the one only God; this he does by powerful rhetorical displays rather than logical arguments, by appealing to their feelings rather than their reason; by setting forth the manifestations of God in his works; by calling nature to witness to His presence ; and by proclaiming His vengeance against those who associate other gods with Him, or attribute offspring to Him. The appeal was strengthened by glowing pictures of the happiness in store for those who should believe, and by frightful descriptions of the everlasting torments prepared for the unbelievers. The short Sfrah entitled ‘Unity’ is said, on the traditional authority of Mohammed himself, to be equivalent in value to two-thirds of the Qur’4n.
3The short Sfrah entitled ‘Unity’ is said, on the traditional authority of Mohammed himself, to be equivalent in value to two-thirds of the Qur’4n. ‘ Say, “ He is God, one God the eternal. He begets not, and is not begotten; nor is there like unto Him, one.”’ This protest is not aimed at the Christian doctrines alone, for the Arab, as we have seen, asserted that their angels and deities were daughters of Allah, the supreme God. In the earlier chapters, too, the prophetic inspiration, the earnest conviction of the truth of his mission, and the violent emotion which his sense of responsibility caused him are plainly shown. The style is curt, grand, and often almost sublime; the expressions are full of poetical feeling, and the thoughts are earnest and passionate, though sometimes dim and confused, indicating the mental excitement and doubt through which they struggled to light. In the second period of the Meccan Sfrahs, Mohammed appears to have conceived the idea of still further severing himself from the idolatry of his compatriots, and of giving to the supreme deity Allah another title, Ar-Rahman, ‘the merciful one.’ The Meccans, however, seem to have taken these for Ixii THE QUR'AN. the names of separate deities?, and the name is abandoned in the later chapters. In the Sfrahs of the second Meccan period we first find the long stories of the prophets of olden time, especial stress being laid upon the punishment which fell upon their contemporaries for disbelief; the moral is always the same, namely, that Mohammed came under precisely similar circumstances, and that a denial of the truth of his mission would bring on his fellow-citizens the self-same retribution. They also show the transition stage between the intense and poetical enthusiasm of the early Meccan chapters and the calm teaching of the later Medinah ones. This change is gradual, and even in the later and most prosaic we find occasionally passages in which the old prophetic fire flashes out once more, The three periods again are marked by the oaths which occur throughout the Quran. In the first period they are very frequent and often long, the whole powers of nature being invoked to bear witness to the unity of God and the mission of His Apostle; in the second period they are shorter and of rarer occurrence; in the last period they are absent altogether. To understand the Medinah Sirahs we must bear in mind Mohammed’s position with respect to the various parties in that city. In Mecca he had been a prophet with little honour in his own country, looked on by some as a madman, and by others as an impostor, both equally grievous to him, while his following consisted only of the poorest and meanest of his fellow-townsmen. His own clansmen, for the reason that they were his clansmen and for no other, resented the affronts against him.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1In the present recension of the Qur’4n there are comparatively few various readings recognised, but it is clear that great variations existed from the very first. On more than one occasion Mohammed himself dictated the same passage to different persons with different readings; and the ‘traditional saying’ ascribed to him, that ‘the Qur’an was revealed according to seven modes of reading,’ shows what latitute he himself allowed. The other interpretation of this tradition, namely, that ‘the Qur’4n may be read according to the seven Arabic dialects,’ was obviously invented to check the tendency to perversion of the text according to individual fancy, and is plainly refuted by the fact that the persons to whom the saying was uttered, INTRODUCTION. lix and who had appealed to the prophet to decide upon the reading of a certain text, were both of the tribe of Qurais. At length, some twenty years afterwards, the Caliph Othman, alarmed at the bitter feelings and open quarrels which these differences of reading and interpretation had already engendered, determined to prevent the Muslims from differing amongst themselves in their way of reading the word of God as the Jews and Christians did. He accordingly appointed a commission, consisting of Zaid, the original editor, with three men of the Qurdis (Mohammed’s own tribe), to decide, once for all, upon the text and to fix the reading definitely according to the pure Qurais idiom. When this edition was completed, Othm4n sent copies to all the principal cities in the empire, and caused all the previous copies to be burned. These copies were perhaps not themselves free from small discrepances ; the few slight various readings which have, as I have shown, crept in, are most of them mere matters of orthography, and the rest are unimportant to the general sense. The last named will be found mentioned in the notes to the passages in which they occur in the course of the following translation. Othmén’s recension has remained the authorised text, and has been adopted by all schools of Mohammedan theologians from the time it was made (A.D. 660) until the present day. In this no further attempt was made at chronological arrangement than in the preceding one. The individual Sfrahs have prefixed to them the name of the place, Mecca or Medinah, at which they were revealed; but this indication, though derived from authentic tradition, is not a sufficient guide, since in many places verses have been inserted in a Meccan Sfrah which were evidently revealed at Medinah, and vice versA. To clear away this difficulty, and to propose an intelligible chronological arrangement of the Sfrahs, has been the aim of scholars, both Arabic and European; but no one has treated the subject in so lx THE QUR’AN. critical or masterly a manner as Noldeke, and his arrangement may be taken as the best which Arabic tradition, ‘combined with European criticism, can furnish.
2critical or masterly a manner as Noldeke, and his arrangement may be taken as the best which Arabic tradition, ‘combined with European criticism, can furnish. To arrive at a decision on this point we must consider first the historical event, if any, to which each text refers ; next, the style generally; and lastly, the individual expressions used. Thus, in addressing the Meccans the words yé aiyuha ’nnds, ‘O ye folk!’ occur, while the expression y4 aiyuha ‘llaDHin Amand is used in speaking to the people of Medinah; though sometimes the former phrase occurs in a verse of a Medinah Sarah. The Sfrahs resolve themselves into two great classes, those revealed at Mecca and those revealed at Medinah after the flight; and these are easily distinguished both by their style and subject-matter. The earlier ones especially are grander in style, and testify in every verse to the mental exaltation of the prophet and the earnest belief which he certainly had at this time in the Teality and truth of his divine mission. The Qur’an falls naturally into these two classes, which répresent, in fact, the first development of Mohammed's prophetic office at Mecca, and the later career as a leader and lawgiver after the flight at Medinah. Sdrahs belonging to the first period of his career are therefore ascribed to Mecca, and those of the latter period .to Medinah, although the actual place at which they were delivered may be in certain cases doubtful. One of the next earliest Sfrahs is that entitled Abu Laheb. Mohammed had at length called together his clansmen, the Bani Hashim, and bade them accept the new doctrine of Allah’s unity. Hereupon ‘Abd el ’Huzzah, surnamed Abu Laheb, ‘he of the flame,’ indignantly exclaimed, ‘ Perdition to you! is that what thou hast called — us for?? Mohammed then proclaimed the Sfrah bearing Abu Laheb’s name, in which he enunciates a terrible curse against him and his wife Umm Gemil, and made of him an irreconcilable foe. The CVIth Sarah also belongs undoubtedly to an early INTRODUCTION. Ixi period. In it Mohammed bids the Qurdis ‘serve the Lord of this House,’ for the two trading caravans they yearly sent out in winter and summer respectively. In the Meccan Sfrahs Mohammed’s one and steady purpose is to bring his hearers to a belief in the one only God; this he does by powerful rhetorical displays rather than logical arguments, by appealing to their feelings rather than their reason; by setting forth the manifestations of God in his works; by calling nature to witness to His presence ; and by proclaiming His vengeance against those who associate other gods with Him, or attribute offspring to Him. The appeal was strengthened by glowing pictures of the happiness in store for those who should believe, and by frightful descriptions of the everlasting torments prepared for the unbelievers. The short Sfrah entitled ‘Unity’ is said, on the traditional authority of Mohammed himself, to be equivalent in value to two-thirds of the Qur’4n.
3The short Sfrah entitled ‘Unity’ is said, on the traditional authority of Mohammed himself, to be equivalent in value to two-thirds of the Qur’4n. ‘ Say, “ He is God, one God the eternal. He begets not, and is not begotten; nor is there like unto Him, one.”’ This protest is not aimed at the Christian doctrines alone, for the Arab, as we have seen, asserted that their angels and deities were daughters of Allah, the supreme God. In the earlier chapters, too, the prophetic inspiration, the earnest conviction of the truth of his mission, and the violent emotion which his sense of responsibility caused him are plainly shown. The style is curt, grand, and often almost sublime; the expressions are full of poetical feeling, and the thoughts are earnest and passionate, though sometimes dim and confused, indicating the mental excitement and doubt through which they struggled to light. In the second period of the Meccan Sfrahs, Mohammed appears to have conceived the idea of still further severing himself from the idolatry of his compatriots, and of giving to the supreme deity Allah another title, Ar-Rahman, ‘the merciful one.’ The Meccans, however, seem to have taken these for Ixii THE QUR'AN. the names of separate deities?, and the name is abandoned in the later chapters. In the Sfrahs of the second Meccan period we first find the long stories of the prophets of olden time, especial stress being laid upon the punishment which fell upon their contemporaries for disbelief; the moral is always the same, namely, that Mohammed came under precisely similar circumstances, and that a denial of the truth of his mission would bring on his fellow-citizens the self-same retribution. They also show the transition stage between the intense and poetical enthusiasm of the early Meccan chapters and the calm teaching of the later Medinah ones. This change is gradual, and even in the later and most prosaic we find occasionally passages in which the old prophetic fire flashes out once more, The three periods again are marked by the oaths which occur throughout the Quran. In the first period they are very frequent and often long, the whole powers of nature being invoked to bear witness to the unity of God and the mission of His Apostle; in the second period they are shorter and of rarer occurrence; in the last period they are absent altogether. To understand the Medinah Sirahs we must bear in mind Mohammed’s position with respect to the various parties in that city. In Mecca he had been a prophet with little honour in his own country, looked on by some as a madman, and by others as an impostor, both equally grievous to him, while his following consisted only of the poorest and meanest of his fellow-townsmen. His own clansmen, for the reason that they were his clansmen and for no other, resented the affronts against him.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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