Quran

The Qur'an, commonly spelled Koran in the west, is the Islamic holy book of Allah (God). Practioners of Islam called muslims, believe that it is the eternal, literal word of God, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad over a period of 22 years. The Qur'an consists of 114 suras (chapters) and 6,228 ayats (verses).

Much of the content in the Qur'an makes reference back to parts of the Jewish and Christian Bibles. Well-known Biblical characters such as Abraham, Noah, and Jesus are mentioned. Detractors of the Qur'an and Muhammad have claimed that Muhammad was merely taking older religious documents and stories and embellishing them. Muslims maintain that this could not be the case. They say that modern science has identified many factual errors and internal inconsistencies in the Bible, but that the Qur'an has none and, in cases where Biblical stories reappear in very similar form in the Qur'an, the stories are always changed in such a way that the scientific inaccuracies and inconsistencies are gone. The absence of inaccuracies and inconsistencies are, they claim, proof that it comes from God.

Muslims believe that the wording of Qur'anic text that we have today is identical to that spoken by Muhammad himself. Muhammad only delivered the Qur'an in spoken form during his lifetime; the word "Qur'an", in fact, means "the recitation". To ensure they remembered the text thoroughly, the faithful were required (and many still do) to memorize passages perfectly, down to the last syllable, and recite them frequently. Shortly after his death, Muhammad's disciples began recording all the Suras in written form. Thus, two different mechanisms were in place -- oral and written -- to help ensure that no corruption of the text took place over time. There is almost no dispute among Islamic clerics that the text today is as it was when it was first written down.

The First chapter of the Qur'an is"al-Fatihah," which contains seven verses and which serves as an introduction to the entire revelation: " In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds; The Merciful, the Compassionate; Master of the Day of Judgment; Thee only do we worship, and Thee alone we ask for help. Guide us in the straight path, The path of those whom Thou hast favored; not the path of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray. " The text of the Quran was delivered orally by the Prophet Muhammad to his followers as it was revealed to him. The first verses were revealed to him in or about 610, and the last revelation dates from the last year of his life, 632. His followers at first committed the Quran to memory and then, as instructed by him, to writing. Although the entire contents of the Quran, the placement of its verses, and the arrangement of its chapters date back to the Prophet, as long as he lived he continued to receive revelations. Consequently, the Holy Text could only be collected as a single corpus - "between the two covers" - after the death of Muhammad. This is exactly what happened. After the battle of al-Yamamah in 633, 'Umar ibn al-Khattab, later to become the second caliph, suggested to Abu Bakr, the first caliph, that because of the grievous loss of life in that battle, there was a very real danger of losing the Quran, enshrined as it was in the memories of the faithful and in uncollated fragments. Abu Bakr recognized the danger and entrusted the task of gathering the revelations to Zayd ibn Thabit, who as the chief scribe of the Prophet was the person to whom Muhammad frequently dictated the revelations in his lifetime. With great difficulty, the task was carried out and the first complete manuscript compiled from "bits of parchment, thin white stones - ostracae - leafless palm branches, and the memories of men." Later, during the time of 'Uthman, the third caliph, a final, authorized text was prepared and completed in 651, and this has remained the text in use ever since.

The Qur'an never has been changed from what the prophet Mohammed taught his followers as Allah has revealed to the prophet. Allah (God) promised in the Qur'an that he will save the Qur'an from any changes “We revealed the Qur'an to the prophet and We will save it from any changes”

Translations

Robert of Ketton was the first to translate it into Latin in 1143.

External links:

The Noble Quran
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/

The Quran Browser
http://www.stg.brown.edu/webs/quran_browser/pqeasy.shtml

Textual Variants of the Qur'an
http://answering-islam.org/Quran/Text/

What is the Koran?
http://theatlantic.com/issues/99jan/koran.htm