The Basics
The first thing to understand about the Quran is its form. The Arabic word, “Quran,” literally means both “recitation” and “reading.” Similarly, the Quran was both recited orally and written down in book form.
The true power of the Quran remains in the oral recitation, as it is meant to be read aloud and melodiously, but still the verses were written down on available materials as an aid to memorizing and guarding it, and these were collected and ordered in book form both privately and, at a later stage, institutionally.
The Quran was not meant to tell a chronological story, and thus, the Quran should not be viewed as a sequential narrative like the book of Genesis. The Arabic book that goes by the name Quran is about as long as the New Testament. In most editions it is about 600 pages in length.
In contrast to the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, the Quran was issued from the mouth of a single person, who recited what he heard from the angel Gabriel.
On the other hand, both the Jewish and the Christian scriptures are collections of many books that were written down by a large number of human beings, and opinions differ as to their status as revelation.
How Is the Quran Organized?
The Quran is composed of 114 parts or chapters of unequal length. Each chapter is called a surah in Arabic and each sentence or phrase of the Quran is called an aaya, literally “a sign.” Like the Bible, the Quran is divided into discrete units, referred to as verses in English.
These verses are not standard in length or meter, and where each begins and ends was not decided by human beings, but dictated by God. Each one is a discrete act of locution of closed signification, or “sign,” denoted by the word aayah in Arabic.
The shortest of the surahs has ten words, and the longest surah, which is placed second in the text, has 6,100 words. The first surah, the Fatihah (“The Opening”), is relatively short (twenty-five words). From the second surah onward, the surahs gradually decrease in length, although this is not a hard and fast rule.
The last sixty surahs take up about as much space as the second. Some of the longer aayahs are much longer than the shortest surahs.
All surahs, except one, begin with Bismillah hir-Rahman nir-Rahim, “In the Name of God, the Most-Merciful, the Compassionate.” Each surah has a name that usually mentions a key motto within it.
For example, the longest surah, Surah al-Baqara, or “The Cow,” is named after the story of Moses commanding the Jews to offer a sacrifice of a cow, which begins by God saying:
“And remember when Moses said to his people: ‘God commands that you sacrifice a cow…’”
(Quran 2:67)
Since the various chapters are of various lengths, the Quran was divided by scholars of the first century after the death of the Prophet into thirty roughly equal parts, each part is called a juz’ in Arabic.
This division of the Quran was done in order for people to memorize or read it in a more organized fashion, and it has no influence on the original structure, as they are mere marks on the sides of the pages denoting the part.
In the Muslim month of fasting, Ramadan, one juz’ is usually recited every night, and the entire Quran is completed in the thirty days of the month.
Translations of the Quran
A beginner should know a few points about Quran translations.
First, there is a distinction between the Quran and its translation. In Christian view, the Bible is the Bible, no matter what language it may be in. But a translation of the Quran is not the word of God, for the Quran is the exact Arabic words spoken by God, revealed to Prophet Muhammad by Gabriel.
The word of God is only the Arabic Quran as God says:
“Indeed, I revealed it as an Arabic Quran.”
(Quran 12:2)
A translation is simply an explanation of the meanings of the Quran. That is why one modern English translation has been titled The Meaning of the Glorious Quran: it strives only to give the meaning, but falls short, as any translation must, of reproducing the form of the Holy Book.
The translated text loses the inimitable quality of the original, so be aware of the degree to which a translation reflects the original message at every level of meaning, and that it will probably not match it.
For this reason, all which is regarded as “recitation” of the Quran is to be done in Arabic, such as the recitation of the Quran in the five daily prayers of the Muslims.