KORAN. The Koran is the sacred book of the Muharn madans. The word, which means the " reading " or the " lectionary." is more correctly written Kur'an or Qur'an. The work contains the revelations which are supposed to have come to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel. These are given in one hundred and fourteen Sums (q.v.) or chapters. " The style in which the Qur'an is written is a kind of rhyming prose. i.e., language having a final rhyme. without being measured, a style much in use in the time of Muhammad, and liked by the Arabs, and in which their soothsayers and poets used to speak " (Klein). The Qur'an is sup posed to contain all knowledge. Muhammad says that " he who reads a letter or syllable of the Qur'an receives for it the recompense of a good action, and this action is worth ten other good actions." Again, " the Qur'an contains a thousand times and twenty thousand letters: he who reads it with the desire of receiving a reward from God, and with patience, will receive (in Paradise) a Houri ' as wife." Muhammad professes to have received divine and miraculous revelations. Muslim doctors say that these came to him by direct inspiration of the Angel Gabriel, " the Angel of Inspiration," or in visions in which the Angel Gabriel appeared to him, or by communication from God Himself when the prophet was awake or asleep. The revelations were not arranged in one book in the Prophet's lifetime. An amanuensis wrote them down as he uttered them " on any material that happened to be at hand, such as palm-leaves, bones, stones, leather, etc." After his death they were repeated for a time from memory by the " Readers " of the Qur'an. The necessity of fixing and writing down the Koran was suggested by the multiplication of various readings. The Khalif Abu Bakr (632-634 A.D.) ordered Zaid bin Thabit to collect the various portions of the Qur'an into one book. No copies of this first edition, however, have been preserved. It did not in any case put a stop to the multiplication of various reading's. Khalif 'Uthman (644-655 A.D.) therefore had a new re cension made. Persons having a thorough knowledge of the Qur'an were called by Muhammad Qur'an-readers.
The Suras are divided into Suras revealed before the flight of Muhammad to Madina, " Mecca Sumas," and Suras revealed after the flight, " Madina Suras." The Sums are arranged as to length and not according to chronology. " The long Sums were placed first and the short ones last. Within the Sums, some portions have been arranged in chronological order, others on the ground of similarity of matter; but in a variety of instances passages are joined together without any regard to either chronology or similarity of subject. Thus we find verses revealed at Mecca in the midst of Madina Sums, and passages revealed at Madina mixed up in the earlier Mecca Suras, and occasionally most heterogeneous materials put together without any regard to logical connexion at all " (Klein). The Qur'an is not free from contradictions, and God Himself is represented as saying (Ii. 100): " Whatever verse we abrogate, or cause thee to forget, we will bring a better one than it, or one like it." It is not certain that Muhammad could read or write. Devoted followers have maintained that he could not, and that therefore his revelations must certainly have been received from God. But in any case he had other means of obtaining religious information, and, as Klein says, it is "evident that by far the greater portion " of the Qur'an " consists of materials collected from Jews, Christians, Sabeans, and pagan Arabs." J. 31. Rodwell gives the following transliteration of the first Sum as an example of the rhyming prose in which the Qur'an is written : Bismillahi ' rahmani ' rrahheem.
El-hamcloo lillahi rah' ' lalameen.
Arrahhmani raheem.
Glaliki yowmi-d-deen.
Hyaka nahoodoo, waeyaka nestaeen.
lhdina 'ssirat almostakeem.
Sirat alezeena anhamta aleihim, eheiri-'I mughdoobi aleihim, wale dsaleen. Ameen.
There are many commentaries on the Qur'fin. One of the best known is that of Al Baidawi (685 A.H.). The Qur'an has been translated into English by George Sale, J. M. Rodwell, and E. H. Palmer. See J. M. Rodwell, The Koran, 1861; G. L. Hurst, Sacred Literature, 1905: F. A. Klein, The Religion of Islam, 1906; T. Noeldeke, Geschichte des Qorans, part I., second edition, 1909.