DOZY’S ESTIMATE OF THE _KORAN_

T1he book which contains the revelations made to Mohammed, and which is, at the same time, if not the most complete, at least the most trustworthy source of his biography, presents more peculiarities and irregularities than any other. It is a collection of stories, exhortations, laws, etc., placed side by side without attempt at chronological order or any other order. The revelations were seldom long, most frequently they consist of simple verses which were put into writing in Mohammed’s life-time, or simply entrusted to memory; for, as is proved by the genealogies and poems of paganism, which for long were only preserved by oral tradition, Mohammed’s contemporaries had a memory of marvellous power, as is generally the case with people who write little.

2Mohammed called every complete revelation _sura_, or “_koran_.” The former of these two words is Hebrew, and it literally means a series of stones in a wall, and thence the line of a letter or of a book; in the _Koran_, as we possess it, it has the wider meaning of a chapter. The word _koran_, properly speaking, is an infinitive, and means “to read, to recite, to expose”; this word is also borrowed from the Jews, who use the verb _kara_ (to read) especially in the sense of to study the Scriptures; but Mohammed himself included under the name _Koran_ not only each separate revelation, but also the union of several or even of all of them.

3[Illustration: SPECIMEN OF ARABIC WRITING

4(From an old manuscript of the _Koran_)]

5However, in the time of Mohammed no complete collection of the texts of the _Koran_ existed; and had it not been for the care of the first three caliphs it would have run a great risk of being forgotten. What reserves are needed in admitting the entire authenticity of the text of the sacred writings of the East! The example of the Jews shows this clearly. Already in the time of Mohammed it was known that the Jews had altered the text of the Old Testament in several places; they have been blamed for doing so, and the fact has been positively proved; at the same time in the history of Judaism itself reasons have been discovered for these alterations, which from a certain point of view appear necessary. The Mohammedans had not the same reason as the Jews for adding and altering; but that does not prove that they had no other reasons.

6However that may be, and whatever may be the judgment which posterity will declare as to the greater or lesser authenticity of the _Koran_, it is quite certain that the arrangement of this book and its division into _suras_ or chapters is entirely arbitrary. And it could not be otherwise; an arrangement according to subject was quite impossible, for Mohammed often spoke in the same revelation of totally different things. Still less could a chronological order be followed: first, because Mohammed himself, in many places, added new revelations to more ancient ones; next, because in those times there was no one still living who knew the exact moment when each verse had been revealed.

7It was with perfect justice that, at this period, a man who was asked if the fragments of the _Koran_ were arranged in chronological order, replied: “Even if all men and all _jinns_ (demons) attempted it, they could not succeed.” So the length of the _suras_ was taken as a rule of the order to be followed, without keeping too strictly to it; the longest came first, then the one which was nearest in length, and so on; so that the last _sura_ is at the same time the shortest. The consequence is that revelations dating from very different epochs are now mixed without order, so that a similar confusion is found in no other book; and this, above all else, makes the reading of the _Koran_ so difficult and so tedious.

8For believing Moslems the _Koran_, that is to say God’s Word which has not been created, is the most perfect book which exists, both in matter and form, and this opinion is what it should be in the natural order of things; but it is somewhat strange that the prejudice of the Moslems should have had more influence on us than would have been expected. The pompous rhetoric and the so frequently foolish accumulation of metaphors which are to be found in the Meccan _suras_ have been taken seriously for poetry and admired in consequence; the style of the whole book has been considered a model of purity of language. It is difficult to argue on the question of taste; every man has his private opinion on this matter, and he can seldom be persuaded to change it. But if we must give our own, we must confess that, among the more famous of ancient Arab books, we know none so wanting in taste and originality, so exceedingly prolix and wearisome as the _Koran_.

9Mohammed was not able to compose in verse, an art of which nearly all were masters at that time; so he did not speak in verse, and he even had a marked aversion for poetry. His taste was extremely peculiar; he preferred very mediocre poets who could express pious thoughts in bombastic verse, to the greatest Arab poets who were still living or who had only lately died. Generally speaking he was opposed to poetry, and very naturally; for it was the true expression of the former joyous life of paganism. He was therefore forced to employ rhymed prose for his revelations, which consists in using short sentences, two or more of which rhyme together. In the oldest _suras_ Mohammed closely followed the rules of this style of writing so that they resemble the oracles of the old Arab soothsayers; later on however he neglected them more and more, made sentences longer than they should have been, and took many licences with the rhyme which, far from being attractive, are real blemishes. If they were found in any other book than the Word of God, they would have been severely criticised.

10Moreover, he was not master of the language, which partly explains the frequent repetitions to be found in the _Koran_. Mohammed had much trouble in composing; he seldom found at once the right word to express his thought; so he tried all methods, and hence it is that in the _Koran_ the same ideas recur continually and only the expression changes. The _Koran_ is crowded with degenerate words, borrowed from the Jewish, the Syrian, and the Ethiopian languages; the Arab commentators, who knew no other language than their own, wearied their brains in trying to explain them, without succeeding, however, in finding the true meaning. Moreover the _Koran_ contains more than one infraction of the rules of grammar; and if these are less noticeable, it is because Arab grammarians, wishing to justify them, made these errors into rules or exceptions to the rules.

11The _Koran_ had, moreover, very little influence on Mohammed’s contemporaries. The Arabs had reached a very high degree of civilisation and of development--I refer to intellectual and not to material civilisation; while Mohammed was a mere enthusiast, like many others elsewhere--a fanatic, who was surpassed in understanding, science, intelligence, and even in morality by more than one of his fellow-citizens. The greater number of his contemporaries were indifferent to his pious effusions. And, in short, to find the _Koran_ fine and sublime, faith must first have stifled common sense. The majority of the nation had not yet reached that stage. So the conversions one reads of which are attributed to certain passages of the _Koran_ belong chiefly to the domain of pious legend and not to history; history, in fact, teaches that the multitude knew little or nothing of the _Koran_, and that they were moreover not at all anxious to know it.