It is the undisputed belief of all right-thinking Muslims that over a period of approximately twenty-two solar (or twenty-three lunar) years (610-632 CE) the Prophet Muhammad delivered to the Arabs, and through the Arabs to all mankind, a series of messages from God, revealed to him by the intermediary agency of Gabriel (Jibril), His angel, and that the sum of those messages constitutes the Qur'an (from the verb qara'a 'to recite'). In short the Qur'an is the corpus of those divine pronouncements which Gabriel, their bearer, transmitted word perfect to man through Muhammad, the chosen Messenger of God. This being so, it logically follows that all that is contained in the Qur'an was uttered by God and is therefore His speech - 'the word of God' (kalam Allah).these ecstatic utterances were made the subject of memory and committed to writing 'on palm leaves, shreds of leather, and parchment, and shoulder-blades and tablets of stone'. The prophet himself began the process by compiling a written scripture by dictating to scribes and instructing them on how to order the verses of the revelation. Before the prophet's death, many pf his companions had memorises the whole of the Qur'anic revelation by heart, soon after the Qur'an had been fully compiled and an official version had been promulgated by the Caliph Uthman (644-656)

In consequence, the Qur'an has a place of importance at the very centre of Muslim religious life and practice. Qur'anic teachings are the guide both to personal and social life, and to religious responsibility. The Qur'an has shaped the values and the world-view of the Islamic community as has no other force. It continues to be a living factor in the contemporary world, just as it was a fundamental formative element of the Islamic culture of the past. It is given the most sublime status and is treated with the utmost respect. It is acknowledged to be one of the most widely read, most studied, most revered, and most influential books in all of human history.

b. Revelation

The Qur'an and the Muslim understanding of it are both inextricably interwoven with the experience of the Prophet, through whom the Holy Book was delivered. The experience of receiving the Qur'anic revelations transformed Muhammad from the most ordinary citizen of Mecca into not only a leader of his people but one of the most influential individuals in all of history. Four years after the death of Justinian A.D. 569, was born at Mecca, in Arabia the man who, of all men exercised the greatest influence upon the human race….Muhammad… In a little more that a year he was actually the spiritual, nominal and temporal ruler of Medina, with his hands on the lever that was to shake the world.

Tradition recalls that prior to his prophetic call, Mohammad cultivated the habit of retiring into isolation in the hills surrounding Mecca to practice devotional exercises. During one such visit in his fortieth year, according to tradition Muhammad experienced the call to prophethood and received the first of many revelations. Te tradition records that the call came with a vision of thee angel Gabriel, who said, 'O Muhammad, thou art the Messenger of God', and commanded Muhammad, 'Recite!' At first Muhammad replied 'I cannot recite', whereupon Gabriel seized him and squeezed him three times. Again the angel ordered 'Recite in the name of the Lord' Muhammad then recited the verses that constitute the first part of the Surah 96 of the Qur'an.

Recite in the name of thy Lord who created,
Created, man from a clot
Recite; Thy Lord is most generous
Who taught by the pen,
Taught man what he knew not.

On the basis of this account, the above verses are considered to be the first revelation given to Muhammad and, from a chronological viewpoint, the first verses of the Qur'an. These revelations continued throughout his remaining lifetime, with more or less frequency. Their fragmentary nature is explained in terms of the Prophets responses to the circumstances and problems that he and his community faced. As new situations arose, posing new questions or difficulties, the revelation provided guidance and answers.

c. Terminology for Revelation

The term employed in the Qur'an to describe the revelation process is a wahy, a noun or awah a verb. This word, which may be translated in a general sense as 'inspiration', occurs often in the Qur'an. Several other terms are also used to convey the same meaning, the following being some of those mentioned;

Qur'an (recitation).
Kitab (something written)
Tanzil (sending down)
Dhikir (mention, or reminder); this word indicates that the revelation is an admonition and a warning.
Furqan (to distinguish or to separate) i.e. the Qur'an is a standing criterion between the right and wrong.
Hoikma (wisdom); from the verb 'to judge'

d. Recording and compilation

At the time of the Prophet Muhammad's death in 632 CE, it is quite certain that there was no firm written text of the Qur'an that bore the Prophets stamp of approval. However, it is almost equally certain that there were written collections of the Qur'anic material that the Prophet had a part in dictating and ordering.

Historical tradition records that a variety of individual these people were given instructions by him to include specific portions of revelations in the Surah bearing such and worked in the capacity of scribes for the prophet and that such a name. Not only does this kind of report indicate a concern for seeing the Qur'anic revelations in written form, but it also indicates that the structure and chapters and their names had been determined while Muhammad was still living and that he used them to make an ordered record of the revelation.

The nature of the revelations necessitated that the Prophet repeated them constantly to his Companions and continually revised the form which the collections of fragments had to take. It is common belief among Muslims that the Prophet recited every year in the month of Ramadan (9th month of the Islamic calendar), in the presence of Gabriel, that the portion of the Qur'an which had been revealed up until that year. The Prophet also held public recitations, sometimes in congregation at night (tarawih), so that private copies could be corrected.

After the Prophets death, the Caliph Abu Bakr (632-634) felt the urgency of codifying the Qur'an, upon observing that Companions who knew the Qur'an by heart had been killed in battles, he charged Zaid b. Thabit, the Prophets chief amanuensis for taking dictation of newly received revelation, with the task of preparing a fair copy of the entire text in the form of a book.

The fair copy thus prepared was called the Mushaf (bound leaves), which was kept in the Caliphs own custody and, after him, by his successor 'Umar (634-644). During this time the Islamic domain stretched from Tripoli (Libya) to Balkh (Afghanistan) and from Armenia to Sindh (Pakistan) and Gujarat (India). 'Umar realised the need of sending authentic copies of the text to the provincial centres, to avoid deviations; but it was left to his successor 'Uthman (644-656) to accomplish this task. One of the lieutenants, returning from Armenia, reported that he had found conflicting copies of the Qur'an, which created many problems. 'Uthman immediately entrusted the copy prepared for Abu Bakr to a commission presided over by Zaid, for preparing an authoritative version. On completion it was read before the experts (among the Companions) present in the capital. A copy of this Qur'an was sent to different centres of the Islamic world with orders that henceforth all copies should be based only on the authentic copy.

The copies of the Qur'an sent by 'Uthman to provincial centres gradually disappeared in the succeeding centuries; one of them is at present in the Topkapi Museum, Istanbul; another incomplete one id in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The Czarist government of Russia published the latter with a facsimile reproduction. Complete identity between these copies and the text otherwise in use has been noted. The same is true of other extant manuscripts of the Qur'an, both complete and fragmentary, dating from the first century AH onwards.

e. Characteristics of the Qur'an

i. The reading of the Qur'an is considered a pious duty by every Muslim and it is actually performed in practise by every literate person - man, woman, and child. For the convenience of those who wish to complete the whole reading in a given time, the whole text is divided into thirty equal parts. The thirtieth part is called juz' in Arabic and siparah, or simply parah, in Persian and Urdu. Usually the arithmetical quarters of a juz' (one fourth, one half, three quarters) are also marked in the Arabic copies as al-rub, al-nisf, and al-thalatha. These quarters are further divided into ruku, or sections, which denote the end of a paragraph.

ii. According to subject matter, the division is different. The whole of the Qur'an is arranged in 114 Surahs. A Surah is usually spoken as a chapter in English, but that translation is hardly satisfactory. The Surahs are numbered (not in chronological order) and the consecutive number is shown just before the title of the Surah, supplemented by an indication of whether the Surah was revealed in Mecca or Medina. The number of juz' and the title of the Surah are also given at the head of every page in the Surah.

iii. Each Surah consists of a number of ayat (usually translated as 'verses' in English), determined by the rhythm and cadence in the Arabic text. A big circle denotes the end of one ayah and the beginning of another. On occasions an ayah can contain many sentences, which are divided by breaks, but usually there is a pause in meaning at the end of an ayah. It is not altogether appropriate; however, to translate ayah as 'verse', since the Qur'an is composed in a kind of rhyming prose and does not exhibit the uniform observance of a metrical system of any kind.

iv. Each Surah, except Surah 9, is headed by the Basmalah (Bismillal al-Raman al-Rahim - 'in the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful') which is considered to be part of the revelation. It attests to the nature of what is to follow as coming from God; therefore it serves as a mark of the beginning of a unit of revelation.

v. Certain Surahs have certain initials prefixed to them, which are called the 'disjointed letters' ('al-muqatta'at). These are Arabic letters that do not constitute words but are read as separate letters. The phenomenon of the disjointed letters can be found in twenty nine Surahs. Such letters are unanimously affirmed to be part of the revelation and their respective meanings to be known only to Allah.

vi. The Qur'an is also distinguished by the presence of a full complement of diacritical marks (i'rab) that provide precise guidance for the vocalisation of each word. Were the text not fully pointed, numerous possibilities for error would arise, especially for non-Arabists. The significance of this can be further understood by repeating the fact that it is the undisputed belief of all right thinking Muslims that the Qur'an is the very word of God Himself; therefore error in its reading is not acceptable.

f. Teachings of the Qur'an

The Qur'an contains many different kinds of material that range from narrative to prescriptions and prohibitions of a quasi-legal nature and exhortations to fear God. Although its teaching is not developed in a systematic way, it is nonetheless possible to extract from the Qur'an a summary of its world-view.