>>299363 >>299364Read the Quran, you say? Well I have read the Quran in Arabic about five times from cover to cover. When I say read, I mean that I have studied it and contemplated the meanings of each verse, not that I have merely read the text. Throughout my studies I used the interpretations/commentary provided by well-known and respected early Muslim scholars like Ibn Katheer and Al-Qurtubi. I read all of this in Arabic, the language in which it was orignally written. What follows are my thoughts on the Quran.
About the text itself, the Quran is, generally speaking, a confusing mess of verses with little order to them. To be completely fair, a few Surah's (chapters) are pretty cohesive, extremely poetic and overall enjoyable to read, at least untranslated. A lot of the beauty of the style of some of the Surah's is lost in translation. Anyways, I think the reason that the Quran as a whole is extremely incohesive relates to the manner in which the text was compiled. The verses of the Quran was only compiled into a single book in the time of the first caliph Abu-Bakr, several years after the prophet's death. In the early years of Islam the Quran was primarily memorised by people and kept only in that manner; before the first compilation that I am about to elaborate upon shortly no full written copies of the Quran existed. When it was feared that parts of the Quran would be lost due to the large number of
people who memorised its verses dying in the wars that followed the prohpet's death, Abu-Bakr decided that a complete written copy should be produced after that was suggested by Omar Bin-Al-Khattab, a close companion of the prophet and the caliph that would come after Abu-Bakr. When compiling the Quran, two men were required to testify that each verse being added was uttered by the prophet. Some verses did not meet that criterion and were thus never added. It should be noted that one particular man's testimony was considered equivalent to that of two men because the prophet said that about him when he was alive. I have added this for thoroughness only and it is not particulary important. So that was the first copy of the Quran. Other copies were made but some companions of the prophet had their own private copies that did not match the rest. This pe
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