REL 137g 1st Edition Lecture 4 Current LectureMuhammed570 – birth610 – call to prophet hood622 – time in Mecca 632 – return to Medina and deathSine qua non That without with a thing cannot beFor prophet hood – revelation (wahyu)Qur’an/Koran“Recitation” An oral text Consumed primarily through the ear and not the eyeFor the predominantly illiterate society MushafWritten record of the recitationTurns the Koran into a book, now terms can be used interchangeably Divided into chaptersSurahs114Revealed to Muhammed in different placesMeccan – 80. Shorter and more poeticMedinese – 32. More technical (i.e. about law, marriage, family, rules,etc)Disputed/unknown – 12Not of equal lengthDivided into versesAyah 6,235 ayahs in the Koran 23:14Chapter 23, verse 14Koran is primarily rhymed proseNot exactly poetry Divided into 30 parts 1/30 recited at Ramadan by a leader, or an ImamExtremely moving when heard aloudBecause the form, particularly, is regarded as Muhammed’s miracleVery poetic, makes the content beautiful ‘ismahDivine protection from errorHow Muhammed was able to preserve the text and a proper understanding of that textVerbatim word of God Actually spoken to Gabriel and then to Muhammed As Arabs spread out and outsiders come in, the original language becomes point of contentionDifferent dialects affect the language and create different meanings What is the real word of God?This conflict leads to the rise of the impetus to write the Koran down Early recordings had no vowelsStill fundamentally dependant on oral memory UthmanThird temporal successor to the prophet, a kahlif Fixes a codex of the Koran, orders that all other copies to be burned The Uthmanic Codex Chapters are not chronologically arranged Longest to shortest Believed to be absolutely authoritative and accurate Therefore distinctly different from the HadithSunnaMuhammed’s supplemental teachings, tacit approvals Recorded in individual reports known as Hadith Because of the mode of transmission, tawature (diffuse congruence)Vast numbers of people saying the same thingTherefore it cannot be falseAlso in contrast to Ahadi (not tawature, “falsifiable”)Hadith A chain of people through which information passes (isnad) Single initial report from one person passed around Text is matn Meant to be verbatim transmission but that does not mean it’s correctStill
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