The Koran is divided into 114 suras, or chapters, and 6,666 verses. The word itself signifies reading or recitation, and Muhammad always asserted that he only recited what had been repeated to him. But the Koran represents Muhammad from many points of view, in different capacities, and under different necessities. Ayesha, his favourite wife, when asked in later years as a widow to relate something about the Prophet, replied: 'Have you not the Koran, and have you not read it? for that will tell you everything about him.'
The Koran was not collected or arranged until after Muhammad's death. It is to be regretted that there is no reliable record of the exact order in which its various verses and chapters were given to the world by the Prophet, as that would have given us a great insight into the working of his mind from the time that he began his first recitals up to the time of his death. It is true that attempts have been made to formulate the order of delivery, but these can only be more or less conjecture. At the same time, though earlier and later verses appear mixed up in the different chapters, in some cases, of course, the period to which they belong can be pretty accurately fixed and determined.
As an interesting work, it can hardly be compared with our Old and New Testaments, nor would it be fair to make such a comparison. It must be remembered that the Koran is the work of Muhammad alone, while the Biblos, or Book, commonly called the Bible, is the work of many men. In its compilation many authors were rejected, and it represents as a whole the united talents of the ages. Indeed, the Bible may be considered as the most wonderful book in existence, and certainly the most interesting after visiting the countries it describes and the localities it refers to. If read from a matter-of-fact point of view, it gives an abundance of various kinds of literature, and describes the workings of the human mind from the earliest ages, and the progress of ideas as they gradually and slowly dawned upon man and drove him onwards. If read from a spiritual or mystical point of view, it can be interpreted in many ways to meet the views of either the readers or the hearers. In a word, the Bible is full of prose and poetry, fact and imagination, history and fiction. It was lately described in an Italian newspaper, Il Secolo, about to issue a popular edition of it in halfpenny numbers, as follows:
'There is one book which gathers up the poetry and the science of humanity, and that book is the Bible; and with this book no other work in any literature can be compared. It is a book that Newton read continually, that Cromwell carried at his saddle, and that Voltaire kept always on his study table. It is a book that believers and unbelievers should alike study, and that ought to be found in every house.'
As a scientific work it has little value except that it represents the extent of scientific knowledge possessed by the authors at the time the different books were written.
To return to the Koran, which may, then, be regarded as the Bible of the Muslims. According to Mr. Badger: 'It embodies the utterances of the Arabian Prophet on all subjects, religious and moral, administrative and judicial, political and diplomatic, from the outset to the close of his career, together with a complete code of laws for regulating marriage, divorce, guardianship of orphans, bargains, wills, evidence, usury, and the intercourse of private and domestic life, as they were dictated by him to his secretaries, and by them committed to writing on palm-leaves, the shoulder-blades of sheep, and other tablets. These, it appears, were thrown pell-mell into chests, where they remained till the reign of Abu Bakr, the immediate successor of Muhammad, who, during the first year of his Khalifate, entrusted Zaid-bin Harithah, an Ansar, or auxiliary, and one of the amanuenses of the Prophet, with the task of collecting them together, which he did, as well from "the breasts of men" as from the afore-named materials, meaning thereby that he availed himself of the memories of those who had committed parts of the Prophet's utterances to memory. [Tradition states that one of the contemporary Muslims had learnt as many as seventy chapters by heart.] Zaid's copy continued to be the standard text during the Khalifate of Abu Bakr, who committed it to the keeping of Hafsah, one of Muhammad's widows. Certain disputes having arisen regarding this text, owing mainly to the variations of dialect and punctuation occurring therein, Omar, the successor of Abu Bakr, in the tenth year of his Khalifate, determined to establish a text which should be the sole standard, and delegated to Zaid, with whom he associated several eminent Arab scholars of the Al-Koraish, the task of its reduction. On its completion copies were forwarded to the principal stations of the empire, and all previously existing copies were submitted to the flames. This is the text now in general use among Muslims, and there is every reason to believe it to be a faithful rescript of the original fragmentary collection, amended only in its dialectical variations, and made conformable to the purer Arabic of the Al-Koraish, in which the contents of the Koran were announced by Muhammad.'
From a literary point of view the Koran is regarded as a specimen of the purest Arabic, and written in half poetry and half prose. It has been said that in some cases grammarians have adapted their rules to agree with certain phrases and expressions used in it, and that though several attempts have been made to produce a work equal to it, as far as elegant writing is concerned, none have as yet succeeded.
With the Koran, then, as a basis to work upon, Muhammad became the author and, it may be said, also founder of the Muhammadan faith, although as regards the foundation of any religion the followers of the author are generally the real founders of his faith. Of the three authors of great religions, viz., Moses, Buddha, and Jesus, who had gone before, Moses seems to have had much in common with Muhammad, and the two resembled each other in some ways. Buddha and Jesus were, on the other hand, entirely spiritualistic, their ideas on many subjects much the same, and their preachings and teachings run together very much on parallel lines.
The connecting links, however, between Buddhism and Christianity, if any, have yet to be discovered and determined. It may happen that some day further light may be thrown upon the subject; but at present, in spite of similarity of ideas, of sentiments, and of parables in the two religions, there is no positive proof of any connection between them, except that one preceded the other. While history has recorded every detail of Muhammad's life, both before and after his public ministry, which did not begin until he was forty years of age, history, alas! gives us no detailed record of the life of Jesus prior to the commencement of His public ministry in His thirtieth year. Had He travelled Himself to the further East? Had He studied under Buddhist missionaries? Had He taken the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, before He was baptized by John the Essene? Had He anything to do with the sects called Essenes, Therapeuts, Gnostics, Nazarites, the Brethren, which existed both before and during His lifetime? These, and many other questions which might be asked, can now probably never be answered, and the only thing that can be confidently asserted is that the character and the spiritual teachings of Christ, as handed down to us, much resemble the character and spiritual teachings of Buddha.
A few paragraphs must be devoted to Moses and Muhammad, as the first organizers of the Jews and the Arabs into separate and distinct nationalities. The two men had very different material to work upon, but they succeeded with the aid of Eloah, or Allah, supporting their own efforts.