Guest Author - Serkan Tufan

I'd like to start with the second question:

To understand Makka and Madina concepts, we needed to go over Islamic history a little bit, but maybe later. I could just talk about a little bit on Makka and Madina. The city Makka is the home of Prophet Muhammad (570-632), He was appointed as a prophet while He was living there. He and Muslims migrated to the city Madina in 622. He lived there until He died. He had begun getting revelations from God around 609-610.

Therefore, there are some verses in Quran that are called Makkan verses because they were sent down while Prophet Muhammad was living in Makka. Other verses that were sent down between 622-632 are called Madinan verses. However, there is no seperation between these two types. There are 114 chapters, and 6,226 verses, containing 99,464 words made up of 330, 113 letters in Quran and they are all together. Quran is the whole book, there is no division like Makka or Madina Quran. As Allah promises in Quran, even a letter have not been added to Quran, nor have a letter been eliminated from it.

The order of Quran is not according to the date of revealing. It is in a certain order that God instructed. For instance Surat'ul Bakara (Second Chapter Bakara ) was revealed in Madina and Surat'ul Beled (90th Chapter -The city ) was revealed in Makka.

However, as Islam state was welcoming more and more nations in it, to preserve one and only writing style and alphabet the same with original Quran, this main manuscript that was written in Makka dialect (not Makkan suras, but Makkan writing style) was agreed to be a model for any Quran to be written. That is why the page number of Quran never changes. It is 600 pages because of the certain writing style.

Original Arabic Quran is the main reference. Translations of Quran is allowed and necessary to understand Quran, but it is considered as always missing some meaning and originality since classic Arabic language is so powerful and rich. For instance, I am Turkish and there is more than 50,000 words in Arabic that has no meaning in Turkish.

Moreover, Quran is a book that is so concentrate and a pure extract. All verses, all words and all letters have numereous meanings and background points. Although it is 600 pages, hundreds of interpretations and commentaries have been written by Islamic scholars by today. For instance Fahreddin Razi (1149-1210) wrote a commentary of 16 volumes on Quran.

There is another commentary which is so comprehensive, so rich with its connecting both hearts and minds in understanding Quran. It is Risale-i Nur Collection by Said Nursi (1877-1960) and it is around 6000 pages. This commentary is the most popular one in the world right now and I read it most of the time. It answers all my questions and satifsy my logic as well as my heart.

I also found a web page with brief, chronological info in it. It is only one page.

http://www.muhammad.net/quran/Other/History_of_Quran_Compilation.htm