Composition of the Qu’ran (Richard Bell)

If any great changes by way of addition, suppression or alteration had been made, controversy would almost certainly have arisen; but of that there is little trace. ‘ Uthmān offended the more religious among Muslims, and ultimately became very unpopular. Yet among the charges laid against him, that o f having mutilated or altered the Qur’ān is not generally included, and was never made a main point. On general grounds then, it may be concluded that the ‘Uthmānic revision was honestly carried out, and reproduced, as closely as was possible to the men in charge of it, what Muḥammad had delivered. Modern study of the Qur’ān has not in fact raised any serious question of its authenticity. The style varies, but is almost unmistakable.

It is usually assumed, in accordance w ith Islamic doctrine, that throughout the Qur’ān the speaker is G od, and that the P rophet is addressed as the recipient o f the revelation. This corresponds to the setting in m any passages. G od speaks som etim es in the first person singular. A clear example o f this is 51.56f., ‘I have n o t created jinn and m en but that they should serve me; I desire n o t any provision from them , n o r do I desire that they should feed me ’. Others are 67.18, 74.11-15, and even distinctly Medinan passages such as 2.40/38, 4 7 /4 (where God m akes, as it were, a personal appeal to the C hildren o f Israel) and 2.186/2. M uch m ore frequently, how ever, w e find the first person plural used w here G od is without doubt the speaker. The use of the second person singular is very common in the Qur’ān, and the individual addressed m ust be Muḥammad himself. M any passages are indeed personal to the P rophet: encouragem ents, exhortations, assurances o f the reality o f his inspiration, rebukes, pieces o f advice on how to act. O n the other hand, m any passages thus addressed to the P ro p h et have no special reference to him , but contain m atter o f interest to others as well. T h at is, in fact, frequently stated, in such phrases as: ‘Surely in that is a lesson for those w ho fear’. Even w hen n o t stated, it is the evident intention that the com m unication should be m ade public; the Prophet is exhorted to ‘recite’, and that was no doubt the m ethod by w hich these revelations w ere m ade know n to the people.

Rhymes and Strophes
There is no attempt in the Qur’ān to produce the strict rhyme of poetry. In an Arabic poem each verse had to end in the same consonant or consonants surrounded by the same vowels – an interchange o f ī and и was allowed, though considered a weakness. Short inflectional vowels following the rhyme-consonant were usually retained, and, if retained, were pronounced long at the end of the line. Only in very exceptional cases is it possible to find this type of rhyme in the Qur’ān. What one finds rather is assonance, in which short inflectional vowels at the end o f a verse are disregarded, and for the rest, the vowels, particularly their length, and the fall of the accent, that is the form of the end-word o f the verse, are o f more importance than the consonants.

The structure of the Arabic language, in which words fall into definite types of forms, was favourable to the production o f such assonances. Even in the short suras, how ever, there is a tendency to rely in part for the assonance on gram m atical term inations, such as the suffix -hā in suras 99 and 91. In the longer suras this tendency increases. Thus in 55 the assonance depends largely upon the dual-ending -ān. O ften in the longer suras, though seldom carried through w ithout a break, the assonance is -ā( l), that is, a long ā vow el follow ed by a (variable) consonant; so in parts o f suras 2, 3, 14, 38, 39, 40 and sporadically elsewhere. In the great majority o f the suras o f any length, how ever, and even in som e short ones, the prevailing assonance is -ī(l ), that is, a long ī or ū sound (these interchange freely) follow ed by a consonant. This is formed largely by the plural endings of nouns and verbs, -ūп and -īn, varied by words of the form technically know n as fa’īl, one f the commonest forms in Arabic. By far the greater part o f the Qur’ān show s this assonance.