Sheikh Hamza Yusuf

How the Quran was compiled


Anything worth doing should begin with Bismillah

Semitic languages have words with have a three letter root

Three is the beginning of multiplicity

The word Quran comes from a root word to mean city, Qaaf, Raa, Ya
And also the word Qa, Ra, Ah which means to recite

Every civilisation is rooted in a book

The Greeks would base theirs on Homer

For the Arabs, there was no book until the Quran

Children are in the oral world for the first five years of their lives. They hear stories and their imagination come to live

Now we have the children being brought up by the television and this link is severed

Arabs are an oral people

The real meaning of the word Quran is the recital

It is know as a book and the word Ka, Ta Ba means to join together

Arabs used to send their children to bedions out side the city areas because they where very eloquent

The Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him) was born in this culture, in a tribe called Hashim. Before his fourteenth birthday he would enjoy isolation in the cave of hira

Orientalists changed their stance on Islam when oil was found in the Arab region

An angel come to him (peace and blessings be upon him) during his time in the cave and the first word the angel said was, “Read” He said, I am not a reader

After this event the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him ) went to his wife, she comforted him and then went to her uncle Warwa ibn Nawful who said this is the Namus which means angel and its Greek root means law

This is the beginning of the revelation

The first thirteen years is known as the Meccan period, the dominate themes of the Quran

The Quran is a non-linear book, you have to surrender your desire for linarity

19 Juz revealed in Medina and 11 in Mecca

The Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him) saw himself as the first sign of the end of time

There are still people who are people able to memorise the Quran

The Quran is being memorised and written in the Meccan stages

The Meccan suras start with o’ humanity and the medina o’ you who have accepted (believers) these were the people who responded

The focus is one character, building a society

The entire Quran was written down in during his lifetime (peace and blessings be upon him)

In 633, after the battle of Yammam, many Quran reciters had been killed and Umar asked Abu Bakr to collect the Quran

During the caliphate of Uthman, he noticed that some of the Muslims had begun to differ on the recitation of the Quran as it was initially written without dots or vowels

He makes a master copy from the gathered text and copies where sent to every major city in the Muslim world

It was protected by oral recitation

Qurtabi narrates a story about a man who copies the old testament in beautiful calligraphy with mistakes and sends it to a Jewish Rabbi. Who after reading it, sends it back and says it’s a wonderful copy and he does the same with new testament and the Christian doesn’t notice the mistakes and says it’s a wonderful copy. When he does this to the Quran. The Muslim scholar says to burn it as its got mistakes.

It’s a historically correct document

The word “we” in the Quran is used for greatness. This is appropriate for Allah Subhanu wa ta’ala but not for people. This is a plural of magnification and doesn’t not indicate to plural gods as some people refer to

There are seven dialectal ways recitation (another three are unconfirmed) of the Quran, it doesn’t not change the meaning