In Search of the Original Koran: The True History of the Revealed Text (2 page)

NOTES
117

BIBLIOGRAPHY
125

INDEX
135

uestioning the authenticity of the Koranic text these days smacks of blasphemy, of a particularly sacrilegious act with regard to one of the principal dogmas of Islam-if not the most important one, after belief in God and in his Prophet. However, the taboo that envelops the question of the history of the Koran has no theological justification that emanates from the revealed text-nor even a historical rationale, since Muslim Tradition itself relates an imposing mass of information about the very serious problems that have affected transmission of the Koranic text down to our own day.

But the most astonishing aspect of the tense attitude of Muslim orthodoxy is that it contradicts the very doctrine that the Koran itself has formulated about its own authenticity. In effect, far from claiming any textual authenticity at all, the Koran advances a theory of revelation that resolutely refutes such a claim.

This Koranic doctrine explains that the revealed text is merely a secondary product emanating from a primary and authentic text that has been recorded on a celestial tablet kept by God and inaccessible to common mortals. The true Koran is not the one that has been revealed, but the one that has remained in heaven in the hands of God as sole true witness of the revealed text. In short, the Koran attributes authenticity not to the text revealed through Muhammad, but only to the original kept by God. This means that the passage from the heavenly original to the copy betrays the letter of the transmitted text. Muhammad did not receive the revelation by means of dictation, but by means of inspiration (wahy).

Moreover, the revealed text was subject to the law of abrogation and to divine editing, in such a way that the Koran is neither eternal nor absolute. It is historical, circumstantial, and relative. Other factors distance it from the authentic heavenly text: God orders Satan to inspire false revelations from the mouth of Muhammad, and then he denounces them. Moreover, the Prophet is subject to certain human weaknesses-again, according to the Koran.

Thus it is important to bring to light this Koranic doctrine about the inauthenticity of the revealed text.

In effect, at the death of the Prophet, the text of the revelation found itself consigned onto several mediums: parchments, scapular bones, shards, and other chance materials. By all the evidence, the idea of gathering these scattered texts into a single compendium was a rather late innovation, unknown to Muhammad and foreign to the spirit of the Koran. Only a shaping of revealed textual units saw the light of day during Muhammad's lifetime. These units of revelation gave rise to the current surahs by a process that has still not been elucidated, but which is partially visible through the mysterious letters that open certain chapters.

Muslim Tradition maintains that a first collection of the Koran was carried out by the first caliph, Abu Bakr. A fresh collection was undertaken under the third caliph, Uthman. What did such a "collection" consist of? In fact, opinions on this subject vary, and nothing certain has come down to us. The situation is all the more obscure in that a third collection is supposed to have taken place during the reign of the Umayyad governor al-Hajjaj.

Whatever these incoherences within Muslim doctrine about the history of the Koranic text, it is clear that the establishment of an official text of the Koran was the end result of a long progression, whose stages can only be deduced approximately and with great prudence on the basis of stories reported in Muslim Tradition.

In short, the first generations of Muslims did not possess the Koranic text of reference, since one had never existed. As consolation, tradition purely and simply created the myth of the archangel Gabriel meeting Muhammad annually for a clarification of the texts revealed in the course of the preceding year. Thus it was that upon the death of the Prophet that the Koranic text found itself entirely codified, structured, and completed according to divine wishes: the "collections" that took place later have brought nothing new, according to certain stories; they have merely rectified the alterations that intervened during the first decades of Islam. This is the mythical orthodox doctrine about the reliability of the transmission of the revealed text.

In parallel with this idealist justification, Muslim Tradition has bequeathed us indications that are very useful for the historian of the Koranic text, on the condition (of course) that one knows how to decode them. It is on the basis of this material that critical study of the Koranic text began in the West through a magisterial book (which remains even today a reference work) by Theodor Noldeke, Geschichte des Qorans, or The History of the Koran, published for the first time in 1860, and reissued in 1909 by Friedrich Schwally, an edition continued in 1919 with the second volume and in 1938 by Gotthelf Bergstrasser. It inspired in 1958 the excellent Introduction au Coran by the French scholar Regis Blachere.

Alongside this historical critique of the Koran, a new scholarly research avenue arose around the middle of the twentieth century, devoted to the study of the literary genres employed in the sacred text of Islam. Again it was the German school that led the way in this new orientation, essentially inspired by a discipline in which it excelled, that of Formgeschichte, of which Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) was one of the leading figures. Let me mention the series of articles published in 1950 in the journal The Muslim World titled "The Qur'an as Scripture," which prefigured the important contribution of John Wansbrough in his Quranic Studies. Wansbrough studied the schemas of the Koranic discourse and compared them to the Jewish tradition. His demonstration of a solidly structured discourse suggests in effect that it was continuing an old scribal tradition. Henceforth the text of the Koran appears less as the result of an improvisation issuing from the desert than as the continuation of a lofty tradition.

We are going to make use of these scriptural techniques in order to better understand the history of the composition of the Koranic text as realized by the veritable technicians of the inspired writing.

I will end this study by insisting that myths were created by Muslim Tradition in order to impose a representation of the revelation and of its textual product-which, as we shall see, is totally alien to the spirit and to the content of the Koranic text as it has been handed down to us.

Finally, I want to thank all those who have encouraged me to pursue my research and have offered me the benefit of their kind assistance. I particularly appreciate the help of editor Ibn Warraq for this English version, and translator Emilia Lanier for correcting the proofs.

Mondher Sfar

NOTE FROM THE TRANSLATOR

The French translation of quotations from the Koran used by Mr. Sfar refers to the one by Regis Blachere. My English translation also makes use of this, as well as of the standard English versions by Marmaduke Pickthall, the N. J. Dawood translation for Penguin, and that by A. Yusuf Ali. The chapter and verse numbers corresponding to Koranic quotations are indicated, separated by a colon, between parentheses in the text. Occasional biblical references use the New International Version (NIV) and occasionally the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

The system of transliteration adopted in this book aims at simplicity. We have used primarily the English form of proper names and common nouns that are habitually used. As for dates, the Muslim calendar is used (H = Hijra) alongside the Judeo-Christian one (CE = Common Era). Readers who want to pursue the subject are referred to the bibliography and the sources in the notes found at the end of this book.

Emilia Lanier

he transmission of the divine message to Muhammad took place in a particular mode that is more complex than the one represented in orthodox Muslim doctrine. According to the latter, God literally dictated his message. Thus Muhammad is meant to have reproduced in the Koran the words that were created for all eternity by Allah.

In fact, the text revealed to the Prophet comes from another text kept close to God. This is the famous tablet, in Arabic lawh, the exclusive property of God, and to which he is the only one to have access, along with the angel-scribes or angel-messengers like Gabriel. It was only on the basis of this original that the Koranic text was transmitted to Muhammad and then to mankind. From the start, then, the Koran establishes a distinction of decisive importance within the process of revelation.

Here in effect lies a question central to our inquiry into the authenticity of the revealed text. Consequently, Koranic doctrine is clear: the revealed Koranic text represents merely a supposed copy that cannot be confused with the heavenly original, and in this sense, it could not possibly pretend to be authentic. Here, the Koranic text is free from ambiguity: the heavenly original is designated by the term kitab, which signifies "writing," while the text that derives from it by means of revelation is called qur'an, an entity that is essentially liturgical and designates recitation.

Between the copy and the original, there is a whole history that quite evidently refers us to the nature of revelation and to the mode of transmission it is presumed to employ. Cleary understood, the decisive question that we would want to pose at the outset is more theological than historical. And we shall see that the Koranic philosophy of the nature of revelation illuminates in an original and unsuspected manner the history of the transmission of the Koran down to our day.