Part 16 (1/2)
CHAPTER IV
THE PROPHET AND THE KORAN
With the appearance of Mu?ammad the almost impenetrable veil thrown over the preceding age is suddenly lifted and we find ourselves on the solid ground of historical tradition. In order that the reasons for this change may be understood, it is necessary to give some account of the princ.i.p.al sources from which our knowledge of the Prophet's life and teaching is derived.
[Sidenote: Sources of information: I. The Koran.]
[Sidenote: How it was preserved.]
[Sidenote: Value of the Koran as an authority.]
There is first, of course, the Koran,[270] consisting ”exclusively of the revelations or commands which Mu?ammad professed, from time to time, to receive through Gabriel as a message direct from G.o.d; and which, under an alleged Divine direction, he delivered to those about him. At the time of pretended inspiration, or shortly after, each pa.s.sage was recited by Mu?ammad before the Companions or followers who happened to be present, and was generally committed to writing by some one amongst them upon palm-leaves, leather, stones, or such other rude material as conveniently came to hand. These Divine messages continued throughout the three-and-twenty years of his prophetical life, so that the last portion did not appear till the year of his death. The canon was then closed; but the contents were never, during the Prophet's lifetime, systematically arranged, or even collected together.”[271] They were preserved, however, in fragmentary copies and, especially, by oral recitation until the sanguinary wars which followed Mu?ammad's death had greatly diminished the number of those who could repeat them by heart.
Accordingly, after the battle of Yamama (633 A.D.) 'Umar b. al-Kha??ab came to Abu Bakr, who was then Caliph, and said: ”I fear that slaughter may wax hot among the Reciters on other battle-fields, and that much of the Koran may be lost; so in my opinion it should be collected without delay.” Abu Bakr agreed, and entrusted the task to Zayd b. Thabit, one of the Prophet's amanuenses, who collected the fragments with great difficulty ”from bits of parchment, thin white stones, leafless palm-branches, and the bosoms of men.” The ma.n.u.script thus compiled was deposited with Abu Bakr during the remainder of his life, then with 'Umar, on whose death it pa.s.sed to his daughter ?af?a. Afterwards, in the Caliphate of 'Uthman, ?udhayfa b. al-Yaman, observing that the Koran as read in Syria was seriously at variance with the text current in 'Iraq, warned the Caliph to interfere, lest the Sacred Book of the Moslems should become a subject of dispute, like the Jewish and Christian scriptures. In the year 651 A.D. 'Uthman ordered Zayd b.
Thabit to prepare a Revised Version with the a.s.sistance of three Qurays.h.i.+tes, saying to the latter, ”If ye differ from Zayd regarding any word of the Koran, write it in the dialect of Quraysh; for it was revealed in their dialect.”[272] This has ever since remained the final and standard recension of the Koran. ”Transcripts were multiplied and forwarded to the chief cities in the empire, and all previously existing copies were, by the Caliph's command, committed to the flames.”[273] In the text as it has come down to us the various readings are few and unimportant, and its genuineness is above suspicion. We shall see, moreover, that the Koran is an exceedingly human doc.u.ment, reflecting every phase of Mu?ammad's personality and standing in close relation to the outward events of his life, so that here we have materials of unique and incontestable authority for tracing the origin and early development of Islam--such materials as do not exist in the case of Buddhism or Christianity or any other ancient religion. Unfortunately the arrangement of the Koran can only be described as chaotic. No chronological sequence is observed in the order of the Suras (chapters), which is determined simply by their length, the longest being placed first.[274] Again, the chapters themselves are sometimes made up of disconnected fragments having nothing in common except the rhyme; whence it is often impossible to discover the original context of the words actually spoken by the Prophet, the occasion on which they were revealed, or the period to which they belong. In these circ.u.mstances the Koran must be supplemented by reference to our second main source of information, namely, Tradition.
[Sidenote: 2. Tradition (?adith).]
[Sidenote: Biographies of Mu?ammad.]
[Sidenote: General collections.]
[Sidenote: Commentaries on the Koran.]
Already in the last years of Mu?ammad's life (writes Dr. Sprenger) it was a pious custom that when two Moslems met, one should ask for news (_?adith_) and the other should relate a saying or anecdote of the Prophet. After his death this custom continued, and the name _?adith_ was still applied to sayings and stories which were no longer new.[275]
In the course of time an elaborate system of Tradition was built up, as the Koran--originally the sole criterion by which Moslems were guided alike in the greatest and smallest matters of public and private interest--was found insufficient for the complicated needs of a rapidly extending empire. Appeal was made to the sayings and practice (_sunna_) of Mu?ammad, which now acquired ”the force of law and some of the authority of inspiration.” The Prophet had no Boswell, but almost as soon as he began to preach he was a marked man whose _obiter dicta_ could not fail to be treasured by his Companions, and whose actions were attentively watched. Thus, during the first century of Islam there was a mult.i.tude of living witnesses from whom traditions were collected, committed to memory, and orally handed down. Every tradition consists of two parts: the text (_matn_) and the authority (_sanad_, or _isnad_), _e.g._, the relater says, ”I was told by _A_, who was informed by _B_, who had it from _C_, that the Prophet (G.o.d bless him!) and Abu Bakr and 'Umar used to open prayer with the words 'Praise to G.o.d, the Lord of all creatures.'” Written records and compilations were comparatively rare in the early period. Ibn Is?aq ( 768 A.D.) composed the oldest extant Biography of the Prophet, which we do not possess, however, in its original shape but only in the recension of Ibn Hisham ( 833 A.D.). Two important and excellent works of the same kind are the _Kitabu 'l-Maghazi_ ('Book of the Wars') by Waqidi ( 822 A.D.) and the _Kitabu 'l-?abaqat al-Kabir_ ('The Great Book of the Cla.s.ses,' _i.e._, the different cla.s.ses of Mu?ammad's Companions and those who came after them) by Ibn Sa'd ( 844 A.D.). Of miscellaneous traditions intended to serve the Faithful as a model and rule of life in every particular, and arranged in chapters according to the subject-matter, the most ancient and authoritative collections are those of Bukhari ( 870 A.D.) and Muslim ( 874 A.D.), both of which bear the same t.i.tle, viz., _al-?a?i?_, 'The Genuine.' It only remains to speak of Commentaries on the Koran. Some pa.s.sages were explained by Mu?ammad himself, but the real founder of Koranic Exegesis was 'Abdullah b. 'Abbas, the Prophet's cousin. Although the writings of the early interpreters have entirely perished, the gist of their researches is embodied in the great commentary of ?abari ( 922 A.D.), a man of encyclopaedic learning who absorbed the whole ma.s.s of tradition existing in his time. Subsequent commentaries are largely based on this colossal work, which has recently been published at Cairo in thirty volumes. That of Zamakhshari ( 1143 A.D.), which is ent.i.tled the _Kashshaf_, and that of Bay?awi ( 1286 A.D.) are the best known and most highly esteemed in the Mu?ammadan East. A work of wider scope is the _Itqan_ of Suyu?i ( 1505 A.D.), which takes a general survey of the Koranic sciences, and may be regarded as an introduction to the critical study of the Koran.
[Sidenote: Character of Moslem tradition.]
While every impartial student will admit the justice of Ibn Qutayba's claim that no religion has such historical attestations as Islam--_laysa li-ummatin mina 'l-umami asnadun ka-asnadihim_[276]--he must at the same time cordially a.s.sent to the observation made by another Mu?ammadan: ”In nothing do we see pious men more given to falsehood than in Tradition”
(_lam nara 'l-?ali?ina? fi shayin akdhaba minhum fi 'l-?adith_).[277] Of this severe judgment the reader will find ample confirmation in the Second Part of Goldziher's _Muhammedanische Studien_.[278] During the first century of Islam the forging of Traditions became a recognised political and religious weapon, of which all parties availed themselves.
Even men of the strictest piety practised this species of fraud (_tadlis_), and maintained that the end justified the means. Their point of view is well expressed in the following words which are supposed to have been spoken by the Prophet: ”You must compare the sayings attributed to me with the Koran; what agrees therewith is from me, whether I actually said it or no;” and again, ”Whatever good saying has been said, I myself have said it.”[279] As the result of such principles every new doctrine took the form of an Apostolic _?adith_; every sect and every system defended itself by an appeal to the authority of Mu?ammad. We may see how enormous was the number of false Traditions in circulation from the fact that when Bukhari ( 870 A.D.) drew up his collection ent.i.tled 'The Genuine' (_al-?a?i?_), he limited it to some 7,000, which he picked out of 600,000.
The credibility of Tradition, so far as it concerns the life of the Prophet, cannot be discussed in this place.[280] The oldest and best biography, that of Ibn Is?aq, undoubtedly contains a great deal of fabulous matter, but his narrative appears to be honest and fairly authentic on the whole.
[Sidenote: Birth of Mu?ammad.]
If we accept the traditional chronology, Mu?ammad, son of 'Abdullah and amina, of the tribe of Quraysh, was born at Mecca on the 12th of Rabi'
al-Awwal, in the Year of the Elephant (570-571 A.D.). His descent from Qu?ayy is shown by the following table:--
Qu?ayy.
'Abd Manaf.
'Abd Shams. Has.h.i.+m.
Umayya. 'Abdu 'l-Mu??alib.