Surah
Except for Surah al-Tawbah, all suwar commence with "In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful" (Arabic: بِسْمِ ٱللَّٰهِ ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ, romanized: Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem).Say, ˹O Prophet,˺ “Produce ten fabricated sûrahs like it and seek help from whoever you can—other than Allah—if what you say is true!”"[Quran 11:13] In 1938, Arthur Jeffery suggested that the name derived from the Syriac word surṭā meaning 'writing'.'revelation') as was revealed to him,[7] and Wm Theodore de Bary, an East Asian studies expert, describes that "The final process of collection and codification of the Qur'an text was guided by one over-arching principle: God's words must not in any way be distorted or sullied by human intervention.For this reason, no attempt was made to edit the numerous revelations, organize them into thematic units, or present them in chronological order...".[8] A common view is that surah of the Meccan period (i.e. pre-hijrah) are more related to themes such as resurrection, judgment, and stories from Judaism and Christianity.[9] A number of medieval Islamic writers attempted to compile a chronologically ordered list of the chapters, with differing results.As no transmitted reports dating back to the time of Muhammad or his companions exists, their works necessarily represent the opinions of scholars, and none originates before the first quarter of the 8th century.This method is of limited usefulness because the Qur'an narrates the life of Muhammad or the early history of the Muslim community only incidentally and not in detail.Tripartite chapters open with a short warning, followed by one or more narratives about unbelievers, and finally address contemporaries of Muhammad and invite them to Islam.On the other hand, Madinan verses are longer and have a distinct style of rhyming and concern to provide legislation and guidance for the Muslim community.Bell argued that passages which mentioned Islam and Muslim or implied that Muhammad's followers were a distinct community were revealed later.For example, Abdullah bin Buraydah narrated from his father, "I was sitting with the Prophet and I heard him say, 'Learn Surat ul-Baqarah, because in learning it there is blessing, in ignoring it there is sorrow, and the sorceresses cannot memorize it.Some surahs were also named according to a unique word that occurs in the chapter, such as al-Baqarah (The Cow), An-Nur (The Light), al-Nahl (The Bee), Az-Zukhruf (The Ornaments of Gold), Al-Hadid (The Iron), and Al-Ma'un (The Small Kindness).It is only a lack of consideration and analysis on our part that they seem disjointed and incoherent... Each chapter imparts a specific message as its central theme.[17]In contrast, Richard Bell describes the Qur'anic style as disjointed: Only seldom do we find in it evidence of sustained unified composition at any great length...some of the narratives especially accounts of Moses and of Abraham run to considerable length, but they tend to fall into separate incidents instead of being recounted straightforwardly...the distinctness of the separate pieces however is more obvious than their unity.Arthur J. Arberry states that the chapters in many instances, as Muslims have been recognized from the earliest times, are of a 'composite' character, holding embedded in them fragments received by Muhammad at widely differing dates.