The Authorship of the Quran

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

This well-known narration documents that the first compilation of the Quran occurred only after Muhammad's death — following the Battle of Yamama (633 CE), when some 70 memorisers were killed in the Ridda Wars against the prophet Musaylima. The initiative came from Umar, not from Muhammad or divine instruction. Zaid compared the task to moving a mountain, indicating the extraordinary difficulty of collecting and verifying scattered fragments. During Muhammad's lifetime, revelations were recorded on palm stalks, thin white stones, animal shoulder bones, leather, and parchment. The absence of any centralised compilation during the Prophet's lifetime, and the reliance on a post-crisis human initiative, is significant for assessing the claim of divine preservation.

Every chapter of the Quran except the ninth — Surah At-Tawbah — begins with the Bismillah. According to this hadith, Muhammad relied on the revelation of the Bismillah to know when one surah ended and another began — implying the chapter divisions were revealed progressively, not known in advance.

The Islamic tradition indicates that Uthman's committee placed Surah At-Tawbah where it is because it sounded similar in theme to the preceding chapter (Al-Anfal). Muhammad had died before providing definitive placement instructions, so the compilers exercised human judgment — a fact difficult to reconcile with the doctrine of a perfectly preserved, divinely arranged scripture.

The Quran explicitly denies that Muhammad is a kāhin (soothsayer) or majnūn (madman). In those days, people thought soothsayers got their messages from spirits that possessed them. The fact that the Quran needs to deny this charge shows that people at the time saw a real resemblance between Muhammad's recitations and what soothsayers said.

This verse also rejects the idea that the Quran is soothsaying. The surrounding verses (69:40-41) also deny that it is poetry. So the Quran had to defend itself against both charges — being called poetry and being called soothsaying — because the audience recognized its style as fitting into those familiar categories.

The key takeaway: the Quran's style isn't a completely new, miraculous form of speech. It builds on a well-known Arabian tradition of rhymed oracles that already existed. Muslims often point to the Quran's beautiful language as proof it came from God. But critics argue that beauty doesn't prove divine origin — the Quran simply masters a style that poets and soothsayers had been using for generations. The Quran's own defensive verses show that its first listeners made this same connection.