📘 ❞ The History of the Quranic Text from Revelation to Compilation A Comparative Study with the Old and New Testaments ❝ كتاب ــ محمد مصطفى الأعظمي

عن كتاب The History of the Quranic Text from Revelation to Compilation A Comparative Study with the Old and New Testaments:


his work comprises a short introduction to the history of the Q ur’an, its
recording and its collection. The reader may therefore be puzzled as to
why one third of the material in this book tackles the O ld Testament (OT)
and the New Testament (NT), wondering w hat significance this has on
tire Q ur’an’s history. This significance shall, I hope, be made clear as the
chapters progress, since I-have attempted to present only those details which
have a direct bearing on the current subject matter. I
TTif ii-ien of mitHririno- a hnnk about the O ur’an. about its collection and
immaculate preservation, had long germinated in myj mind, and approx­
imately three and half years ago I finally began working on this book along
side another entitled
Islamic Studies: W hat Methodology?
It! was journalist Toby
Lester’s article in
The Atlantic M onthly
(January 1999) hojvever, and the chaos
it had the potential to sow among Muslims, which prom pted a greater

believing in the Q ur’an as the unadulterated Book of Allah, were thoroughly
incapable of defending this view in any scholarly fashion. The gauntlet was
thrown, and I felt it necessary to take on this challenge and explain the
stringent methodology used by early Muslim scholars in accepting a text
as genuine, or rejecting it as fake. This has lead to the unavoidable repetition
of some material in both books. As most of the scholars that Lester quotes
are either Jews or Christians, I also considered it fitting to cover the histories
of the O ld and New Testaments by way of comparison. This should help
the reader to regard the disparity of opinions between Muslim and O ri­
entalist scholars with a fair measure o f insight.
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With their insistence on a purely oral transmission, most Orientalists
reject all reports that cite recording and compilation of the Q ur’an during
the Prophet M uham m ad’s lifetime. M any of them even deny that any final
compilation occurred during Abu Bakr’s reign, while some accept the role
of the third caliph ‘Uthman in this regard. Only
ffte m y e a r s
lapsed between
the Prophet’s death and ‘U thm an’s distribution of written copies of the
Q ur’an to different provinces of the Muslim world. Viewing this interval







The author said in his introduction: This work comprises a short introduction to the history of the
Quran, its recording and its collection. The reader may therefore be puzzled as to why one third of the material in this book tackles the Old Testament OT and the New Testament NT , wondering what significance this has on the Quran’s history. This significance shall, I hope, be made clear as the chapters progress, since I have attempted to present only those details which have a direct bearing on the current subject matter.