6. Rubʿ. The quarter of a Juzʾ, or Sīpārah.
7. Niṣf. The half of a Sīpārah.
8. S̤uls̤. The three-quarters of a Sīpārah. These three divisions are denoted by the words being written on the margin.
9. Juzʾ (pl. Ajzāʾ). Persian Sīpārah. Thirty divisions of the Qurʾān, which have been made to enable the devout Muslim to recite the whole of the Qurʾān in the thirty days of Ramaẓān. Muḥammadans usually quote their Qurʾān by the Sīpārah or Juzʾ and not by the Sūrah.
10. Manzil (pl. Manāzil, Stages). These are seven in number, and are marked by the letters ف م ى ب ش و ق, which are said to spell Famī bi Shauq, “My mouth with desire.” This arrangement is to enable the Muslim to recite the whole in the course of a week.
IV.—The Contents of the Qurʾān and the Chronological Arrangement of its Chapters.
In the Arabic Qurʾān, the Sūrahs are placed as they were arranged by Zaid ibn S̤ābit, who seems to have put them together regardless of any chronological sequence. The initial, or opening prayer, stands first, and then the longest chapters. But the Muḥammadan commentators admit that the Qurʾān is not chronologically arranged; and Jalālu ʾd-dīn, in his Itqān, has given a list of them as they are supposed to have been revealed. This list will be found under the Divisions of the Qurʾān in the present article. And, what is still more confusing, all Muḥammadan doctors allow that in some of the Sūrahs there are verses which belong to a different date from that of other portions of the chapter; for example, in the Sūratu ʾl-ʿAlaq, the first five verses belong to a much earlier date than the others; and in Sūratu ʾl-Baqarah, [verse 234] is acknowledged by all commentators to have been revealed after [verse 240], which it abrogates.
If we arrange the Sūrahs or Chapters according to the order given in Suyūt̤ī’s Itqān, or by Sir William Muir, or by Mr Rodwell, we cannot fail to mark the gradual development of Muḥammad’s mind from that of a mere moral teacher and reformer to that of a prophet and warrior-chief. The contrast between the earlier, middle, and later Sūrahs is very instructive and interesting.
In the earlier Sūrahs we observe a predominance of a poetical element, a deep appreciation of the beauty of natural objects, fragmentary and impassioned utterances; denunciation of woe and punishment being expressed in these earlier Sūrahs with extreme brevity.
“With a change, however, in the position of Muḥammad when he openly assumes the office of ‘public warner,’ the Sūrahs begin to wear a more prosaic and didactic tone, though the poetical ornament of rhyme is preserved throughout. We lose the poet in the missionary aiming to convert, and in the warm asserter of dogmatic truths; the descriptions of natural objects, of the Judgment, of Heaven and Hell, make way for gradually increasing historical statements, first from Jewish, and subsequently from Christian histories; while in the twenty-nine (thirty?) Sūrahs revealed at Medina we no longer listen to vague words, often, as it would seem, without definite aim, but to the earnest disputant with the opponents of the new faith, the Apostle pleading the cause of what he believes to be the truth of God. He who at Mecca is the admonisher and persuader, at Medina is the legislator and the warrior dictating obedience, and who uses other weapons than the pen of the poet and the scribe; while we are startled by finding obedience to God and the Apostle, God’s gifts and the Apostle’s, God’s pleasure and the Apostle’s, spoken of in the same breath, and epithets and attributes elsewhere applied to Allah openly applied to himself. ‘Whoso obeyeth the Apostle obeyeth Allah.’