The first thing the reader will encounter in most modern printed translations of the Qur’an, or the Bible, after wisely skipping over the translator’s introduction, will be a table of contents. The Qur’an’s table of contents will list the names of the 114 suras of the Qur’an. For convenience, western writers often refer to the suras by number. Muslims, however, usually memorize and refer to the suras by their Arabic names, just as Christians memorize the names of the books of the Bible. Unlike chapter divisions of the Bible, which were added later for convenience, the suras of the Qur’an are original to the text and each sura is a self-contained literary unit. A better biblical comparison is the the book of Psalms. Each Psalm, like each sura, is a self-contained literary composition, and the 150 Psalms together form a larger work with discernible themes and patterns of composition.
Like the names of books of the Bible, the titles of the suras do not belong to the text itself, but were added later. Sometimes these vary slightly. As you browse through these titles, you will recognize familiar names: Jonah/Yunus (10), Joseph/Yusuf (12), Abraham/Ibrahim (14), Mary/Maryam (19), Noah/Nuh (71). You will also come across titles that hint at familiar biblical themes: Repentance/al-Tawba (9), Believers/al-Mu’minun (23), The Forgiver/Ghafir (40), The Resurrection/al-Qiyama (75), The Most High/al-A’la (87). The significant overlaps with biblical characters and themes are important. They also turn out to be rather misleading for Christian readers of the Qur’an. The majority of sura titles are short and cryptic – The Cow, The Thunder, The Bee, The Cave, The Poet, The Ants, The Spider, The Smoke, the Moon, The Jinn, He Frowned, The Dawn, The Daybreak. These are usually drawn from some distinctive or memorable word that occurs in the sura. One sura is named for Muhammad himself (47) indicating that this sura is the only place in the Qur’an where Muhammad is mentioned by name.
As you browse the contents of the Qur’an may also notice that the suras are ordered roughly from longest to shortest. The first sura is an exception. This has the curious effect of placing the shortest suras, which are generally thought to be oldest, at the end of the book so that we are reading it in reverse chronological order. Introductions to the Qur’an sometimes recommend starting with the later suras, not just because they may be earliest, but also because they are, well, short, and presumably easier to digest. Michael Sells does this in his Approaching the Qur’an, and his translations of these suras are excellent. But the choice is dubious, and I don’t recommend it. When Muslims read the book, they often proceed from beginning to end. In fact many versions of the Qur’an are divided into 30 parts of roughly equal length so that the book can be read through devotionally in a month. It makes sense for Christians who want to familiarize themselves with Muslim ways of experiencing the Qur’an to do the same.
Each Sura is further divided into verses, called Ayat (singular Aya). These verse divisions are not original to the text, and numbering schemes vary slightly. Most recent translations follow a consistent scheme, but the Arberry translation, for example, uses an alternate verse numbering scheme. As you browse beyond the table of contents, you may notice other curious and distinctive literary features. For example, every sura but one (sura 57, al-Tawba) begins with the invocation “In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate” and twenty-nine suras follow this invocation with between one and five mysterious letters. I have no idea why they are there, or what function they perform, but they are an integral part of the text and I am in good company since the best Qur’an commentators also have no idea.
Readers may have difficulty making sense of how suras are organized. This is not an issue for the very short suras. But longer and even medium length suras often seem, on the surface, to be stitched together rather randomly, moving unexpectedly between themes or topics. Trying to figure out why the suras are put together the way they are is a very modern pre-occupation (though not a post-modern one, since post-modern scholars are often quite at peace with apparent randomness). On the side of western critical scholarship, Richard Bell, for instance, spent many undoubtedly happy hours cutting the text of the Qur’an into small pieces and trying to paste it back together again in ways that made better sense to him. Some Muslim scholars have also spent a lot of time on this problem, but with the opposite aim of showing that the internal organization of suras is not at all random but that they have a strong coherence that is discernible – for those with eyes to see. For most interpreters of the Qur’an before the modern period, and for most ordinary Muslims now, questions about the internal structure of suras was and is a non-issue. For them the Qur’an was simply God’s word, and therefore just as God wanted it to be. The job of humans is not to figure out how it might be better organized, but to figure out what God has to say to them through it.
Christians who struggle to understand the structure of the Qur’an will better understand the challenges a Muslim friend will face if he opens a Bible. The contents of the Bible – 66 “books” in two separate “testaments” composed over many centuries by roughly 40 different human authors – will be daunting to any first time reader, but Muslim readers face special challenges. A Muslim familiar with the Qur’an has every reason to expect the Bible to be composed of three books, the Torat (Torah), the Zabur (the Psalms) and the Injil (the Gospel), each revealed directly from God to a particular Prophet. The fact that this scheme appears to correspond to actual components of the Bible, only heightens the confusion. Why does the Bible contain four Gospels, not one, and why do these read as historical accounts rather than as words from God delivered by the Prophet Jesus? And how does poetry, history, or letters to churches fit into this scheme? A Muslim reader of the Bible will need, even more than a Christian reader of the Qur’an, to set aside prior expectations, and to read the book for what it is rather than what he expects or wants it to be. And both Muslim and Christian readers will do well to return to the advice I gave in the introduction – don’t read alone. If at all possible, Muslim readers should read the Bible with a Christian friend, and Christian readers should read the Qur’an with a Muslim friend.
As I finish writing this section, I am fearful that I am becoming (Oh no!) pedantic. Have I piled on too much detail and lost the thread? How does it read to you?
I concluded this section was originally in the wrong place, so I’ve move it up.
Overall, the contents seem necessary to me though there may be a bit too much detail in some places. The next to the last paragraph is the strongest and most valuable for Christian readers I’d say.
“Unlike chapter divisions of the Bible, which were added later for convenience, the suras of the Qur’an are original to the text and each sura is a self-contained literary unit.”
– I wonder if the example of the Psalms would resonate with Christian readers.
Yes, the comparison with the Psalms may be helpful. Good thought.
This is a very helpful introduction. I agree that the Psalms make a good comparison.
I have a thought regarding this sentence: “The job of humans is not to figure out how it might be better organized, but to figure out what God has to say to them through it.” Since it follows a couple of sentences about Muslim approaches, I’m not sure that average Muslims would feel that Muslim scholars’ attempts to discern the order in the Qur’an is inappropriate. These scholars are not seeking to reorganize it.
Perhaps Ruthven’s comment, “Almost any one of the suras will contain, in a more or less condensed form, the message of the whole,” gives a sense of the way the Qur’an’s organizing “DNA” is found throughout. (Malise Ruthven, Islam in the world (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, Kindle Location 1212-15.)
There may be something to the claim that qur’anic suras are organize in pairs. But likely not worth mentioning.