There is first, of course, the Koran,[270] consisting "exclusively Sources of information: I. The Koran. of the revelations or commands which Muḥammad professed, from time to time, to receive through Gabriel as a message direct from God; and which, under an alleged Divine direction, he delivered to those about him. At the time of pretended inspiration, or shortly after, each passage was recited by Muḥammad before the Companions or followers who happened to be present, and was generally committed to writing by some one amongst them upon palm-leaves, leather, stones, or such other rude material as conveniently came to hand. These Divine messages continued throughout the three-and-twenty years of his prophetical life, so that the last portion did not appear till the year of his death. The canon was then closed; but the contents were never, during the Prophet's lifetime, systematically arranged, or even collected together."[271] They were preserved, however, in fragmentary copies and, especially, by oral How it was preserved. recitation until the sanguinary wars which followed Muḥammad's death had greatly diminished the number of those who could repeat them by heart. Accordingly, after the battle of Yamáma (633 a.d.) ‘Umar b. al-Khaṭṭáb came to Abú Bakr, who was then Caliph, and said: "I fear that slaughter may wax hot among the Reciters on other battle-fields, and that much of the Koran may be lost; so in my opinion it should be collected without delay." Abú Bakr agreed, and entrusted the task to Zayd b. Thábit, one of the Prophet's amanuenses, who collected the fragments with great difficulty "from bits of parchment, thin white stones, leafless palm-branches, and the bosoms of men." The manuscript thus compiled was deposited with Abú Bakr during the remainder of his life, then with ‘Umar, on whose death it passed to his daughter Ḥafṣa. Afterwards, in the Caliphate of ‘Uthmán, Ḥudhayfa b. al-Yamán, observing that the Koran as read in Syria was seriously at variance with the text current in ‘Iráq, warned the Caliph to interfere, lest the Sacred Book of the Moslems should become a subject of dispute, like the Jewish and Christian scriptures. In the year 651 a.d. ‘Uthmán ordered Zayd b. Thábit to prepare a Revised Version with the assistance of three Qurayshites, saying to the latter, "If ye differ from Zayd regarding any word of the Koran, write it in the dialect of Quraysh; for it was revealed in their dialect."[272] This has ever since remained the final and standard recension of the Koran. "Transcripts were multiplied and forwarded to the chief cities in the empire, and all previously existing copies were, by the Caliph's command, committed to the flames."[273] In the text as it has come down to us the various readings are few and unimportant, and its genuineness is above suspicion. We shall see, Value of the Koran as an authority. moreover, that the Koran is an exceedingly human document, reflecting every phase of Muḥammad's personality and standing in close relation to the outward events of his life, so that here we have materials of unique and incontestable authority for tracing the origin and early development of Islam—such materials as do not exist in the case of Buddhism or Christianity or any other ancient religion. Unfortunately the arrangement of the Koran can only be described as chaotic. No chronological sequence is observed in the order of the Súras (chapters), which is determined simply by their length, the longest being placed first.[274] Again, the chapters themselves are sometimes made up of disconnected fragments having nothing in common except the rhyme; whence it is often impossible to discover the original context of the words actually spoken by the Prophet, the occasion on which they were revealed, or the period to which they belong. In these circumstances the Koran must be supplemented by reference to our second main source of information, namely, Tradition.
Already in the last years of Muḥammad's life (writes Dr. Sprenger) it was a pious custom that when two Moslems met, 2. Tradition (Ḥadíth). one should ask for news (ḥadíth) and the other should relate a saying or anecdote of the Prophet. After his death this custom continued, and the name Ḥadíth was still applied to sayings and stories which were no longer new.[275] In the course of time an elaborate system of Tradition was built up, as the Koran—originally the sole criterion by which Moslems were guided alike in the greatest and smallest matters of public and private interest—was found insufficient for the complicated needs of a rapidly extending empire. Appeal was made to the sayings and practice (sunna) of Muḥammad, which now acquired "the force of law and some of the authority of inspiration." The Prophet had no Boswell, but almost as soon as he began to preach he was a marked man whose obiter dicta could not fail to be treasured by his Companions, and whose actions were attentively watched. Thus, during the first century of Islam there was a multitude of living witnesses from whom traditions were collected, committed to memory, and orally handed down. Every tradition consists of two parts: the text (matn) and the authority (sanad, or isnád), e.g., the relater says, "I was told by A, who was informed by B, who had it from C, that the Prophet (God bless him!) and Abú Bakr and ‘Umar used to General collections. open prayer with the words 'Praise to God, the Lord of all creatures.'" Written records and compilations were comparatively rare in the early period. Ibn Isḥáq († 768 a.d.) composed the oldest extant Biography of the Prophet, which we do not possess, however, in its original shape Biographies of Muḥammad. but only in the recension of Ibn Hishám († 833 a.d.). Two important and excellent works of the same kind are the Kitábu ’l-Maghází ('Book of the Wars') by Wáqidí († 822 a.d.) and the Kitábu ’l-Ṭabaqát al-Kabír ('The Great Book of the Classes,' i.e., the different classes of Muḥammad's Companions and those who came after them) by Ibn Sa‘d († 844 a.d.). Of miscellaneous traditions intended to serve the Faithful as a model and rule of life in every particular, and arranged in chapters according to the subject-matter, the most ancient and authoritative collections are those of Bukhárí († 870 a.d.) and Muslim († 874 a.d.), both of which bear the same title, viz., al-Ṣaḥíḥ, 'The Genuine.' It only remains to speak of Commentaries on the Koran. Some passages were explained by Muḥammad himself, but the real founder of Koranic Exegesis was ‘Abdulláh b. ‘Abbás, the Prophet's cousin. Although the writings of the early interpreters have entirely perished, the gist of their researches is Commentaries on the Koran. embodied in the great commentary of Ṭabarí († 922 a.d.), a man of encyclopædic learning who absorbed the whole mass of tradition existing in his time. Subsequent commentaries are largely based on this colossal work, which has recently been published at Cairo in thirty volumes. That of Zamakhsharí († 1143 a.d.), which is entitled the Kashsháf, and that of Bayḍáwí († 1286 a.d.) are the best known and most highly esteemed in the Muḥammadan East. A work of wider scope is the Itqán of Suyúṭí († 1505 a.d.), which takes a general survey of the Koranic sciences, and may be regarded as an introduction to the critical study of the Koran.
While every impartial student will admit the justice of Ibn Qutayba's claim that no religion has such historical attestations Character of Moslem tradition. as Islam—laysa li-ummatin mina ’l-umami asnádun ka-asnádihim[276]—he must at the same time cordially assent to the observation made by another Muḥammadan: "In nothing do we see pious men more given to falsehood than in Tradition" (lam nara ’l-ṣáliḥína fí shay’in akdhaba minhum fi ’l-ḥadíth).[277] Of this severe judgment the reader will find ample confirmation in the Second Part of Goldziher's Muhammedanische Studien.[278] During the first century of Islam the forging of Traditions became a recognised political and religious weapon, of which all parties availed themselves. Even men of the strictest piety practised this species of fraud (tadlís), and maintained that the end justified the means. Their point of view is well expressed in the following words which are supposed to have been spoken by the Prophet: "You must compare the sayings attributed to me with the Koran; what agrees therewith is from me, whether I actually said it or no;" and again, " Whatever good saying has been said, I myself have said it."[279] As the result of such principles every new doctrine took the form of an Apostolic Ḥadíth; every sect and every system defended itself by an appeal to the authority of Muḥammad. We may see how enormous was the number of false Traditions in circulation from the fact that when Bukhárí († 870 a.d.) drew up his collection entitled 'The Genuine' (al-Ṣaḥíḥ), he limited it to some 7,000, which he picked out of 600,000.
The credibility of Tradition, so far as it concerns the life of the Prophet, cannot be discussed in this place.[280] The oldest and best biography, that of Ibn Isḥáq, undoubtedly contains a great deal of fabulous matter, but his narrative appears to be honest and fairly authentic on the whole.
If we accept the traditional chronology, Muḥammad, son of ‘Abdulláh and Ámina, of the tribe of Quraysh, was born at Mecca on the 12th of Rabí‘ al-Awwal, in the Birth of Muḥammad. Year of the Elephant (570-571 a.d.). His descent from Quṣayy is shown by the following table:—
Shortly after his birth he was handed over to a Bedouin nurse—Ḥalíma, a woman of the Banú Sa‘d—so that until he His childhood. was five years old he breathed the pure air and learned to speak the unadulterated language of the desert. One marvellous event which is said to have happened to him at this time may perhaps be founded on fact:—
"He and his foster-brother" (so Ḥalíma relates) "were among the cattle behind our encampment when my son came running to us and cried, 'My brother, the Qurayshite! two men clad Muḥammad and the two angels. in white took him and laid him on his side and cleft his belly; and they were stirring their hands in it.' When my husband and I went out to him we found him standing with his face turned pale, and on our asking, 'What ails thee, child?' he answered, 'Two men wearing white garments came to me and laid me on my side and cleft my belly and groped for something, I know not what.' We brought him back to our tent, and my husband said to me, 'O Ḥalíma, I fear this lad has been smitten (uṣíba); so take him home to his family before it becomes evident.' When we restored him to his mother she said, 'What has brought thee, nurse? Thou wert so fond of him and anxious that he should stay with thee.' I said, 'God has made him grow up, and I have done my part. I feared that some mischance would befall him, so I brought him back to thee as thou wishest.' 'Thy case is not thus,' said she; 'tell me the truth,' and she gave me no peace until I told her. Then she said, 'Art thou afraid that he is possessed by the Devil?' I said, 'Yes.' 'Nay, by God,' she replied, 'the Devil cannot reach him; my son hath a high destiny.'"[281]
Other versions of the story are more explicit. The angels, it is said, drew forth Muḥammad's heart, cleansed it, and removed the black clot—i.e., the taint of original sin.[282] If these inventions have any basis at all beyond the desire to glorify the future Prophet, we must suppose that they refer to some kind of epileptic fit. At a later period he was subject to such attacks, which, according to the unanimous voice of Tradition, often coincided with the revelations sent down from heaven.