A. J. Arberry - Preface 2 lyrics

This volume contains the second half of a new version of the Koran; it thus marks the completion of one phase of a labour which is in the nature of things unending. Over a period of many months the Koran has been my constant companion, the object of my most attentive study. Though many can certainly claim to have read the Koran, indeed over and over again, and to know it Well. I think it may be reasonably a**erted that their understanding and appreciation of the book will always fall short of what may be attained by one who undertakes to translate it in full and with all possible fidelity. I had myself studied the Koran and perused it from end to end over many years, before I embarked upon making a version of it; a**uredly the careful discipline of trying to find the best English equivalent for every meaning and every rhythm of the original Arabic has profoundly deepened my own penetration into the heart of the Koran, and has at the same time sharpened my awareness of its mysterious and compelling beauty. For this reason, if for no other, I think it is justifiable to adopt the unusual procedure of adding a separate preface to the second instalment of a two-volume work. I suppose I shall never again recapture the freshness and excitement of the experience just now completed; the pa**ing months and years will inevitably blur the image; this is the moment, or never, to attempt to record the impact which a sustained and concentrated exploration of the Koran has left on my mind and my heart. First let us look again at the rhythm; for it is to the rhythm that I constantly return as I grope for a clue to the arresting, the hypnotic power of the m**m scriptures. I was talking about this power to an Arab friend; before I could say what I would have said he spoke in terms that expressed exactly what was in my mind. 'Whenever I hear the Koran chanted, it is as though I am listening to music; underneath the flowing melody there is sounding all the time the insistent beat of a drum.' Then he added, 'It is like the beating of my heart.' A keen sense of rhythm is of course one of the most outstanding characteristics of the Arab genius; it has displayed itself in a great variety of ways. No other people has evolved a prosody of comparable richness and complexity; the metres in which Arab poets have composed from earliest times exhibit a wide range of rhythmic patterns, all used with seemingly effortless ease, and each eliciting a distinctive response from the listener. Arab music reveals the same quality. I well recall a wonderful evening, many years ago, when somewhere in the Egyptian desert I sat in the gathering darkness and heard far off -- it may have been a mile, it may have been two miles distant -- an encampment of Bedouins singing to the accompaniment of their primitive drums and strings; the theme was being repeated endlessly, each repetition showing a subtle variation of melodic line and rhythm. So it is with architectural ornament; so it is with arabesque design. The wellnigh impenetrable maze of delicate tracery dances to the beat of a strong and urgent rhythm. Rhythm runs insistently through the entire Koran; but it is a changeful, fluctuating rhythm, ranging from the gentle, lulling music of the narrative and legislative pa**ages, through the lively counterpoint of the hymns of praise, to the shattering drum-rolls of the apocalyptic movements. Almost all Western scholars who have ever written about the Koran have made the comment, with a slavish repetitiveness, that the early revelations -- those received at Mecca before the Hegira, mostly descriptive of the imminent end of the world and the coming Day of Doom -- are more poetical than the later parts. Thus R. A. Nicholson remarked, in his Literary History of the Arabs: 'The preposterous arrangement of the Koran is mainly responsible for the opinion almost unanimously held by European readers that it is obscure, tiresome, uninteresting; a farrago of long-winded narratives and prosaic exhortations, quite unworthy to be named in the same breath with the Prophetical Books of the Old Testament. One may, indeed, peruse the greater part of the volume, beginning with the first chapter, and find but a few pa**ages of genuine enthusiasm to relieve the prevailing dullness. It is in the short Suras placed at the end of the Koran that we must look for evidence of Muhammad's prophetic gift. These are the earliest of all; in these the flame of inspiration burns purely and its natural force is not abated.' This was the verdict of a great scholar justly renowned for his fairmindedness; it betrays a deafness, shared by him with all too many, to that very rhythmical quality which marks the Koran apart from all other books. It is therefore all the more refreshing to read, in a very recent work by Professor A. Guillaume (Islam: Penguin Books), an appreciation so notably nonconformist. 'The Koran is one of the world's cla**ics which cannot be translated without grave loss. It has a rhythm of peculiar beauty and a cadence that charms the ear. Many Christian Arabs speak of its style with warm admiration, and most Arabists acknowledge its excellence. When it is read aloud or recited it has an almost hypnotic effect that makes the listener indifferent to its sometimes strange syntax and its sometimes, to us, repellent content. It is this quality it possesses of silencing criticism by the sweet music of its language that has given birth to the dogma of its inimitability; indeed it may be affirmed that within the literature of the Arabs, wide and fecund as it is both in poetry and in elevated prose, there is nothing to compare with it.' These two contrasting statements epitomise the gulf which divides a musically sensitive from a musically insensitive reading of one and the same book. Aesthetically judged, there should be no question of the superiority or the inferiority of certain parts of the Koran. The rhythm changes, admittedly; yet it never ceases. The cataract transforms itself into a softly running stream; but the broad later sweep of the waters of inspiration is no less beautiful or majestic than the tumultuous thunder of their earlier flow. Disciples of the Higher Criticism, having watched with fascinated admiration how their masters played havoc with the traditional sacrosanctity of the Bible, threw themselves with brisk enthusiasm into the congenial task of demolishing the Koran. Taking as their point of departure that rough cla**ification of the Suras, a crude an*lysis preserved from far antiquity, which marked some as having been revealed at Mecca before A.D. 622 and some thereafter at Medina, and pursuing eagerly the faint clues emerging out of the mists of time that certain verses received during Muhammad's later years were inserted into contexts of a much earlier date, these brilliant detectives sought to a**ign every Sura, and every section, almost every verse or half-verse of each individual Sura, to a particular incident in the Prophet's career. Much of their work was done on sound lines, and the boundaries of knowledge have been notably enlarged by their labours; not even the most sensitive m**m believer needs to take offence at the well-intentioned and well-conducted investigations of pure scholarship. But having cut to pieces the body of Allah's revelation, our erudite sleuths have found themselves with a corpse on their hands, the spirit meanwhile eluding their preoccupied attention. So they have been apt to resort to the old device of explaining away what they could not explain; crushed between their fumbling fingers, the gossamer wings of soaring inspiration have dissolved into powder. The most extreme representative of this school of thought, which once tyrannised over Koranic studies in the West, was no doubt the late Dr Richard Bell. A man of great kindliness and the utmost integrity, he devoted his last years of ripe scholarship to a remarkable essay to place every verse of the Koran in its historical context (The Qur'an, 2 vols.). He was too scrupulous a scholar to claim anything like finality; indeed he often felt obliged to make such vague judgments as that which he prefixed to his translation of Sura CVI: 'This little surah, though rhythmic in style, is uncertain in rhyme. It must either be very early or very late -- more probably early.' He was generally cautious in expressing his favourite hypothesis; that what he, with most critics, regarded as the incoherency of the Koran was due in no small measure to the fact (or rather the presumption, for there is no shred of proof) that parts of the Suras were originally written down, more or less at random, on the backs of other parts, and then tacked on to follow them by the later editors. Occasionally however his satisfaction with this ingenious theory tempted him almost to dogmatize, as on page 450: 'The end of the surah, vv. 67-88, which may not be in itself a unity, is in a different rhyme and does not properly belong to it. Its presence may be due to vv. 49-66 having been written on the back of it.' On page 476 he is even more positive: 'Vv. 28, 24, and vv. 80, 81, 82, 85 contrast the fates of un-believers and believers, and are probably the latest parts of the surah. They have been written on the back of scraps, of which vv. 25-28 form a connected piece.' Dr Bell's preliminary comments on Sura LXVI well illustrate the boldness, and incidentally the irreverence, of his approach: 'This surah is very disjointed, and seems to consist of a collection of discarded pa**ages of various dates. Vv. 1 and 2 go together, but as they are addressed to the prophet personally, they possibly were not publicly recited. It is very unlikely that vv. 8 and 4 were published. If recited at all, they were probably addressed to the two wives. They refer in all probability -- as vv. 1 and 2 also to the episode of Muhammad having been discovered with Mary the Copt, by Hafsa, who then in spite of having been pledged to secrecy, told the story to Ayesha. But the matter is anything but clear, and v.8 is so vague and silly that we might -- almost suspect someone -- Ayesha.i -- of having parodied Muhammad. Verse 5 joins well enough in sense with the preceding verses, but the rhyme and the different pronoun of address show that originally at least it belonged to some other context (cf. XXXIII, 28ff.). The rest of the pieces of which the surah is made up belong to early Medinan times. Verse 9 must be later than Uhud. The fact that the examples quoted in vv; 10-12 are women might argue a connection between them and the beginning of the surah, but in language they seem much earlier.' Such is the position which champions of the Higher Criticism of the Koran eventually reach. It is against this excess of anatomical mincing that I argue the unity of the Sura and the Koran; instead of offering the perplexed reader disjecta membra scattered indifferently over the dissecting table, I ask him to look again at the cadaver before it was carved up, and to imagine how it might appear when the lifeblood of accepted inspiration flowed through its veins. I urge the view that an eternal composition, such as the Koran is, cannot be well understood if it is submitted to the test of only temporal criticism. It is simply irrelevant to expect that the themes treated in the individual Sura will be marshalled after some mathematical precision to form a rationally ordered pattern; the logic of revelation is not the logic of the, schoolmen. There is no 'before' or 'after' in the prophetic message, when that message, is true; everlasting truth is not held within the confines of time and space, but every moment reveals itself wholly and completely. Such was the experience that Henry Vaughan described in those famous lines: I saw Eternity the other night Like a great Ring of pure and endless light, All calm, as it was bright, And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years Driv'n by the spheres Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world And all her train were hurl'd. Sublime expression was given to the same mystical reality by Thomas Traherne: I felt no dross nor matter in my soul, No brims nor borders, such as in a bowl We see. My essence was capacity, That felt all things; The thought that springs Therefrom's itself. It hath no other wings To spread abroad, nor eyes to see, Nor hands distinct to feel, Nor knees to kneel; But being simple like the Deity In its own centre is a sphere Not shut up here, but everywhere. It acts not from a centre to Its object as remote, But present is when it doth view, Being with the Being it doth note Whatever it doth do. But yet of this I was most sure, That at the utmost length, (So worthy was it to endure) My soul could best express its strength. It was so quick and pure, That all my mind was wholly everywhere, Whate'er it saw, 'twas ever wholly there; The sun ten thousand legions off; was nigh: The utmost star, Though seen from far, Was present in the apple of my eye. It was this experience of multiplicity-in-unity, this momentary flight of the eternal spirit out of the prison of life-in-time into the boundless plain of life everlasting; 'that moved the Egyptian mystic Ibn al-Farid to write in his great epic of the soul's ascent to God: The whole of me performing what the Path Provideth, in the manner that the Truth Of me required, when I had joined the rift So that the cracks that split the unity (Through difference of attribute) (no 'more Dispersed) were closed, and naught remained (to cause Estrangement) as between myself and my Firm trust in love's familiarity, I realized that we in truth were one And the sobriety of unison Confirmed the blotting-out of scatteredness. My all: a tongue, an eye, an, ear, a hand: To speak, to see, to hear, to seize withal. Mine eyes conversed, the while my tongue, beheld, My hearing uttered, and my hand gave' ear; My hearing was an eye considering Whate'er' appeared, mine eyes an ear to heed Silently if the folk broke forth in song; Upon my benefits my tongue became A hand, as too my hand became a tongue For converse and for preaching; so my hand Became an eye, to see whate'er appeared, Mine eye a hand outspread wherewith to strike; Mine ear became a tongue in my address, My tongue an ear for silent listening; The smell too had its rules agreeable To general an*logy as in The fusion of my attributes, or by Reversal of the case. No limb in me Was specialized as being singled out To the exclusion of the rest for one Description, as to wit a seeing eye: My every atom, notwithstanding its Own singularity, itself comprised The sum of all the organs' faculties, Whispering and attending, consequent On contemplation of one taking charge (By virtue of a hand omnipotent) Disposing of his whole totality In one brief moment. So it is I read The various knowledge of all learned men Summed in one word, and with a single glance Reveal to me all beings in the world: I hear the voices of all men at prayer, And every language, in a space of time Less than an instant's flash: I summon up Before me, what could scarcely be conveyed; From its far distance, ere mine eye can wink: So in one inhalation I breathe in The perfumes of all gardens, and the scent Of every herb clutching the breezes' skirts: And I review all regions of the earth Before me in one thought, and with one bound Traverse the seven layers of the skies. The mystic's experience, attested as it is by a cloud of witnesses, surely provides the key to the mysterious inconsequence of the Koranic rhetoric. All truth was present simultaneously within the Prophet's enraptured soul; all truth, however fragmented, revealed itself in his inspired utterance. The reader of the m**m scriptures must strive to attain the same all-embracing apprehension. The sudden fluctuations of theme and mood will then no longer present such difficulties as have bewildered critics ambitious to measure the ocean of prophetic eloquence with the thimble of pedestrian an*lysis. Each Sura will now be seen to be a unity within itself, and the whole Koran will be recognised as a single revelation, self-consistent in the highest degree. Though half a mortal lifetime was needed for the message to be received and communicated, the message itself, being of the eternal, is one message in eternity, however heterogeneous its temporal expression may appear to be. This, the mystic's approach, is surely the right approach to the study of the Koran; it is an approach that leads, not to bewilderment and disgust -- that is the prerogative of the Higher Critic -- but to an ever deepening understanding, to a wonder and a joy that have no end.