In Search of the Original Koran: The True History of the Revealed Text Read Online Free PDF

events in, and the daily history of, the new community created around its prophet. This is what Tradition refers to as "asbab al-nuzul," or "that which caused the revealed words."
    Even more surprisingly, this Tradition went so far as to make certain of the Prophet's companions veritable "inspirators" of the revealed texts. Suyuti, for example, devotes chapter 10 of his book Itgan to this phenomenon: "On what was revealed in the Koran according to the expressions pronounced by certain Companions." Suyuti reports that the companion best illustrated in this domain is the future caliph Umar. His son is supposed to have said: "The Koran recorded nothing literally from what these people say, except for Umar. The Koran was revealed according to certain of his words."26 Mujahid is even said to have asserted that sometimes "Umar had a vision and then the Koran was revealed according to that."27 Several compilers of hadiths have mentioned a saying by Anas that reports: "Umar said: `I was in unison with my Lord on three occasions: 1) I said: 0 Messenger of Allah, if we made the place where Abraham stood a place of prayer?' And then the verse was revealed: `Make the place where Abraham stood a place of prayer' (2:125); 2) and I said: `O Messenger of Allah, good people and less good people frequent your women. If you ordered them to veil themselves?' And then the verse of the Veil was revealed; 3) the wives of the Prophet were in league against him because of some story of jealousy and I said to them: `If perchance the Prophet repudiates you, his Lord will give him wives who are better than you,' and then a verse [66:5] was revealed in these same terms." -g

    Another story, again according to Anas, reports that when this verse is revealed: "We created man from a mass of clay. . ." (23:12), Umar said: "Blessed be Allah, the best of Creators!" and so verse 23:14 was revealed in the same words.29 Other words of Umar's are said to have been taken verbatim into the Koran, such as: "Whoever is an enemy to Allah and his Angels, and to his Apostles, to Gabriel and Michael, [that one is Allah's enemy] for Allah is an enemy to the unbelievers" (2:98).30
    Other companions also had the privilege of seeing their words reproduced verbatim in the Koran, as, for example, Sald Ibn Mucadh, when he exclaimed: "Glory to Thee [our Lord]! This is a most serious slander!" with respect to the accusations circulating against Aisha, the wife of the Prophet. Thus verse 24:16 textually repeats this exclamation.-' The same expression has been attributed to others, such as Zayd ibn Haritha and Abu Ayyub.32
    It is also reported that in the course of the battle of Uhud, when Mus`ab ibn `Umayr was wounded, he did not cease crying: "Muhammad is only a Prophet coming after other Prophets. If he dies or is killed, you will turn back on your heels." Then he died. And so verse 3:144 uses the same words.
    In the same lineage of ideas, Suyuti came to pose a more general question about the historical veracity of words put into the mouths of the angels'33 and even about the anonymous entourage around God's apostle, as in the prayer of Fatiha (surah 1, "The Opening"): were these words supposed to have been really said by these personages or else only imagined and presumed to have been said?34 But this question, which relates even more to the semantics and rules of the enunciation, demonstrates the pertinence and the subtlety of the questions posed within Muslim Tradition about the nature of the revealed text, which testifies to an openness of mind and a freedom of inquiry-of which one finds few traces these days.

    On the other hand, Tradition tells us of the role of Muhammad's secretaries in the elaboration of certain verses. Zayd ibn Thabit is said to have asked Muhammad to add two verses, 4:98 and 4:99, in order to exclude the impotent and the blind from the punishment announced in verse 4:97 against those who refused to emigrate from Mecca to Medina and to fight alongside the