آرتيني فعّال
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اشترك في: الجمعة مارس 23, 2007 7:56 pm
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مشاركات: 2811
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القسم: English
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السنة: MA in Linguistics
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WWW: http://www.art-en.com
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Yahoo Messenger: adahhik@yahoo.com
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مكان: Hims
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 [align=center]Koran[/align]
INTRODUCTION
Koran (Arabic, al-Qur’an), the chief sacred text of Islam. The Arabic name indicates something “read” or “recited”. It may be an Arabicized form of a Syriac word. It is applied to the book which contains what Muslims believe are a series of revelations made by Allah (God) to Muhammad during his career as a prophet in Mecca and Medina in the first decades of the 7th century.
THE COLLECTION AND COMPOSITION OF THE KORAN
The revelations were in Arabic and, according to the most usual Muslim view, were made through the angel Gabriel (Jibrail). Traditionally it has been held that when Muhammad proclaimed the revelations to his followers they were remembered by heart or sometimes written down on such things as palm leaves, fragments of bone, and animal hides. After Muhammad’s death in ad 632 his followers began to collect these revelations and they were finally put together, to form the Koran as we know it, around 650 in the caliphate of Uthman. Written Arabic usually shows consonants only, not vowels, and the tradition is that the vowels were introduced into the text later. By the 4th century of Islam (10th century) various systems of “reading” (that is, adding vowels to) the accepted consonantal text had developed, and seven of these came to be accepted as of equal validity.
These accepted “readings” should not be confused with the variant texts of certain Koranic passages which Muslim tradition has preserved. The variants are said to have come from versions of the Koran which some of the companions of Muhammad had kept but which differed from, and were supplanted by, the “Uthmanic” version. These variants are often inconsequential and unimportant although sometimes they offer support for a particular view on a legal or religious question which is disputed among Muslims.
Most modern non-Muslim scholars have accepted the traditional accounts of how the text of the Koran as we know it came to be composed. Recently, however, some have put forward different ideas, applying to the Koran theories and methods which have proved fruitful in the analysis of the Bible.
FORM AND CONTENT
The Koran is divided into 114 chapters (suras), each known by a different title. The chapters are divided into verses (ayas). The verse divisions are later than the chapter divisions and are not always the same in different editions of the text. In length the Koran is roughly equivalent to the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It is not arranged in the order in which it is believed to have been revealed to Muhammad, but according to the length of the chapters. Generally speaking, the chapters become shorter from the beginning of the book to its end. The only exception to this principle is Chapter 1 (the Fatiha) which is relatively short. Chapter 2 is then the longest (286 verses in the most common edition) while Chapter 114 (6 verses) is the shortest.
The Arabic of the Koran is distinctive in comparison with other forms of Arabic. It is a mixture of prose and poetry without metre. Its style is allusive and elliptical and its grammar and vocabulary often difficult. Like many scriptures it is subject to different interpretations, in places is hard to understand, and is usually learned within a Muslim community together with a tradition of interpretation. Traditionally it has been seen as the most perfect example of Arabic, and no human being could produce anything to match it. Since it is generally accepted by Muslims that the Prophet was illiterate, it is seen as a miracle that such a work should have been produced through him.
In content it consists mainly of moral and ethical commands and recommendations, warnings about the coming last day and final judgement, stories about prophets before Muhammad and the peoples to whom they were sent, and rules regarding religious life and such things as marriage, divorce and inheritance. Its fundamental message is that there is only one God, the creator of everything, who alone must be served by correct worship and behaviour. This God is constantly merciful and has continuously called mankind to worship him through a series of prophets whom he has sent. These prophets have been rejected over and over again by sinful peoples whom God has therefore punished. The general themes of the Koran and many of its illustrative stories are shared with Jewish and Christian scripture, but they are often developed in a distinctive way. Many details of the stories about previous prophets are closer to the versions found in Jewish and Christian apocrypha and similar writings than to the versions found in the Bible.
THE KORAN’S IMPORTANCE AND INTERPRETATION
The Koran has been accepted by most Muslims as the word of God in a literal sense. It is, therefore, at the centre of Islam and is comparable to the Torah for Jews or the figure of Jesus for Christians. The obligatory daily prayers include the recitation of passages from the Koran, and traditional education involved learning it by heart. It is regarded by Muslims as one of the two main sources of Islamic law (the other being the Sunna, the divinely guided behaviour and practice of the prophet and, for the Shiites, of the Imams).
Nevertheless, it should not be thought that the Koran is the whole of Islam, even though some Muslims have claimed so. It is also difficult to accept the claim sometimes made that the Koran represents “true Islam” as distinct from what are seen as the accretions or even corruptions of human origin contained within traditional Muslim teaching. Without the tradition of interpretation which accompanies it, much of it would be difficult to understand. Even the view that it contains a series of revelations made to Muhammad depends on the tradition, for that teaching is not stated unambiguously in the text of the Koran itself.
The interpretation of the Koran (traditionally known as tafsir) is a field of Muslim scholarship which has continued from the time when the text first established itself as scripture for Muslims down to modern times. Numerous books have been produced on the subject. We have a few commentaries attributed to scholars of the first three centuries of Islam but the earliest major work of tafsir is that by al-Tabari (died 923). This work goes through the Koran verse by verse and offers a variety of the opinions of earlier and contemporary scholars regarding such things as vocalization, grammar, lexicography, ethical and moral interpretation, and the relationship of the text to the life of Muhammad. The various views are reported without comment although al-Tabari often indicates which of them he prefers.
Many later commentaries follow the procedure used by al-Tabari but others become simpler and shorter by selecting only certain verses for commentary, limiting themselves to only one or a few selected interpretations, or specialising on one topic, such as the Koranic vocabulary which was regarded as especially difficult.
Much of the work of interpretation is concerned with the “occasions of revelation”. The individual verses and groups of verses are related to the life of Muhammad and are understood as having been revealed in connection with specific incidents in his life or to solve particular problems which he faced. Thus the text is understood as having an immediate context in the life of Muhammad as well as a more universal and timeless significance.
Some modern non-Muslim scholars have felt that elements in the life of Muhammad have been created by the elaboration of certain Koranic verses. The process has been described as midrashic because of its similarity to the way in which Jewish tradition created the Midrash stories about biblical figures, by creative elaboration of the text of the Bible. If this is so, then to explain the Koran by reference to the biography of the Prophet would involve a circular method of reasoning.
The tradition of tafsir has often reflected divergences and trends within Islam. Shiite interpretation of particular verses has often differed radically from that of the Sunnis, finding, for instance, references to the special status of Ali ibn Abi Talib and the Imams in the Koranic verses. In recent times both reforming “modernists” and “fundamentalists” have interpreted the text in ways which conform with their own viewpoints. Some have sought to show that the Koran is not only in conformity with many of the ideas of modern science but actually prefigures them. It is the often opaque nature of the Koranic text itself which makes such divergent approaches possible.
TRANSLATIONS
Whether the Koran may be translated from its original Arabic into another language, and, if so, under what circumstances a translation may be used, has also been a matter of dispute. Nevertheless, it has been translated by Muslims and non-Muslims into a variety of languages. The first translation into a European language was the Latin version made in 1143 by the English scholar Robert of Ketton on the orders of Peter the Venerable. The first English version, in 1649 was made on the basis of an earlier French translation. The first English version directly from the Arabic was by George Sale and appeared originally in 1734. Today there are many versions available in English and the other major languages of the world.
May God protect His Great Koran
Adnan
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من أروع ما قرأت " يومئذٍ يتذكّر الإنسان وأنّى له الذكرى * يقول يا ليتني قدّمت لحياتي "
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