Quran (Arabic: recitation, reading)
The Quran is the sacred scripture of islam. Mus-
lims believe it contains the infallible word of
God as revealed to mUhammad the Prophet in the
Arabic language during the latter part of his life,
between the years 610 and 632 in the Western
calendar. They also hold that it is the last of a
sequence of revealed books delivered to human-
kind through history, but, because previous scrip-
tures, particularly the torah and gospel, had
become corrupted, it is the most perfect of all rev-
elations. Through recitation, worship, exegesis,
and the art of calligraphy, Muslims have made it
part of daily life wherever they are.
The Quran is about the same length as the
Christian New Testament. It consists of 114
chapters called suras. These chapters are orga-
nized roughly by length, from longest to shortest,
excepting the opening one, the Fatiha, which
is a short prayer asking for God’s guidance and
blessing. There is no logical or narrative connec-
tion between one chapter and the next, which
makes it a challenge for beginners to read without
guidance. The Quran’s structure contrasts with
that of the first books of the Hebrew Bible and
the New Testament’s Gospels and Book of Acts,
which follow a narrative sequence (from cre-
ation to the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple
and the return from exile in the former, and the
ministries of Jesus and his disciples in the latter).
Corresponding to beginning with the Fatiha, the
Quran ends with two short chapters known as the
“protecting” ones (Q 113 and 114), because they
ask God’s protection from evil.
To facilitate memorization and recitation of the
sacred text, Islamic tradition has given each of the
Quran’s chapters a distinctive title. In a few cases
the title assigned is indicative of the chapter’s con-
tent, such as the sura of Yusuf (Q 12), which tells
the story of the biblical Joseph, the son of Jacob.
Likewise for the chapters named for mary (Q 19)
and Noah (Q 71), which include versions of the
Bible stories about these figures, as well as the sura
of The Cave (Q 18), which contains a story about
a group of youths who escape persecution for their
beliefs by hiding in a cave. A number of chapters
in the latter part of the Quran have names that
identify them with events associated with the end
of the world and JUdgment day, such as The Res-
urrection (Q 75), The Tidings (Q 78), The Fold-
ing Up (Q 81), Splitting Apart (Q 82), and The
Earthquake (Q 99). The names of other chapters
are derived from the mysterious letters with which
some of them begin, such as Q 9 Qaf, Q 20 Ta-Ha,
and Q 36 Ya-Sin. Most chapters, including many of
those already mentioned, obtain their titles from a
unique word or name that occurs in them. Thus, Q
2 is called al-Baqara (The Cow), a word that occurs
only in this chapter (verses 67–69, 71). Sura 16
is named The Bee (nahl) after the bee mentioned
only in verse 68, and sura 96 is entitled The Blood
Clot (alaq) because this word occurs in verse 2 and
nowhere else in the Quran.
Each chapter in the Quran is divided into
verses (sing. aya). The Quran has more than 6,200Page from an Arabic Quran manuscript showing the
first verses of sura 39, Maghribi script (North African
Style) 13th–14th century. (Art Resource/The Metropolitan
Museum of Art)
K 570 Quran