In Search of the Original Koran: The True History of the Revealed Text (8 page)

Another example of an addition serving as an informational com plement, verse 52:21 promises righteous men that in paradise they will be in the company of their children. This verse is longer than the others and breaks their rhythm. Therefore it seems that it answers a preoccupation expressed after the revelation of the promised paradise.

There remains one other type of possible interpolation: one that introduces a dispensation from a rule or a judgment. For example, the condemnation of poets: "The poets are followed by erring men. Do you not see how in each valley they wander and how they say what they do not do? / Except for those who have believed and who have done good works and remember Allah very much and who benefit from our help only after having been treated unjustly. Those who are unjust will know toward what destiny they are turning" (26:224-26/227-28). It is without doubt that the exception made for righteous poets that is introduced here is a belated interpolation, intended to reform a radical judgment made against poets as such. This can be more easily understood because Muhammad rallied certain poets toward the end of his apostolate, of whom the most celebrated was Hassan ibn Thabit. Analogously, the condemnation to Gahanna of the converted of Mecca, who had refused to follow the Prophet in his emigration to Medina, finds itself nuanced in these two verses: "Except those men, women, and children who are helpless [on Earth], who have no means of escape or of finding the true path. Perhaps Allah will forgive [their faults]. Allah forgives and absolves" (4:98). The introduction of this long incidental phrase shows that we are dealing with a belated interpolation: the nuance brought in could not have been present in the text of the condemnation in verse 4:97. Similarly, when the Koran cites Abraham to the new Muslim believers as an example of someone who broke radically with his family milieu, the same verse introduces this interpolation: "Except the words of Abraham addressed to his father: `I will indeed demand pardon for you, [but] I cannot help you against [the curse of] Allah" (60:4). It is probable that this is a response to an objection raised in the prophetic entourage about the fate of their pagan relatives. It may be also an addendum to recall the case of Abraham, who is here presented as the sole example of an attempt to save a pagan relative.

The rule pronounced in verses 24:27-28, forbidding believers to enter the houses of strangers without their authorization or when they are absent, is modified in the following verse by this derogation: "It is no fault on your part to enter uninhabited houses where there is an object belonging to you. Allah knows what you reveal and what you conceal" (24:29).

This interpolation of a dispensation sometimes ends up removing the rule's veritable raison d'etre: "Seeking what the pleasurable life offers you, do not force your slaves into prostitution, in case they have made a vow of chastity! But if anyone forces them, then God, after they have been compelled, will be forgiving and merciful" (24:33). We see that the second phrase qualifies the condemnation of procurers who have been dishonest when they forced girls to prostitute themselves. All things considered, this offense has been practically absolved-after having been first condemned.

In the same way, the interdiction of taking infidels as friends (awliya) finds itself voided by the addendum "unless you have something to fear from them" (3:28). The same is true of those who have renounced their new faith. Their "reward will be the curse of Allah, the Angels and all mankind, that curse they will suffer forever, nor will their torment be lessened nor shall they be reprieved" (3:87-88). But after this severe condemnation with no possible appeal, the Koran suddenly introduces this derogation: "Except for those who afterwards repent and make amends, for Allah is forgiving and merciful" (3:89). This modification could not have been formulated at the time of the revelation of the verses of vengeance upon apostates. Only imperatives born of new power relations could have imposed such a readjustment at the last minute.

he phenomenon of interpolation that we have just witnessed at work throughout these last developments has allowed us to discover the verse as the textual unit on which the Koran is based. It is time to discover its history-for it has one of its own-which is of interest in order to understand the history of the Koranic text.

The notion of a verse ought not present any historical problems. At least that is the opinion of orthodox Muslim doctrine, which has occupied itself with studying the question of the order of verses without wondering about their origin. Nevertheless, a division of the Koranic text into verses was only partially carried out in the most ancient Koranic manuscripts that we know of, called "Hejazian," like those in the Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris [the French National Library] cat aloged as nos. 328 and 326, in which the division was introduced after they were written.' It is for essentially liturgical reasons that people divided the sacred text up into verses.

Our most precious source for knowing more is once again the Koran itself. It uses the term "aya," which is a word borrowed from Hebrew, but in a sense quite other than the one that ended up designating the textual division of the chapters of the Koran. The term "aya," employed 382 times in the Koran, refers essentially to a divine "sign," which might be a miraculous phenomenon, a decree, or any other manifestation of divine will and power. Among these "signs," pride of place is given to the text revealed by Allah and communicated to His prophets. Thus the Koran designates revelation by "aya," although often in the plural: "Allah has surely been gracious to Believers when He sent them an Apostle of their own to declare to them His aya (yatlu `alayhim ayatihi), to purify them ..." (3:164). Moses was also "sent [to Pharaoh] with aya and a clear authority" (40:23).

As we see, this term "aya" is very important for understanding the nature and essence of the revealed text: it means first and foremost a divine sign, which thereby commands faith in itself and obedience to the commandments that are formulated therein.

Such, then, is the original Koranic meaning of "aya," which would quickly come to refer (after the death of Muhammad) to a subdivision of the chapters of the Koran. After meaning the revealed text as a divine sign, "aya" was reduced to a unit of textual division, a verse.

During the Meccan period, the criteria for the division into verses relied on style, assonance, and rhyme. An effect of style was taken by tradition as a tangible mark of the end of the verse, a fasila (plural, fawasil), or break.2 Blachere notes in this respect that "Muslims refuse to use the word gafiya (plural, gawafi), or garina (plural, gara'in), to refer to Koranic rhyme, because these terms apply to poetry or the "`rhymed prose' of soothsayers."3 The Cairo edition of the Koran contains 6,236 verses, while a tradition going back to Ibn Abbas counts 6,616.4 Ibn al-Arabi even recognized that the question of counting the verses of the Koran "constitutes one of the difficulties [posed by the subject] of the Koran. [For] there are so many of them that are long, while others are short, and some terminate at the end of the sentence, and others in the middle."5 Even the opening surah, "Fatiha," has not escaped interminable debates on the number of its verses.

This uncertainty over the division into verses extends, so to speak, to the West, where the first scholarly edition of the Koran, that of Gustav Flugel (1834), cuts up certain verses of our vulgate into two or three parts, for no apparent reason. For example, verse 11:5 is subdivided into three verses (11:5-7) and a little further on, 11:7 becomes 11:9-10. Similarly, in the English translation by Marmaduke Pick- thall, who followed an Indian textual tradition, verse 6:73 of the Cairo edition is divided into two parts, and 36:35-36 are combined into a single verse.

There is another difficulty linked to the arrangement of verses: the Koran underwent a major evolution in its style from the beginning of revelations until the end of Muhammad's apostolate. At the start of prophetic preaching, "The rhymed units are short and frequently marked, made up of long syllables that are strongly accentuated, offering clauses of identical rhythm."6 Later, the tendency was to elongate the rhymed unit. The rhythm was less sustained, and remained so until the end of the preaching in Mecca, where the rhythmic unit becomes rare while being stretched across multiple sentences.' Because of this, the verse assumed increasingly large proportions, going from a single word, as in verse 89:1, to the extreme of covering a whole page in 2:282.

If the division into verses-starting with its modes and its history-is destined to remain always a problem, neither do we know the process that presided over the establishment of their order. Here, official doctrine is clear: "The order of verses was fixed by [Muhammad] and on his command, and there is no divergence on this point among Muslims," declared Suyuti, according to uncontested authorities.' Caliph Uthman is said to have reported that "as soon something from the Koran comes down to Muhammad, he calls a scribe and tells him to `put these verses in the surah that speaks of such-and-such. "'9 One other tradition specifies that Muhammad put the verses into order according to the express instructions of Gabriel.10 Sometimes, this archangel of revelation gives this order directly to the collectors of the Koran: "Put this verse in that place,"" thereby contradicting the thesis that makes Muhammad the one who has chosen the order of verses. Moreover, Suyuti explains that the companions were listening to the Prophet recite certain surahs during prayers, and concluded that it would be quite normal for them to keep the same order for the verses during the elaboration of the Koran compendiums." Nevertheless, a little later, Suyuti reports that it is Umar who has decided on the placing of the two last verses of the surah bard'a (9:128-29). Umar even goes so far as to say that if these two verses had been three in number, then he would have made them into a separate surah.' I In fact, the order of the verses was not definitively fixed until quite late, no doubt in the Umeyyad era.