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The Koran

TRANSLATED FROM THE ARABIC BY THE REV. J.M. RODWELL, M.A.  WITH AN
INTRODUCTION BY THE REV. G. MARGOLIOUTH, M.A.

MOHAMMED was born at Mecca in A.D. 567 or 569.  His flight (hijra) to Medina,
which marks the beginning of the Mohammedan era, took place on 16th June 622.
He died on 7th June 632.

INTRODUCTION

THE Koran admittedly occupies an important position among the great religious
books of the world. Though the youngest of the epoch-making works belonging
to this class of literature, it yields to hardly any in the wonderful effect
which it has produced on large masses of men. It has created an all but new
phase of human thought and a fresh type of character. It first transformed a
number of heterogeneous desert tribes of the Arabian peninsula into a nation
of heroes, and then proceeded to create the vast politico-religious
organizations of the Muhammedan world which are one of the great forces with
which Europe and the East have to reckon to-day.

The secret of the power exercised by the book, of course, lay in the mind
which produced it. It was, in fact, at first not a book, but a strong living
voice, a kind of wild authoritative proclamation, a series of admonitions,
promises, threats, and instructions addressed to turbulent and largely
hostile assemblies of untutored Arabs. As a book it was published after the
prophet's death. In Mohammed's life-time there were only disjointed notes,
speeches, and the retentive memories of those who listened to them. To speak
of the Koran is, therefore, practically the same as speaking of Muhammed, and
in trying to appraise the religious value of the book one is at the same time
attempting to form an opinion of the prophet himself. It would indeed be
difficult to find another case in which there is such a complete identity
between the literary work and the mind of the man who produced it.

That widely different estimates have been formed of Muhammed is well-known.
To Moslems he is, of course, the prophet par excellence, and the Koran is
regarded by the orthodox as nothing less than the eternal utterance of Allah.
The eulogy pronounced by Carlyle on Muhammed in Heroes and Hero Worship will
probably be endorsed by not a few at the present day. The extreme contrary
opinion, which in a fresh form has recently been revived1 by an able writer,
is hardly likely to find much lasting support. The correct view very probably
lies between the two extremes. The relative value of any given system of
religious thought must depend on the amount of truth which it embodies as
well as on the ethical standard which its adherents are bidden to follow.
Another important test is the degree of originality that is to be assigned to
it, for it can manifestly only claim credit for that which is new in it, not
for that which it borrowed from other systems.

With regard to the first-named criterion, there is a growing opinion among
students of religious history that Muhammed may in a real sense be regarded
as a prophet of certain truths, though by no means of truth in the absolute
meaning of the term. The shortcomings of the moral teaching contained in the
Koran are striking enough if judged from the highest ethical standpoint with
which we are acquainted; but a much more favorable view is arrived at if a
comparison is made between the ethics of the Koran and the moral tenets of
Arabian and other forms of heathenism which it supplanted.

The method followed by Muhammed in the promulgation of the Koran also
requires to be treated with discrimination. From the first flash of prophetic
inspiration which is clearly discernible in the earlier portions of the book
he, later on, frequently descended to deliberate invention and artful
rhetoric. He, in fact, accommodated his moral sense to the circumstances in
which the role he had to play involved him.

On the question of originality there can hardly be two opinions now that the
Koran has been thoroughly compared with the Christian and Jewish traditions
of the time; and it is, besides some original Arabian legends, to those only
that the book stands in any close relationship. The matter is for the most
part borrowed, but the manner is all the prophet's own. This is emphatically
a case in which originality consists not so much in the creation of new
materials of thought as in the manner in which existing traditions of various
kinds are utilized and freshly blended to suit the special exigencies of the
occasion. Biblical reminiscences, Rabbinic legends, Christian traditions
mostly drawn from distorted apocryphal sources, and native heathen stories,
all first pass through the prophet's fervid mind, and thence issue in strange
new forms, tinged with poetry and enthusiasm, and well adapted to enforce his
own view of life and duty, to serve as an encouragement to his faithful
adherents, and to strike terror into the hearts of his opponents.

There is, however, apart from its religious value, a more general view from
which the book should be considered. The Koran enjoys the distinction of
having been the starting-point of a new literary and philosophical movement
which has powerfully affected the finest and most cultivated minds among both
Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages. This general progress of the
Muhammedan world has somehow been arrested, but research has shown that what
European scholars knew of Greek philosophy, of mathematics, astronomy, and
like sciences, for several centuries before the Renaissance, was, roughly
speaking, all derived from Latin treatises ultimately based on Arabic
originals; and it was the Koran which, though indirectly, gave the first
impetus to these studies among the Arabs and their allies. Linguistic
investigations, poetry, and other branches of literature, also made their
appearance soon after or simultaneously with the publication of the Koran;
and the literary movement thus initiated has resulted in some of the finest
products of genius and learning.

The style in which the Koran is written requires some special attention in
this introduction. The literary form is for the most part different from
anything else we know. In its finest passages we indeed seem to hear a voice
akin to that of the ancient Hebrew prophets, but there is much in the book
which Europeans usually regard as faulty. The tendency to repetition which is
an inherent characteristic of the Semitic mind appears here in an exaggerated
form, and there is in addition much in the Koran which strikes us as wild and
fantastic. The most unfavorable criticism ever passed on Muhammed's style
has in fact been penned by the prophet's greatest British admirer, Carlyle
himself; and there are probably many now who find themselves in the same
dilemma with that great writer.

The fault appears, however, to lie partly in our difficulty to appreciate the
psychology of the Arab prophet. We must, in order to do him justice, give
full consideration to his temperament and to the condition of things around
him. We are here in touch with an untutored but fervent mind, trying to
realize itself and to assimilate certain great truths which have been
powerfully borne in upon him, in order to impart them in a convincing form to
his fellow-tribesmen. He is surrounded by obstacles of every kind, yet he
manfully struggles on with the message that is within him. Learning he has
none, or next to none. His chief objects of knowledge are floating stories
and traditions largely picked up from hearsay, and his over-wrought mind is
his only teacher. The literary compositions to which he had ever listened
were the half-cultured, yet often wildly powerful rhapsodies of early Arabian
minstrels, akin to Ossian rather than to anything else within our knowledge.
What wonder then that his Koran took a form which to our colder temperaments
sounds strange, unbalanced, and fantastic?

Yet the Moslems themselves consider the book the finest that ever appeared
among men. They find no incongruity in the style. To them the matter is all
true and the manner all perfect. Their eastern temperament responds readily
to the crude, strong, and wild appeal which its cadences make to them, and
the jingling rhyme in which the sentences of a discourse generally end adds
to the charm of the whole. The Koran, even if viewed from the point of view
of style alone, was to them from the first nothing less than a miracle, as
great a miracle as ever was wrought.

But to return to our own view of the case. Our difficulty in appreciating the
style of the Koran even moderately is, of course, increased if, instead of
the original, we have a translation before us. But one is happy to be able to
say that Rodwell's rendering is one of the best that have as yet been
produced. It seems to a great extent to carry with it the atmosphere in which
Muhammed lived, and its sentences are imbued with the flavor of the East.
The quasi-verse form, with its unfettered and irregular rhythmic flow of the
lines, which has in suitable cases been adopted, helps to bring out much of
the wild charm of the Arabic. Not the least among its recommendations is,
perhaps, that it is scholarly without being pedantic that is to say, that it
aims at correctness without sacrificing the right effect of the whole to
over-insistence on small details.

Another important merit of Rodwell's edition is its chronological arrangement
of the Suras or chapters. As he tells us himself in his preface, it is now in
a number of cases impossible to ascertain the exact occasion on which a
discourse, or part of a discourse, was delivered, so that the system could
not be carried through with entire consistency. But the sequence adopted is
in the main based on the best available historical and literary evidence; and
in following the order of the chapters as here printed, the reader will be
able to trace the development of the prophet's mind as he gradually advanced
from the early flush of inspiration to the less spiritual and more equivocal
role of warrior, politician, and founder of an empire.

G. Margoliouth.

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