the Qur’an, therefore, God spoke directly to the people of Mecca, using Muhammad as his mouthpiece, just as he spoke through the Hebrew prophets in the Jewish scriptures. Hence the language of the Qur’an is sacred, because—Muslims believe—it records the words spoken in some way by God himself. When Muhammad’s converts listened to the divine voice, chanted first by the Prophet and later by the skilled Qur’an reciters, they felt that they had an immediate encounter with Allah. Biblical Hebrew is experienced as a holy tongue in rather the same way. Christians do not have this concept of a sacred language, because there is nothing holy about New Testament Greek; their scriptures presented Jesus as the Word spoken by God to humanity. Like any scripture, the Qur’an thus provided an encounter with transcendence, bridging the immense gulf between our frail, mortal world and the divine.
Muhammad’s converts eagerly awaited each new revelation; after he had recited it, they would learn it by heart, and those who were literate wrote it down. They felt moved and stirred by the exquisite language of their scripture, which, they were convinced, could only have come from God. It is difficult for a non-Arabic speaker to appreciate the beauty of the Qur’an, because this is rarely conveyed in translation. The text seems wearyingly repetitive; it has no apparent structure, no sustained argument or organizing narrative. But the Qur’an was not designed to be read sequentially. In its final form, the chapters or surahs of the Qur’an have been arranged arbitrarily, beginning with the longest and ending with the shortest, so the order is not important. Each surah contains essential teachings and it is possible to dip into the text at any point and imbibe crucial lessons.
In common with the majority of Arabs at this time, Muhammad could neither read nor write. The word qur’an means “recitation.” It was not designed for private perusal, but like most scriptures, it was meant to be read aloud, and the sound was an essential part of the sense. Poetry was important in Arabia. The poet was the spokesman, social historian, and cultural authority of his tribe, and over the years the Arabs had learned how to listen to a recitation and had developed a highly sophisticated critical ear.9 Bards chanted their odes at the annual trade fairs to excited audiences from all over the peninsula. Every year there was an important poetry contest at the fair of ‘Ukaz, just outside Mecca, and the winning poems were embroidered in gold on fine black cloth and hung on the walls of the Kabah. Muhammad’s followers would, therefore, have been able to pick up verbal signals in the text that are lost in translation. They found that themes, words, phrases, and sound patterns recurred again and again—like the variations in a piece of music, which subtly amplify the original melody, and add layer upon layer of complexity. The Qur’an was deliberately repetitive; its ideas, images, and stories were bound together by these internal echoes, which reinforced its central teaching with instructive shifts of emphasis. They linked passages that initially seemed separate, and integrated the different strands of the text, as one verse delicately qualified and supplemented others. The Qur’an was not imparting factual information that could be conveyed instantaneously. Like Muhammad, listeners had to absorb its teachings slowly; their understanding would grow more profound and mature over time, and the rich, allusive language and rhythms of the Qur’an helped them to slow down their mental processes and enter a different mode of consciousness.
The American scholar Michael Sells describes what happens when the driver of a hot, crowded bus in Egypt plays a cassette of Qur’anic recitations: “A meditative calm begins to set in. People relax. The jockeying for space ends. The voices of those who are talking grow quieter and less strained. Others are silent, lost in thought. A sense of shared community overtakes the discomfort.”10 Breath control is crucial to most of the contemplative traditions. Yogins have found that it brings a feeling of expansiveness, comparable to the effect of music, especially when played by oneself.11 Qur’anic reciters chant long phrases on a slow exhalation and, when they inhale, leave silent pauses for meditation. It is natural for the audience to adjust their breathing too and find that this has a calming, therapeutic effect, which enables them to grasp the more elusive teachings of the text.
God was not booming clear instructions from on high. The divine voice constantly changed the way it referred to itself—as “we,” “he,” “your lord,” “Allah” or “I”—shifting its relationship to both the Prophet and his audience. Nor was God distinctively male. Each recitation began with the invocation: “In the name of Allah, the Compassionate (al-Rahman) and the Merciful (al-Rahim).” Allah was a masculine noun, but the divine names al-Rahman and al-Rahim are not only grammatically feminine but related etymologically to the word for womb. A partially personified female figure was central to nearly all the early revelations. We find veiled allusions to a woman conceiving a child or giving birth; the image of a woman who has lost her only child, and the poignant evocation of a baby girl, murdered by her disappointed parents.12 This strong female presence was remarkable in the aggressive patriarchy of Mecca and may explain why women were among the first to respond to the message of the Qur’an.
In each of the early surahs, God spoke intimately to the individual, often preferring to pose many of his teachings in the form of a question—“Have you not heard?” “Do you consider?” “Have you not seen?” Each listener was thus invited to interrogate him or herself. Any response to these queries was usually grammatically ambiguous or indefinite, leaving the audience with an image on which to meditate but with no decisive answer.13 This new religion was not about achieving metaphysical certainty: the Qur’an wanted people to develop a different kind of awareness.
The Christian notion of the Last Judgment was central to the early message of the Qur’an. Muhammad believed that Mecca was in crisis because the Quraysh no longer felt accountable for their actions. In the steppes, the karim may have been arrogant and egotistic, but he had felt responsible for all the members of his tribe. The Quraysh, however, were busily amassing private fortunes, without giving a thought to the plight of the “weak.” They did not seem to realize that their deeds would have long-lasting consequence. To counter this heedlessness, the Qur’an taught that individuals would have to explain their behavior to God. There would be a “day of reckoning” (yawm ad-din): the Arabic term also implies a “moment of truth.”14 At the end of their lives, human beings would have to face up to uncomfortable realities they had tried to avoid. They would experience a terrifying ontological reversal, in which everything that had seemed solid, important, and permanent would prove to be ephemeral. In staccato, lapidary verses, the early surahs tore this veil of delusion away.
When the sun is overturned
When the stars fall away
When the mountains are moved
When the ten-month pregnant camels are abandoned
When the beasts of the wild are herded together
When the seas are boiled over…
Then a soul will know what it has prepared.15
Sun, moon, and stars would disappear. Even a pregnant camel, the desert Arab’s most precious possession, had no lasting value. All that really mattered was a person’s conduct:
At that time people will straggle forth to be shown what they have done
Whoever does a mote’s weight good will see it
Whoever does a mote’s weight wrong will see it.16
Deeds that seemed unimportant at the time would prove to have been momentous; a tiny act of selfishness and unkindness or, conversely, an unconsidered act of generosity would become the measure of a human life: “To free a slave, to feed the destitute on a day of hunger, a kinsman, orphan, or a stranger out of luck, in need.”17
Anybody who had