190 | CHAPTER 6
Christian Bibles, notably the Psalms.^122 For its own reasons, European schol-
arship has traditionally dismissed the Qurʾān as an epigonal text, inferior to
the Bible as both revelation and literature. This attitude is now being replaced
by greater respect, in the same way later Aristotelianism and Platonism are no
longer treated as so self- evidently inferior to the works of the founders.^123
Getting over such mental blockages is at the heart of the First Millennium
periodization, and is indeed one of the major justifications for it.
Despite its apparent imperfections, Muslims perceive the Qurʾān as the
actual uncreated speech of God, equivalent not so much to the Bible as to
Christ himself, Muhammad being but a mediator. In a sense, Islam’s prophetic
and scriptural phases are identical.^124 But just as the Qurʾān’s being itself an
exegetical text does not stop us recognizing that the post- Qurʾān commen-
tary tradition is something different,^125 so too, at least for purposes of histori-
cal exposition, it is helpful to maintain the distinction between incipient Is-
lam’s prophetic phase from c. 610 to 632, when the revelations were delivered
and then circulated orally and (probably) in writing too, and the period, per-
haps equally brief, during which the complete text was gathered and edited
into almost its present shape, with some fine tuning up to the 690s. According
to abundant traditions, the Caliph ʿUthmān (644–56) circulated authorized
codices of the Qurʾān, just as Constantine sent imperial codices of the Bible
to the major Churches. A similar initiative is attributed, with still greater cer-
tainty, to the Caliph ʿAbd al- Malik (685–705), or more particularly to his
governor of Iraq, Hajjāj.^126 John Wansbrough’s attempt to posit a text still
under construction as late as c. 800 has collapsed thanks in part to discovery
and study of early Umayyad or even pre- Umayyad Qurʾān manuscripts.^127 The
canonization process was strikingly faster and more straightforward than for
the Jewish or Christian Bibles.^128 yet Islam did not until recently^129 adopt the
Christian habit of using the scripture codex itself to symbolize its inalienably
textual faith. Instead, religious art focused on calligraphic passages taken
from the Book—which was, after all, primarily an oral artifact.
122 E.g., Neuwirth, Koran als Text [1:6] 220–23, 414–17, 564–67, 606–7, 725–26, 744–52.
123 Neuwirth, Koran als Text [1:6] 42–43; cf. above, p. 136.
124 Neuwirth, Koran als Text [1:6] 158–81.
125 Sinai, Fortschreibung und Auslegung [1:8] X.
126 O. Hamadan, Studien zur Kanonisierung des Korantextes (Wiesbaden 2006) (a reference I owe
to Aziz al- Azmeh) 170–74; Neuwirth, Koran als Text [1:6] 235–53; B. Sadeghi and U. Bergmann, “The
codex of a companion of the Prophet and the Qurʾān of the Prophet,” Arabica 57 (2010) 364–70, 413–
14; A. Neuwirth, Der Koran 1: Frühmekkanische Suren (Berlin 2011) 24–26. On Constantine see Euse-
bius, Life of Constantine [3:54] 4.36–37.
127 Donner, Narratives [3:87] 35–63; F. Déroche, La transmission écrite du Coran dans les débuts
de l’Islam (Leiden 2009); Sadeghi and Bergmann, Arabica 57 (2010) [6:126] 343–436, 516; Neuwirth,
Koran als Text [1:6] 91–96, 249, 269–73; B. Sadeghi and M. Goudarzi, “Sanʿāʾ 1 and the origins of the
Qurʾān,” Der Islam 87 (2012) 1–129.
128 Neuwirth, Koran als Text [1:6] 235–36.
129 O. Grabar, “Art and architecture and the Qurʾān,” EQ 1.172.