But the most illustrious exemplification of the difficulty which the Doctorean or Dovean commentators will experience in settling the chronology of these chapters, is to be found in the history of the Koran.
Mahommedan Doctors are agreed that the first part or parcel of their sacred book which was revealed to the Prophet, consisted of what now stands as the first five verses of the ninety-sixth chapter; and that the chapter which ought to be the last of the whole hundred and fourteen, because it was the last which Mahommed delivered, is placed as the ninth in order.
The manner in which the book was originally produced and afterwards put together explains how this happened.
Whenever the Impostor found it convenient to issue a portion, one of his disciples wrote it, from his dictation, either upon palm-leaves or parchment, and these were put promiscuously into a chest. After his death Abubeker collected them into a volume, but with so little regard to any principle of order or connection, that the only rule which he is supposed to have followed was that of placing the longest chapters first.
Upon this M. Savary remarks, ce bouleversement dans un ouvrage qui est un recueil de préceptes donnés dans différens temps et dont les premiers sont souvent abrogés par les suivans, y a jetté la plus grand confusion. On ne doit donc y chercher ni ordre ni suite. And yet one of the chapters opens with the assertion that “a judicious order reigns in this book,”—according to Savary's version, which here follows those commentators who prefer this among the five interpretations which the words may bear.
Abubeker no doubt was of opinion that it was impossible to put the book together in any way that could detract from its value and its use. If he were, as there is every reason to think, a true believer, he would infer that the same divine power which revealed it piece-meal would preside over the arrangement, and that the earthly copy would thus miraculously be made a faithful transcript of the eternal and uncreated original.
If, on the other hand, he had been as audacious a knave as his son-in-law, the false prophet himself, he would have come with equal certainty to the same conclusion by a different process: for he would have known that if the separate portions, when they were taken out of the chest, had been shuffled and dealt like a pack of cards, they would have been just as well assorted as it was possible to assort them.
A north-country dame in days of old economy, when the tailor worked for women as well as men, delivered one of her nether garments to a professor of the sartorial art with these directions:
“Here Talleor, tak this petcut; thoo mun bin' me't, and thoo mun tap-bin' me't; thoo mun turn it rangsid afoor, tapsid bottom, insid oot: thoo can do't, thoo mun do't, and thoo mun do't speedly.”—Neither Bonaparte nor Wellington ever gave their orders on the field of battle with more precision, or more emphatic and authoritative conciseness.
Less contrivance was required for editing the Koran, than for renovating this petticoat: The Commander of the Faithful had only to stitch it together and bin' me't.