II.

The Collection and Composition of the Koran

The revelations were in Arabic and, according to the most usual Muslim view, were made through the angel Gabriel (Jibrail). Traditionally it has been held that when Muhammad proclaimed the revelations to his followers they were remembered by heart or sometimes written down on such things as palm leaves, fragments of bone, and animal hides. After Muhammad’s death in ad 632 his followers began to collect these revelations and they were finally put together, to form the Koran as we know it, around 650 in the caliphate of Uthman. Written Arabic usually shows consonants only, not vowels, and the tradition is that the vowels were introduced into the text later. By the 4th century of Islam (10th century) various systems of “reading” (that is, adding vowels to) the accepted consonantal text had developed, and seven of these came to be accepted as of equal validity.

These accepted “readings” should not be confused with the variant texts of certain Koranic passages which Muslim tradition has preserved. The variants are said to have come from versions of the Koran which some of the companions of Muhammad had kept but which differed from, and were supplanted by, the “Uthmanic” version. These variants are often inconsequential and unimportant although sometimes they offer support for a particular view on a legal or religious question which is disputed among Muslims.

Most modern non-Muslim scholars have accepted the traditional accounts of how the text of the Koran as we know it came to be composed. Recently, however, some have put forward different ideas, applying to the Koran theories and methods which have proved fruitful in the analysis of the Bible.