Facts about the Quran Revelation
Facts about the Quran Revelation
The most read book throughout the world, The Holy Quran, is the last book of Allah (SWT) carrying the message of mercy, forgiveness and peace for all mankind. The Holy Quran was revealed more than 1400 years ago to the last messenger of Allah, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) as the final word to call the mankind towards the creator and share the truth about the universe with humankind. The message in Quran shows us the way to spend our lives in accordance to the guidelines provided by Allah and to follow the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). Reciting Quran reveals many treasures of wisdom hidden in the Holy Book which draw us closer to believe in oneness of God and the message of Islam.
1. The World’s Biggest Quran
In 2008, Sayeed Najmul Hasan Chishti from India took the world record for creating the largest handwritten Quran. Then in 2009, the record was being eyed by a teenager writing for 12 hours a day to produce a Quran 3,000 meters (about 1,000 ft) long. If she finished, no one noticed because the world record was taken in 2011 by a Quran in Russia. Weighing 1,763 pounds, this massive book was encrusted in gold and silver and a smattering of precious stones.
After all that effort, it probably hurt when the new world’s largest Quran was unveiled in Afghanistan a couple of months later. Clearly, the quest to have the world’s largest is hard-fought, and a lot of people are putting a lot of effort into claiming it (someone should probably tell them about the 18-meter (60 ft) Quran that is part of a building in South Sumatra). There are a lot of large Qurans.
2. Quran Memorization
Seventeen million people around the world watched the Dubai National Quran Awards this year, a contest in which children recite the book from memory in pursuit of 250,000 UAE dollars ($70,000). As well as the top prize, there’s also an award for most beautiful voice. Like many competitions between children, there’s a hint that this is about the parents: This year’s beautiful voice said, “My father who has worked hard in training me is really happy and I’m proud that I didn’t let him down.”
Putting pushy parenting aside, memorizing the scripture is a big thing. The term “hafiz” is used to describe those that have learned the Quran in full, and the hafiz are well regarded among their fellow Muslims.
3. What’s A Quran worth?
The most expensive Quran sold for over $2.3 million in 2007. While that doesn’t make it the most valuable holy book (one volume of the two-part Gutenburg Bible sold for $5.5 million in 2008), it’s still a substantial amount of money. The Quran in question is dated June 1203 (17 Ramadan 599 on the Islamic calendar) and is the oldest complete and dated copy known.
As with anything, big money attracts crime. Three men were arrested in May 2000 for trying to smuggle a stolen copy of the book out of Turkey. The 11th-century Quran, stolen from Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, would’ve been worth around $50,000 on the UK black market.
The Quran uses the term “Allah” for God; it emphasizes the supreme Divinity rather than the tribal or ethnic gods worshipped by Muhammed’s contemporaries.
In addition to the Quran, Muhammad’s followers believed that everything Muhammad did or said came from divine inspiration. The records of his words and acts, or "Hadiths," are held to be second in importance only to the Quran itself.
Together, the Quran and the Hadiths make up the “shari’a,” which means holy law.
Muslims believe that the Old and New Testaments were written by prophets, including Jesus, who were charged with bringing their specific revealed book. Muhammad, however, was held to be the last and greatest prophet, so his book supersedes all the rest.
The Quran consists of 114 chapters called surats. The chapters are not arranged in the order in which they were first recited by Muhammad, but are instead in the re-arranged order that Muhammad placed them in after they were all written down.
In the 19th century, Quran was spelled “Koran.” Although the correct transliteration into English is “Qur’an," some people still use “Quran” because English does not normally put apostrophes in the middle of words.
Every aspect of a Quran is considered to be holy, including the paper upon which it is written, the letters of the Arabic words on the page, and even the sounds that are made when one is reading the Quran out loud.
The individual words and letters of the Quran are also thought to possess ta’wil, inner meanings, that express metaphysical and cosmological truths.
The revelations of the Quran can be divided into two groups: those which were received when Muhammad lived in Mecca and those from after his migration to Medina.
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