- ten or preserved in the memory, that were contributed by individual
believers. The copy thus made was not published, but was committed for safe custody to Hafsa, daughter of Omar, and one of the widows of the prophet. She kept it during the ten years of her father Omar's caliphate. But as there were no official and authorized copies of this genuine Koran, it came to pass that the various missionaries who were sent as teachers to the newly-conquered countries repeated it differently, and that various readings crept into the transcripts in use. Hence serious threatenings of division and scandal among the Moslems. The caliph Othman, foreseeing the danger, appointed a commission, with the secretary Zaid at its head, to copy the copy of Hafsa and return it to her, their duty being to determine on differences of reading, and to be careful to restore the Meccan idiom where it had been departed from in any of the versions. Several copies were made by the commissioners, of which one was kept at Medina, and the others sent to the great military stations. This was the official text, prepared about A. H. 25-30; and after its establishment, all private copies or fragments of the Koran were ordered by Othman to be destroyed.[1] The original Koran, which Mahomet did but reproduce, is supposed by those who accept it as divine to be preserved in heaven, in the very presence of its original author, on an enormous table.
In the Koran, as arranged by Zaid, there is apparently no fixed principle in the order of the Suras or chapters. In the main, the longest Suras come first, but even this rule is not adhered to consistently. Of chronological arrangement there is not a trace, and it has been left to the ingenuity of European scholars to endeavor to discover approximately the date of the several revelations. Of some, the occasions of their publication are known, but in the case of the great majority, nothing beyond a conjectural arrangement can be attained.
The principal themes with which the Koran is occupied are the unity of God; his attributes; the several prophets preceding Mahomet, whom he has sent to convert unbelievers; the joys of Paradise and the terrors of hell; and the legislative edicts promulgated for the government of the Arabs under the
- ↑ L. L. M., vol. iii,, Vorrede, Sale preliminary discourse, p. 46.—K., p. vii.
