SIR WILLIAM MUIR ON COMPILATION OF THE HOLY QURAN
“Surely, We Ourself have sent down this Exhortation, and we will, most surely, safeguard it.” (Al Hijr 15:10).
According to the Wikipedia, Sir William Muir (April 27, 1819 – July 11, 1905) was a Scottish Orientalist. He was born at Glasgow and educated at Kilmarnock Academy, at Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities, and at Haileybury College. In 1837 he entered the Bengal Civil Service. He served as secretary to the governor of the North-West Provinces, and as a member of the Agra revenue board, and during the Mutiny he was in charge of the intelligence department there. In 1865 he was made foreign secretary to the Indian Government. In 1867 he was knighted, and in 1868 he became lieutenant-governor of the North-West Provinces. In 1874 he was appointed financial member of the Council, and retired in 1876, when he became a member of the Council of India in London. He had always taken an interest in educational matters, and it was chiefly through his exertions that the central college at Allahabad, known as Muir College, was built and endowed. Muir College later became a part of the Allahabad University.
In 1885 he was elected principal of Edinburgh University in succession to Sir Alexander Grant, and held the post till 1903, when he retired. It should be remembered that Sir William Muir a proud Christian, as well as a missionary who is not very friendly poised towards the Prophet of Islam or the Holy Quran. Nevertheless, he left a detailed and mostly fair account of the compilation of the Holy Quran. Probably, little did he realize that he unknowingly has also become an important witness to the truth of one of the prophecies of the Holy Quran, “Surely, We Ourself have sent down this Exhortation, and we will, most surely, safeguard it.” (Al Hijr 15:10).
This detailed description is from the Appendix of his book Life of Mahomet from original sources, 1878 edition.
The text of Muir is reproduced with complete honesty and precision, with a few exclusions, as mentioned. The footnotes are excluded and few of his negative assertions have been removed and the places indicated. Modern spellings of proper nouns have been substituted for ease of reading and the issues not relevant to the present discussion have been omitted. These places of omissions have also been indicated. He wrote:
The divine revelation was the corner-stone of Islam. The recital of a passage from it formed an essential part of daily prayer public and private; and its perusal and repetition were enforced as a duty and a privilege fraught with religious merit. This is the universal voice of early tradition, and may be gathered also from the revelation itself. The Quran was accordingly committed to memory more or less by every adherent of Islam, and the extent to which it could be recited was one of the chief distinctions of nobility in the early Muslim empire. The custom of Arabia favored the task. Passionately fond of poetry, yet possessed of but limited means and skill in committing to writing the effusions of their bards, the Arabs had long been habituated to imprint these, as well as the tradition of genealogical and other tribal events, on the living tablets of their hearts.
The recollective faculty was thus cultivated to the highest pitch; and it was applied, with all the ardor of an awakened spirit, to the Quran. Such was the tenacity of their memory, and so great their power of application, that several of Muhammad’s followers, according to early tradition, could, during his life-time, repeat with scrupulous accuracy the entire revelation. …
However retentive the Arab memory, we should still have regarded with distrust a transcript made entirely from that source. But there is good reason for believing that many fragmentary copies, embracing amongst them the whole Quran, or nearly the whole, were made by Muhammad’s followers during his life. Writing was without doubt generally known at Makkah long before Muhammad assumed the prophetical office. Many of his followers are expressly mentioned as employed by the Prophet at Madinah in writing his letters or dispatches . … Some of the poorer Makkan captives taken at Badr were offered their release on condition that they would teach a certain number of the ignorant citizens of Madinah to …
Read further in Alislam.org
Categories: Asia, Europe and Australia, Highlight, Quran