How the Holy Quran was compiled

He writes with his left hand.

[quote=s.b.f]He writes with his left hand.[/quote]

Only if I could do that too...

(I am a lefty... but I do most things with my right hand, including writing. Weird.)

[quote=You][quote=s.b.f]He writes with his left hand.[/quote]

Only if I could do that too...

(I am a lefty... but I do most things with my right hand, including writing. Weird.)[/quote]

😂

How is that possible ? ..then surely you are a right handed?

no I am cack handed. (both meanings apply.)

After listening to this, what Im taking away with me today is:

1. Anything that is worth doing, should begin with Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim.

2. Muhammed (saw)...would go away and meditate ...and we don't actually have a description of his practises...

3. Khadijah is the first person to believe him..which is interesting..she didn't you know..abandon him..

4. If you really want to understand the Qu'ran or be able to read it..you have to surrender your desire for linearity

5. The first verse of the Qu'ran..is ALif Lam Mim...God knows that they mean..now its a very interesting phenomenon that you open up a book and the first three letters that you read..nobody knows what they mean..and i think part of the message is to let us know that there is a lot of things that we don't know and if we're not going to admit that at the start..then we are not going to benefit from this book. ..and if we're going to superimpose on the book our own ideas..then we're not going to get anything out of the book.

You probably knew most of that anyway. What I learnt was that the start of Surah Muzammil was the second revelation.

There was other interesting stuff in there too - but surprisingly little about the actual compilation of the qur'an. Most was about revelation etc.

[quote=You]You probably knew most of that anyway. [/quote]

Thats not the point at all.

[quote=You]What I learnt was that the start of Surah Muzammil was the second revelation. [/quote]

From the whole hour of it..and thats all you learnt? :S

[quote=You]
There was other interesting stuff in there too - but surprisingly little about the actual compilation of the qur'an. Most was about revelation etc.[/quote]

Yeah, i was thinking that too.

I listened to it yesterday. I may have picked up something else too, but I cannot remember.

[quote=You]I listened to it yesterday. I may have picked up something else too, but I cannot remember.[/quote]

not enough concepts there?

could be that. Could be something else. I just never thought about it afterwards.

[quote=You]could be that. Could be something else. I just never thought about it afterwards.[/quote]

What made you carry on watching/listening to his lecture?

intrigue and curiosity, but it was all pedestrian - listening to lectures is not really being active.

what do you mean all pedestrian..and not active? you weren't listening to it properly?

I was. but being active would mean taking notes and stuff or something.

making notes listening to a lecture online? do people actually do that?

I think Im kind of doing that with some areas so that later on (a few weeks/months/years) when (hopefully) I am a bit wiser, I can read over what interested me today and wonder why I thought about what I thought.

Atleast mental notes, things to take away. like you did.

But then again I never take notes. Not my thing.

So I guess I paid as much attention to it as I would anything else. Maybe even more, but all I remembered was that one point. (and the word Mus'haaf).

what does the Mus'haaf mean?

something like collection, compilation - it was used for when the verses were all collected and then placed in the correct order into one written book.

Another thing I remembered - before the Qur'an there was (allegedly? its not as if this can be proven...) no other book written in arabic - just a few short poems.

[quote=You]

Another thing I remembered - before the Qur'an there was (allegedly? its not as if this can be proven...) no other book written in arabic - just a few short poems.

[/quote]

Yeah! But why does that surprise you? Why did that interest you?

No books in written in arabic. But could there have been books/literature around in another language?

Ofcourse. for one the testaments are older, so they would have been around. But no other Arabic book? I think that is a big thing - especially as the language was not new. people spoke Arabic and probably even wrote many things in Arabic. Just no books.

[quote=s.b.f]

5. The first verse of the Qu'ran..is ALif Lam Mim...God knows that they mean..now its a very interesting phenomenon that you open up a book and the first three letters that you read..nobody knows what they mean..and i think part of the message is to let us know that there is a lot of things that we don't know and if we're not going to admit that at the start..then we are not going to benefit from this book. ..and if we're going to superimpose on the book our own ideas..then we're not going to get anything out of the book.[/quote]

I haven't seen the lecture, I can't in Syria...

But I really like that point!

[quote=wednesday]He's from Al-Maghrib Institute ... and they did a weekend course at uni and it was ACE! (Both of those dudes wrote with their left hand too) [/quote]

i think you got the wrong guy. shaykh hamza yusuf is from zaytuna institute.

[quote=Ya'qub]

I haven't seen the lecture, I can't in Syria...

[/quote]

I know.

Well, the videos are by Hamza Yusuf, and although he was supposed to be talking about how the Qur'an was compiled, its more focused on language and the revelations.

He starts off talking about the multiplicity of the number 3. He says that language is considered inexhaustible. He says that the Qur'an comes from a root word. He says that that letters that make the word: 'Qur'an' >> and then explains that the root meaning is the word city. He says it brings in the idea of civilization and this leads to the core of the civilization being a book. For he Greeks..for example he says Homer. For the Hebrew people the book was the Torah. and then the Bible for the English speaking people.

HE then says for the Arabic speaking people, he says that there was NO book in Arabic. As You said up there, the closest thing that came to a book was poems.

He recommends the book : 'A is for Ox' by Barry Sanders to the audience who are all teachers. So get reading that soon Ya'qub!
The book, says that if you do not have an oral tradition then you don't have a literate tradition. The author of the book complains that orality is dying out because of media. Hamza Yusuf says that the author Sanders, says that one of the effects of children growing up in front of the television is leading to lack of humanization. Hamza emphasizes that the Qur'an is an oral book.

He now mentions Muhammed (saw). He mentions that Muhammed ﷺ is sent to the desert for ten years, as children were at this era. The point of this was that children would absorb the language during the five years they spend there by integrating with people who live there.

He then talks a bit about the revelation and about Muhammed (saw)..for example the dreams that he had..the fact that he went up to the Mountains to meditate...to avoid polytheism..the Hunafah/ the Hanif tradition...how they were monotheists...that Angel Jibril came to the Prophet (saw)....then the tension between the Anglican Christians and the Muslims is mentioned. The book by Hans Kung called "Christianity and the World Religions' are mentioned..how the author says that he doesn't accept the revelation.

Another interesting theory he mentions by a German philosopher, Heiniger...about how people take on qualities around them..not because they want to learn because of what people have told them. Basically, people should reflect on themselves and the things around them. An undifferentiated person is one that does not think about the things superimposed on us.
He talks about Tawhid and then how Arabs did not believe in the Hereafter until the Qur'an showed up.
He then says how Man set out to standardize the Qur'an. The quote that you highlighted is mentioned here somewhere. Uthman sends identical copies of the Qur'an to various centers of the Muslim government and demands for all of the Qur'ans to be burnt except for the ones based on the copy he had sent out. He says that this is interesting. He then compares this to the Jewish tradition and the Christian tradition.
He finishes the lecture off with answering questions posed on him by the audience. Hope this helps make things clearer. Iv missed out loads of other interesting stuff though. Enjoy reading the longest reply Iv ever written on here. I think.