The Quran
The Quran is one of the most important and influential literary works in the history of the world. It is the holy book of Islam, a religion which is followed by over one billion people today. Unfortunately many non Muslims do not know much about it. This is because it is a very difficult work to decipher. It does not read in chronological order which can be frustrating to read and hard to grasp. There is no one specific topic as it “contains its histories of past prophets, it is no history book; it contains invocations and petitions offered to the Divine, but it is no book of prayer; there are within its pages a smattering of ‘legal’ verses, yet it is no law book; and while it tells us how the Creator fashions the cosmos and makes the world turn, it is no treatise on cosmology” (Turner 53). In this essay I would like to explain how to approach the Quran and give background on its message and its origin.
The word Quran, translated from Arabic, literally means “the recitation.” The Quran came from a series of revelations from God that was communicated to the prophet Muhammad. He had these revelations for a period of twenty-three years starting at the age of forty on Mount Hira. These messages from God came through the archangel Gabriel in either single or groups of verses or entire chapters.
The Quran is structured in verses, (ayas) and chapters (suras). There are 114 suras in the Quran. These suras are derived from the ayas, which are signs from God. Ayas could be miracles, created beings, or anything that shows the attributes that God possesses. All ayas vary in length. Some of them are only a few words while other ...