The Authorship of the Quran

These five verses are traditionally regarded by Islamic scholarship as the first revelation received by Muhammad. According to the biographical tradition recorded in Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah and in Sahih al-Bukhari, Muhammad was retreating in the Cave of Hira near Mecca when he was visited by the angel Gabriel, who commanded him to "recite" (iqra') — despite Muhammad's protest that he was not a reciter. The angel is described as having squeezed Muhammad forcefully before the words emerged. The account of this event is not recorded in the Quran itself but appears in later biographical and hadith literature compiled approximately 150–200 years after the event.

This verse declares that Allah sent down the Quran (al-dhikr) and will preserve it from corruption. In Islamic theology, this is the primary proof-text for the doctrine of the Quran's incorruptibility. The historical record of the Quran's compilation, however, presents a more complex picture: according to Sahih al-Bukhari 4679, after the Battle of Yamama (633 CE) — in which hundreds of Quran memorisers were killed — Umar ibn al-Khattab persuaded Abu Bakr to commission the first compilation of the Quran from scattered fragments written on "palm stalks, thin white stones, and from the men who knew it by heart." Zaid bin Thabit, who was tasked with this work, described it as a task so heavy that "if they had ordered me to shift a mountain, it would not have been heavier for me than this."

This verse addresses highly specific, mundane social situations: house guests lingering after meals, asking the Prophet's wives for household items from behind a curtain, and a permanent prohibition on anyone marrying Muhammad's widows after his death. Such verses are notable because the orthodox Islamic doctrine holds that the Quran is the eternal, uncreated word of God that existed before the creation of the universe. Critics of this doctrine argue that the inclusion of these temporally and culturally specific rules — resolving a domestic social awkwardness involving 7th-century Arabian hospitality customs — is difficult to reconcile with a text claimed to be the timeless decree of a transcendent deity. This verse is also cited in the Contradictions page as an example of situational rules embedded in an allegedly timeless book.

This well-known narration from Sahih al-Bukhari documents that the first compilation of the Quran was not undertaken during Muhammad's lifetime, but only after his death — specifically after the Battle of Yamama (633 CE), when approximately 70 Quran memorisers were killed in the so-called "War of Apostasy" (Ridda Wars) against the self-proclaimed prophet Musaylima. The initiative came from Umar, not from Muhammad or from divine instruction. Zaid's reaction — comparing the task to moving a mountain — indicates that the process of collecting and verifying scattered fragments was considered extraordinarily difficult. The materials used for recording revelations during Muhammad's lifetime included palm stalks, thin white stones, animal shoulder bones, leather, and parchment. The absence of any centralised, authoritative compilation during the Prophet's lifetime, and the reliance on a post-crisis human initiative to create one, is a historically significant fact for assessing the claim of divine preservation.

Every chapter (surah) of the Quran except the ninth — Surah At-Tawbah (The Repentance) — begins with the Bismillah ("In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful"). The absence of this invocation in Surah At-Tawbah has been a subject of discussion among Islamic scholars. According to this hadith from Sunan Abi Dawud, Muhammad himself relied on the revelation of the Bismillah to know when one surah ended and another began — implying that the division of the Quran into chapters was not known to him in advance but was revealed progressively.

Regarding the placement of Surah At-Tawbah, the Islamic tradition indicates that Uthman's committee placed it where it is simply because it sounded similar in theme to the preceding chapter (Surah Al-Anfal). Muhammad had died before providing definitive instructions on where this revelation belonged. The compilers therefore had to exercise human judgment — a fact that has been noted by both classical and modern scholars as difficult to reconcile with the doctrine of a perfectly preserved, divinely arranged scripture.