The Qur’an has always been central to Islam and to the religious lives of Muslims, and this has provided the impetus, generation after generation, for them to devote care and attention to memorizing, reciting, preserving and transmitting the Qur’an. Wherever you go in the Muslim world, whether among Sunnis, Twelver Shi`ah, Zaydi Shi`ah or any other sect or school, you find the verses in the same order within the surahs. There is no disagreement on the sequence of verses within the surahs.There are also numerous hadiths indicating that the order of verses within the surahs was fixed by the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) himself:
- Zayd said, “We used be in the presence of the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace), gathering the Qur’an from pieces of parchment.” [Narrated by al-Hakim with an isnad on the criteria of Bukhari and Musch surlim]
- As part of a longer hadith, narrated by `Uthman (may Allah be well-pleased with him), in response to a question from Ibn `Abbas, “…when something [of the Qur’an] came down upon [the Prophet], he summoned some of those who would write, and tell them, ‘Put these verses in the surah that mentions such-and-such.'” [Ahmad, Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi, Nasai, Ibn Hibban, al-Hakim] Continue reading “Order of Verses in Surahs”
The names of the surahs are not part of the actual text of the Qur’an, nor were they written in the early mushafs. For some (but not all) surahs there are explicit narrations telling us that the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) himself used a particular name. And the narrations suggest that all the names were well-known and widely used among the Sahabah. `Allamah al-Suyuti has stated that the names of all the surahs can be found in either hadiths or aathaar (sayings of the Companions). Among these is the narration that the polytheists used to make fun of the fact that there are surahs named after the cow, the spider, etc, whereupon Allah sent down the verse meaning, “We are sufficed for you against the mockers.” [Qur’an, 15:95]