Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

5. The Muslim Scripture: The Quran
THE QURAN is the Scripture of the Muslims and
comprises the series of revelations “sent down”—the
Quran’s own preferred expression—to Muhammad
between 610 and his death in 632. The revelations
were delivered orally, in a variety of circumstances,
and, as it was explained, through the medium of the
angel Gabriel. These God-sent communications were
repeated verbatim and publicly by Muhammad over
the twenty-two years of his ministry, first at Mecca between
610 and 622, and then at Medina from 622 to
632, and were finally collected into the Book as we
have it. Thus the Quran is literally the Words of God,
repeated, without error, by his “envoy” or “messenger”
(rasul), as he is called in the Quran, and as every
Muslim must and does affirm.
In its book form roughly the size of the New Testament,
the Quran is presently divided into 114 units. In
translations these suras are numbered in the manner
of chapters, in the Arabic original of the Book they
possess only titles—“The Opening,” “The Spoils,”
“Noah”—which suggests that their sequence is not terribly
important, though they also bear the rubric
“Mecca” or “Medina,” which indicates their point of
origin and, by implication, that their order does in
some way matter. The suras seem to be arranged
roughly in descending length, and are themselves subdivided
into verses (aya; pl. ayat), which are numbered
in the text, so here at least the sequence does make a