When was the Koran put in writing? Has there was still only one Koran? What are his literary, cultural or religious influences? Historian Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi returns to the sources of the enigmatic sacred book of Islam, in an interview with “world”.
words collected by Cyprien Mycinski
Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi is director of studies in Islamology at the Practical School of High Studies (Ephe, Paris). Co -director, in 2019, of the Koran of historians (deer, 4,372 pages, 89 euros), monumental work bringing together thirty eminent specialists in Islam, he has just copublier the history of the Koran (Cerf, 1,092 pages, 34 euros) , which synthesizes, completes and updates part of the texts of the first.
This last book is particularly interested in the historical, political, religious and cultural context which has seen the birth of the Koran, placed at the crossroads of the many traditions and religions of late antiquity, starting with Judaism and Christianity Oriental. In an interview with the world, he sums up the latest advances in research on the enigmatic sacred book of Muslims.
What do we know about the date of writing of the Koran?
For Muslims, the Koran is the Word of God revealed in Muhammad [Muhammad, 571-632]. It is transmitted to the prophet by the angel Gabriel, who appeared to her multiple times for twenty years. As he receives this revelation, Muhammad dictates it to copyists. A few years after his death, whileothman became Caliph (644-656), the multiple fragments of the revelation are united in a single book. This is what the Koran is according to the Muslim tradition.
remains that a historian must immediately insist on one point: according to the Muslim sources themselves, during the first four centuries of Islam, there were several versions of the Koran. It is only in the iv e
é> century of the Hegira [beginning of the Islamic calendar], that is to say in the X e é> century of the era Christian, that the “official” Koran, the one who would have been transcribed under Othman, stands out as the one and only version of the text.
Until then, Muslims were divided into several hostile factions, and the clashes had the stake of the content of the sacred book. Since the Othmanian Koran has established itself in all Muslims, the divergent versions have disappeared. The Orthodox story has erased them.
How did this Koran of Othman have imposed itself as the only version of the sacred text?
Until X e century, many groups – and above all the Shiites – question the Koran of Othman. However, on that date, the latter manage to take power in the Muslim Empire. The new Shiite leaders very quickly understand how many Sunnis, who are in majority, are attached to this version of the book. To prevent the Sunni masses from revolting against them, they therefore erase their most explicitly Shiite characteristics.
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