Zentrum für arabisches und islamisches Recht

The Chronological order of the Koran

According to the Islamic tradition, the period during which Muhammad received the revelations lasted for over twenty-two years, time during which he progressed from being a simple tradesman to becoming a head of state. According to this tradition, as soon as a revelation was received by Muhammad, his scribes noted it down on patches of leather, pottery shards, median veins of palms, shoulder blades or ribs of camels. After Muhammad's death, a first collection of the Koran was done during the reign of the Caliph Abu Bakr (d. 634). But as divergent private collections were put into circulation, the Caliph 'Uthman (d. 656) decided to compile his own edition called the 'Uthmanian Koran, currently used by Muslims. All the other collections were burnt.

The 'Uthmanian Koran is composed of 114 chapters (called surat). Every chapter has a title, some two, or even more (as indicated in our translation; see for example the title of chapter 5/1). The title is derived either from one of the first words of the chapter (23/53: Star; 97/55: The all-merciful), or from a characteristic narration (72/14: Abraham; 44/19: Mary), or from an episode considered to be significant (70/16: Bees; 85/29: Spider).² These titles are not part of the revelation and do not figure among the early known Koranic manuscripts; they were added by the scribes in order to distinguish the chapters of the Koran from one another. Some authors, however, attribute the titles to Muhammad having been introduced into the Koran by him.

The chapters are usually classified more or less in the decreasing order of their length, with the exception of the first. Some Muslim authors believe that the order was approved by Muhammad, under the inspiration of the angel Gabriel. But the dominant opinion sustains that only the order of the verses inside the chapters were approved by Muhammad, whereas the order of the chapters was determined by the commission that established the Koran. It is mentioned that the companions of Muhammad were in possession of versions of a Koran whose chapters were classified differently from the usual order.

The usual order of the Koran poses problems of comprehension. We can say that today we read the Koran almost upside-down, since the first chapters, the longest, are composed, broadly speaking, of revelations received by Muhammad toward the end of his life. Hence, the chronological order of the Koran is important not only for the historians who want to know the different stages of the revelation, but also for jurists. Indeed, the Koran comprises legal norms which had evolved over a period of time, some having abrogated others. In order to determine the abrogated passages and those which abrogate them, it is necessary to know which passage preceded the other. For this reason, some Muslim authors proposed to publish the Koran in Arabic by chronological order,¹ but this has never been done to date. Régis Blachère published in 1949-1950 a French translation of the Koran by a chronological order he himself established. The first edition is no longer available in bookstores. Blachère reverted to the usual order of the Koran in his edition of 1957, without giving any explanations. From that time on, our French translation of the Koran can be considered to be the only one available comprising the Arabic text with the French translation by chronological order. However, we came across three English translations based on the chronological order by Mirza Abu'l-Fadl, John Medows Rodwell and Nessim Joseph Dawood.

Muslim scholars and orientalists resort to different criteria for the chronological classification of the chapters of the Koran: the testimony of Muhammad's companions, the content of the chapters, historical events to which they refer, etc. But they are far from being unanimous among themselves² and it is probably impossible to have a realistic chronological order.³ The classification which acquired the most adherence among Muslims and which is the one we follow here was the one adopted by the commission of the Azhar which produced the Egyptian edition of the Koran in 1923, called Mushaf of King Fu'ad. This edition indicates at the head of every chapter the chronological order in which the chapter was revealed and distinguishes the chapters of the Makkan period from those of the Hegirian (Medinan) period. The classification may correspond to the version of the Koran established by the Caliph 'Ali.

However, we can point out here that some classic authors, in line with the edition of the Azhar, consider as Makkan all the verses revealed in Makka after the hegira. Such is the case for the verses 87/2:281, 88/8:30-36, 112/5:3 and 113/9:128-129. In our edition, we have taken as criteria not the place of revelation of the verses, but their period. Thus, the Makkan verses are those revealed before the hegira, and the Hegirian (Medinan) verses are those revealed after the hegira.