After the Prophet’s Death

In the last years of his life Mohammad solidified his military and political situation. Following the conquestfor the community of Believers to survive and grow. Now tribes wanted to become allies, and could do so once they declared their belief in the one true and only God and contributed taxes as a token of their commitment. So the community grew in size and complexity, spreading from western Arabia as far as Yemen in the South, to the East and throughout much of northern Arabia as well.

The history of the collection and codification of the text of the Qur’an is confusing and contradictory. According to traditional scholars such as the late Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah, Selections from the Koran, Mohammad related his revelations verbatim to Zayd or an available scribe. “The order in which the verses were to stand was arranged by the Prophet Mohamed himself, so that at the time of his demise the entire Koran was in complete written form.” The verses were memorized by the believers and collected into a single volume about six months after his death. Other sources suggest that the recitations were stored in the chest of the companions, and parts of it were written on the leathery sheets, white stones, palm’s sheets and ostrich bones.



11th Century North African Qur’an in the British Museum.

Others disagree, and their researches indicate that Mohammad’s revelations were not gathered into the single source we know today as the Qur’an until after his death. One historical tradition holds that the prophet dictated some revelations to Zayd bin Thaabit and other scribes, while others were remembered and repeated by his closest followers who learned them by heart. Shortly after the Prophet died in 632, Arab tribes revolted against the State of Medina. After the bloody Battle of Yamamah in which a large number of those who had committed the Qur’an to memory perished, recording became a more urgent task. The Caliph Abu Bakr assigned the task to Zaid, who, it is said, collected the revelations “from pieces of papyrus, flat stones, palm leaves, shoulder blades and ribs of animals, pieces of leather and wooden boards, as well as from the hearts of men.”

It is possible that the documentation of Mohammad’s revelations may not at the time have been seen as the most important activity, because for them, as for many early monotheistic communities, time was running out: the Day of Judgment was approaching, so spreading the crucial tenet of salvation, “there is no God but God,” may well have been seen as their primary concern and duty. Within ten years of their Prophet’s death the Believers had spread their idea of monotheism to Syria, Iraq, Persia, and Egypt, moving over the next three decades into parts of Europe, North Africa and Central Asia.

The still prevalent idea of Islam being a religion of violence dates from the Middle Ages when the conflict between the West and East and invasions such as the Crusades produced vicious polemics against Islam.

Archaeological evidence challenges the view that Islam’s expansion was primarily by the sword: many churches, some still standing today, were built in lands whose occupation by Islamic activists pre-date their construction. Scholars point out that if Islam’s goal was to eradicate all other existing faiths in favor of forced submission to their own, these places of worship would have been destroyed. On the contrary, the evidence shows that in assuming control of towns and villages a peaceful approach of integration was the preferred method by which the Believers’ message was spread. Communities were adjured to live sufficiently righteous lives and accept the “oneness of God” and to pay taxes to the Umma. Known to the Believers as the “people of the book” adherents to other monotheisms were allowed to maintain their own faith without fear of persecution.

By the time of the third Caliph Uthman (644 - 656) differences in reading the Qur’an in the many dialects of the Arabic language became troublesome, and he was urged to “save the Muslim ummah before they differ about the Qur’an.” Uthman asked a team of companions led by Zayd to collect and compare all available copies and oral versions of the revelations and to prepare a single, unified text. Copies were sent to the main provinces and people were told to burn earlier versions in order to eliminate variations or differences, though many, including key people, refused to do so.

The new young Believers and people in these new communities had no memory of the Prophet himself, so piety became routine and less personal and guidelines needed to be standardized and written down. Eventually about seventy-five to one hundred years after the Prophet’s death the community members started to identify themselves as a different religion. They became Muslims.

During the next few centuries, while Islam solidified as a religious and political entity, a vast body of exegetical and historical literature evolved to explain the Koran and the rise of Islam, the most important elements of which are sunna, or the body of Islamic social and legal custom; sira, or biographies of the Prophet; tafsir, or Koranic commentary and explication and the hadith, or the collected sayings and deeds of the Prophet Mohammad.

To decide which of the sayings and deeds were authentic hundreds of thousands of sayings and stories ascribed to the Prophet were gathered together. Scholars such as Imam Bokari, Ibn Rustam and Asim Ibn Ali spent decades investigating and testing texts for accuracy. Bokari reviewed over 600,000 entries, of which he selected as incontestably correct only 5,000. Those that were deemed by these scholars as authentic were collected and called Hadiths or Traditions. Like The Gospel of Thomas, some of the sayings of the Prophet give us insight into the man and his teaching. Here are some examples from an authoritative collection by Baghawi of Herat in modern Afghanistan, from his Mishkat Al-Masabih:

“Speak to everyone in accordance with his degree of understanding.”
“I order you to assist any oppressed person, whether he is a Moslem or not.”
“Do you think you love your Creator? Love your fellow-creature first.”
“Those who are crooked, and those who are stingy, and those who like to recount their favors upon others cannot enter Paradise.”
"He is not a perfect believer, who goes to bed full and knows that his neighbor is hungry.”
“By the One who holds my soul in His hand, a man does not believe until he loves for his neighbor or brother what he loves for himself.”
“You ask me to curse unbelievers. But I was not sent to curse.”
“My back has been broken by ‘pious’ men.”
“Desire not the world, and God will love you. Desire not what others have, and they will love you.”
“Do not ask for authority, for if you are given it as a result of asking you will be left to deal with it yourself; but if you are given it without asking, you will be helped in undertaking it.”
“Treat this world as I do, like a wayfarer; like a horseman who stops in the shade of a tree for a time, and then moves on.”
“Trust in God – but tie your camel first.”
“Die before your death.”
“The ink of the learned is holier than the blood of the martyr.”

“Unto every one of you have We appointed a different law and way of life. And if God had so willed, He could surely have made you all one single community: but He willed it otherwise in order to test you by means of what He has vouchsafed unto you. Vie, then, with one another in doing good works! Unto God you all must return and then He will make you truly understand all that on which you were wont to differ (Qu’ran 5:48).”

Knowledge

The Prophet said: “There will be a time when knowledge is absent.”

Ziad son of Labid said: “How could knowledge become absent, when we repeat the Koran, and teach it to our children, and they will teach it to their children, until the day of requital?”

The Messenger answered: “You amaze me, Ziad, for I thought that you were the chief of the learned of Medina. Do the Jews and the Christians not read the Torah and the Gospels without understanding anything of their real meaning?”
(Caravan of Dreams by Sayed Idries Shah).