Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into Islam's Obscure Origins (23 page)

This belief stems from the Qur'an itself, which insists on its Arabic character so often that Islamic theologians have quite understandably understood Arabic to be part of the Qur'an's very essence. The Qur'an says that it is written in “Arabic, pure and clear” (16:103).
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It is an “Arabic judgment” (13:37). It is “the revelation of the Lord of all Being” that was “brought down by the Faithful Spirit upon thy heart, that thou mayest be one of the warners, in a clear, Arabic tongue” (26:192–195). Allah says that he has “sent it down as an Arabic Qur'an, in order that you may learn wisdom” (12:1).
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It is “a Qur'an in Arabic, that you may be able to understand” (43:3).
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The Qur'an is not only a guide to understanding but is also
intended for those Arabic speakers who already grasp its message: It is “a Book whose signs have been distinguished as an Arabic Koran for a people having knowledge” (41:3). Allah even explains that if he had sent down the Qur'an in any other language, people would have complained: “Had We sent this as a Qur'an in a language other than Arabic, they would have said: ‘Why are not its verses explained in detail? What! Not in Arabic and its Messenger an Arab?’” (41:44).
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It is, quite simply, an “Arabic Qur'an” (12:2; 20:113; 39:28; 41:3; 42:7).

Islamic tradition reinforces this point. In one hadith, an early Muslim, al-Hasan, recounts of another early Muslim: “I heard Abu Ubaida say that whoever pretends that there is in the Qur'an anything other than the Arabic tongue has made a serious charge against God, and he quoted the verse ‘Verily we have made it an Arabic Qur’an.'”
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Ibn Kathir, author of a renowned medieval commentary on the Qur'an that is still widely read by Muslims, elaborated the orthodox view: “The Arabic language is the most eloquent, plain, deep and expressive of the meanings that might arise in one's mind. Therefore, the most honorable Book was revealed in the most honorable language, to the most honorable Prophet and Messenger, delivered by the most honorable angel, in the most honorable land on earth, and its revelation started during the most honorable month of the year, Ramadan. Therefore, the Qur'an is perfect in every respect.”
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There is only one problem with the widespread assertion that the Qur'an was written in Arabic: It doesn't seem to be true. Even the most cursory examination of the evidence indicates that “the most honorable Book” in its original form was not actually “in the most honorable language” at all.

Thou Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks

The very fact that the Qur'an asserts so many times that it was handed down in Arabic raises questions. Why would a clear and easily understandable book need to assert more than once that it was clear and
easy to understand? Why would an Arabic book need to insist again and again that it was in Arabic? The various authors of the Greek New Testament never feel the need to assert the fact that they're writing in Greek; they're simply doing so. This is a point that they take for granted.

Of course, the New Testament doesn't make the claims about Greek that the Qur'an makes about Arabic. Greek in Christianity is not the language of God; it has no more significance than any other language. But that in itself is part of the mystery of the Qur'anic claims: Why did they need to be made at all? Why was there such anxiety about the Arabic character of the Qur'an that it had to be repeated so many times? This peculiar insistence on the Arabic character of the Qur'an even became part of Islamic theology, which affirms that Arabic is the language of Allah and that the deity who created every human being and presumably understands every human tongue will not accept prayers or recitations of the Qur'an in any other language.

When the Qur'an repeatedly insists that it is written in Arabic, it is not unreasonable to conclude that someone, somewhere was saying that it wasn't in Arabic at all. A point needs emphasis only when it is controverted. As the nineteenth-century man of letters John Henry Cardinal Newman wrote in a vastly different context, “No doctrine is defined till it is violated.”
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In other words, the assertion of a religious doctrine, in an environment involving a competition of religious ideas, doesn't generally take place
except
as a response to the contrary proposition. The Qur'an thus may insist so repeatedly on its Arabic essence because that was precisely the aspect of it that others challenged.

The Qur'an is highly polemical in nature. It answers the theological claims of Judaism and Christianity and responds to the arguments of the unbelievers and hypocrites against Muhammad's prophetic claims and its own divine origins. On practically every page there is a denunciation of the unbelievers; many of these contain reports of what those unbelievers are saying against Muhammad and Islam, and explanations of why their charges are false. It would not be unusual if it also took on challenges to its Arabic origins.

Muhammad's Non-Arabic Sources

The Qur'an itself tells us of challenges to claims of the book's Arabic origins. According to the Qur'an, Muhammad's detractors charged the prophet of Islam with getting material from non-Arabic sources and then passing off what he received as divine revelation. The Qur'an responds furiously to those who deride the prophet for listening intently—perhaps to the Jewish and Christian teachers whose teachings ended up as part of Qur'anic revelation: “And some of them hurt the Prophet, saying, ‘He is an ear!’” Allah tells Muhammad how to respond to those who make fun of him in this way: “Say: ‘An ear of good for you; he believes in God, and believes the believers, and he is a mercy to the believers among you. Those who hurt God's Messenger—for them awaits a painful chastisement’” (9:61).

Muhammad's foes apparently charged him with getting material from a non-Arabic speaker as well: “We know indeed that they say, ‘It is a man that teaches him.’ The tongue of him they wickedly point to is notably foreign, while this is Arabic, pure and clear” (16:103).
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This mysterious foreigner has often been identified as one of Muhammad's early companions, Salman the Persian. The Arabic word translated as “foreign” in this Qur'an verse is
ajami
, which means “Persian” or “Iranian,” or is more generalized as “foreigner.” Ibn Ishaq identifies the foreigner of Qur'an 16:103 as “Jabr the Christian, slave of the B. al-Hadrami” and teacher of Muhammad.
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Another
ajami
identified in Islamic tradition is Abu Fukayha Yasar. The Qur'anic scholar Muqatil ibn Sulayman (d. 767) says Yasar was “a Jew, not an Arab,” who spoke Greek.”
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The modern-day Islamic scholar Claude Gilliot observes that it is more likely he spoke Aramaic, of which Syriac is a dialect.
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Muqatil also recounts accusations from Muhammad's opponent an-Nasr ibn al-Harith that mention both Jabr and Yasar: “This Qur'an is naught but lies that Muhammad himself has forged…. Those who help him are Addas, a slave of Huwaytib b. Abd al-Uzza, Yasar, a servant of Amr b. al-Hadrami, and Jabr who was a Jew, and then became a Muslim….
This Qur'an is only a tale of the Ancients, like the tales of Rustam and Isfandiyar. These three [were] teaching Muhammad at dawn and in the evening.”
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This accusation recalls the criticism to which the Qur'an heatedly responds: “The unbelievers say, ‘This is naught but a calumny he has forged, and other folk have helped him to it.’ So they have committed wrong and falsehood. They say, ‘Fairy-tales of the ancients that he has had written down, so that they are recited to him at the dawn and in the evening’” (25:4–5).

The Hadith offer yet another candidate for the man who was “notably foreign”: Waraqa bin Naufal, the uncle of Muhammad's first wife, Khadija. Islamic tradition holds that after Muhammad's confusing and terrifying first encounter with the angel Gabriel, it was Waraqa who told Muhammad that he had been called to be a prophet. According to one hadith, Waraqa, like Abu Fukayha Yasar, was a Jew. The hadith says that “during the [pre-Islamic] Period of Ignorance [Waraqa] became a Christian and used to write the writing with Hebrew letters. He would write from the Gospel in Hebrew as much as Allah wished him to write.”
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Even Khadija herself, according to the Persian Muslim Bal‘ami (d. 974), “had read the ancient writings and knew the history of the prophets, and also the name of Gabriel.”
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Why would the Qur'an acknowledge critics who accused the book of having non-Arabic origins? And why would hadiths tell us of various people of foreign tongue instructing Muhammad? If the Qur'an arose long after Muhammad is supposed to have lived, as appears to have been the case, then the editors of the Qur'an would have been working with non-Arabic material and rendering it into Arabic. In that case, they would have needed to explain the non-Arabic elements in the Qur'an.

Those non-Arabic elements are certainly present.

Non-Arabic Sources

The Qur'an's dependence on non-Arabic Jewish and Christian sources for much of its theological and cultural milieu is well known. These sources include not only the Bible but other material as well. In the Qur'an's story of the creation and fall of Adam and Eve (2:30–39, 7:11–25, 15:28–42, 20:115–126, and 38:71–85), Allah creates Adam and then orders the angels to prostrate themselves before him (2:34, 7:11, 15:29, 18:50, 20:116). Satan refuses, saying: “I am better than he; Thou createdst me of fire, and him Thou createdst of clay” (7:12, 38:76; cf. 15:33, 17:61). Allah thereupon curses Satan (38:77–78) and banishes him from Paradise (7:13, 15:34). The order to the angels and Satan's refusal is not in the Bible but is found in Jewish apocryphal and rabbinic literature.
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Similarly, in the Qur'anic account of Cain and Abel (5:30–35) comes the celebrated Qur'anic prohibition on the murder of innocents: “Therefore We prescribed for the Children of Israel that whoso slays a soul not to retaliate for a soul slain, nor for corruption done in the land, shall be as if he had slain mankind altogether; and whoso gives life to a soul, shall be as if he had given life to mankind altogether” (5:32). This may also be taken from Jewish tradition, from the
Mishnah Sanhedrin
, which states: “As regards Cain who killed his brother, the Lord addressing him does not say, ‘The voice of thy brother's blood crieth out,’ but ‘the voice of his bloods,’ meaning not his blood alone, but that of his descendants; and this to show that since Adam was created alone, so he that kills an Israelite is, by the plural here used, counted as if he had killed the world at large; and he who saves a single Israelite is counted as if he had saved the whole world.”
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The Qur'anic account of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (27:16–44) contains material that was likely derived from another Jewish source, the Targum of Esther. The historian W. St. Clair Tisdall notes that “the story of Balkis, Queen of Saba, as told at length in the Koran, corresponds so closely with what we find in the II. Targum
of the Book of Esther, that it was evidently taken from it, as heard by Mohammed from some Jewish source…. In respect of the Queen of Saba, her visit to Solomon, the letter sent by him to her, etc., there is a marvellous resemblance between the two, excepting this, indeed, that in place of the Lapwing of the Koran, the Targum Speaks of a Red-cock,—Not a very vital difference after all!”
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There are Christian influences in the Qur'an also. The story of the “companions of the Cave and of the Inscription” (18:9–26) is an Islamic version of the Christian account of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, which was well known in Eastern Christianity at the time that Islam was taking shape. And when the Qur'an writes of the child Jesus fashioning clay birds and then bringing them to life (Qur'an 3:49), it recounts something that is recorded in the second-century Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
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All this dependence on non-Arabic sources indicates that the Qur'an in its original form was something quite different from what Muslims have always taken it to be, and that its very character as an Arabic book is the product of later development, not a feature of the original text.

In fact, there is evidence that the Qur'an was not originally an Arabic book at all.

Incomprehensible

One element of that evidence is the Qur'an's manifest lack of clarity, despite its boasts to the contrary. Many words in this self-proclaimed clear Arabic book are neither clear nor Arabic. Philologist Gerd-R. Puin explains: “The Koran claims for itself that it is
‘mubeen,’
or ‘clear.’ But if you look at it, you will notice that every fifth sentence or so simply doesn't make sense. Many Muslims—and Orientalists—will tell you otherwise, of course, but the fact is that a fifth of the Koranic text is
just incomprehensible.
This is what has caused the traditional anxiety regarding translation. If the Koran is not comprehensible—
if it can't even be understood in Arabic—then it's not translatable. People fear that. And since the Koran claims repeatedly to be clear but obviously is not—as even speakers of Arabic will tell you—there is a contradiction. Something else must be going on.”
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Islamic apologists have been sanguine about the incomprehensible sections of the Qur'an: Allah knows what they mean, and their very presence indicates that the book was written by someone whose understanding is beyond that of ordinary mortals. The Qur'an itself acknowledges that portions of the book cannot be understood and warns Muslims not to waste their time trying: “It is He who sent down upon thee the Book, wherein are verses clear that are the Essence of the Book, and others ambiguous. As for those in whose hearts is swerving, they follow the ambiguous part, desiring dissension, and desiring its interpretation; and none knows its interpretation, save only God. And those firmly rooted in knowledge say, ‘We believe in it; all is from our Lord’; yet none remembers, but man possessed of minds” (3:7).