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In this Book, the Holy
Prophet's life, the history of the Arabs and the events
which occurred during the period of the revelation of the
Quran have not been mingled with the Divine Verses, as is
the case with the Bible. The Quran is the pure word of God.
Not one word therein is not divine. Not a single word has
been deleted from its text. The Book has been handed down to
our age in its complete and original form since the time of
Prophet Muhammad. From the time the Book began to be
revealed, the Holy Prophet had dictated its text to the
scribes. Whenever some Divine Message was revealed, the Holy
Prophet would call a scribe and dictate its words to him.
The written text was then read out to the Holy Prophet, who,
having satisfied himself that the scribe has committed no
error of recording, would put the manuscript in safe
custody. The Holy Prophet used to instruct the scribe about
the sequence in which a revealed message was to be placed in
a particular Surah (chapter). In this manner, the Holy
Prophet continued to arrange the text of the Quran in
systematic order till the end of the chain of revelations.
Again, it was ordained from the beginning of Islam that a
recitation of the Holy Quran must be an integral part of
worship. Hence the illustrious Companions would commit the
Divine verses to memory as soon as they were revealed. Many
of them learned the whole text and a far larger number had
memorized different portions of it.
Method of preservations of the
Quran during the Prophet's time
Besides, those of the Companions (pbut)
who were literate used to keep a written record of several
portions of the Holy Qur'an. In this manner, the text of the
Holy Qur'an had been preserved in four different ways during
the lifetime of the Holy Prophet (PBUH):
Method of preservations of the
Quran after the demise of the Prophet
It is an incontrovertible
historical truth that the text of the Holy Qur'an extant
today is, syllable for syllable, exactly the same as the
Holy Prophet (PBUH) had offered to the world as the Word of
God. After the demise of the Holy Prophet, the first Caliph
Hadhrat Abu Bakr (PBUH) assembled all the Huffaz and the
written records of the Holy Qur'an and with their help had
the whole text written in Book form. In the time of Hadhrat
'Uthman (PBUH) copies of this original version were made and
officially dispatched to the Capitals of the Islamic World.
Two Of these copies exist in the world today, one in
Istanbul and the other in Tashkent. Whosoever is so inclined
may compare any printed text of the Holy Qur'an with those
two copies, he shall find no variation. And how can one
expect any discrepancy, when there have existed several
million Huffaz in every generation since the time of the
Holy Prophet (PBUH) and in our own time? Should anyone alter
a syllable of the original text of the Qur'an, these Huffaz
would at once expose the mistake. In the last century, an
Institute of Munich University in Germany collected
FORTY-TWO THOUSAND copies of the Holy Qur'an including
manuscripts and printed texts produced in each period in the
various parts of the Islamic World. Research work was
carried out on these texts for half a century, at the end of
which the researchers concluded that apart from copying
mistakes, there was no discrepancy in the text of these
forty-two thousand copies, even though they belonged to the
period between the 1st Century Hijra to 14th Century Hijra
and had been procured from all parts of the world. This
Institute, alas! perished in the bombing attacks on Germany
during World War II, but the findings of its research
project survived. Another point that must be kept in view is
that the word in which the Qur'an was revealed is a living
language in our own time. It is still current as the mother
tongue of about a hundred million people from Iraq to
Morocco. In the non-Arab world too, hundreds of thousands of
people study and teach this language.
The grammar of the Arabic language,
its lexicon, its phonetic system and its phraseology, have
remained intact for fourteen hundred years.
A modern Arabic-speaking person can
comprehend the Holy Qur'an with as much proficiency as did
the Arabs of fourteen centuries ago. This, then, is an
important attribute of Muhammad (PBUH), which is shared by
no other Prophet or Leader of Religion. The Book which God
revealed to Him for the guidance of mankind is today's in
its original language without the slightest alteration in
its vocabulary.
This is taken from part of a speech
"Message of Prophet's (saw) Seerah", given by Syed
Abul 'Aala Muadoodi. He compares the history and
authenticity of three scriptures, Torah, Injeel and Quran.
If any one needs specific
references, the best book for Quran is Al-Itqan fi
Uloom-il-Quran by Jalaludin Sayyooti
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