Adnan Rashid – How the Quran Inspired the Islamic Civilisation #01

			This is what we will be talking about in a nutshell Sharla creating shell. So let's start from the
very beginning, you know, the, the revelation of the Quran and really the revolution of knowledge,
really when it talks about when we talk about Islamic view of reading, writing libraries and so on,
maybe let's start having a little bit of that conversation with setting the context there.
		

			Okay, first of all, Islam came with the Quran to the Arabs, right? We the Muslims believe that Islam
is an ancient way of life. It came with the very first man, the first human boom, we called Adam,
Adam Ali Salaam Alaikum. Peace be upon him. He was the father of humanity according to our belief,
right? So we believe Islam came with him. He came with the submission to God Almighty. Okay. So
Islam means submission, submission to submission to God's will. So whatever God, whatever God tells
us, we follow. We obey, right? So God has sent messengers and prophets, they came with
		

			these instructions from God to the respective people in different places at different times. So all
of that put together, we call it Islam. Then finally, Prophet Muhammad was sent with the final
message to humanity with the final word of god uncorrupted, unchanged. Okay, one uniform message,
which basically
		

			taught humanity to worship one God alone, and then follow him by that virtue because he's your God
is your Creator. He's all wise, he's all powerful. You must submit to His power, as well as his
wisdom. So he revealed the Quran to unlettered people, the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu sallam. He
had never been to a school. He was not an educated man. In our conventional terms. He never went to
a school, never went to an academy didn't see a library, okay? And he was an unlettered man couldn't
read, couldn't, couldn't read or write. And this is how the Arabs were. Predominantly, the Arabs are
an unlettered people, their culture, or the language was mainly an oral tradition. Right? They were
		

			points par excellence. They were intellectuals. They were very intelligent people no doubt, right?
They had a very strong and a very rich culture. But their language, or their linguistic tradition
was mainly oral, it wasn't really written down, it wasn't pinned down. So you can say the Quran was
the first book that was systematically penned down in the Arabic language. This is why you do not
find a book in the Arabic language before Islam. I repeat that, okay, you might find inscriptions,
you might find poetical verses inscribed on rocks from the pre Islamic period. But Quran was the
first book that was put together between two covers what we call a Codex. Okay?
		

			A collection of writings put between two covers, we call it a book, right?
		

			And in the Greek language, you would call it big loss. That's why the Bible is called the Bible.
Because the term bed loss means a book in the Greek language. Okay, so the Quran is basically a
Kitab. That's why it's called Kitab. Allah, it's called the book of Allah. So the words came down to
the prophet of Islam, Prophet Muhammad, they were revealed by God to him. And then these words were
actually written down by his direct disciples, his companions, who would receive these words from
his blasted mouth, and they would pen down these words in his presence, on parchment, on vellum, on
leather on three skins, on bones, whatever materials they had available at the time, paper was not
		

			yet invented in its current form. Of course, there were materials people were writing on, for
example, velum velum is like a membrane, you find between the meat between meat and skin of an
animal, right? It is that white membrane which was dried and used as a material to write on. Then we
had proprietary in Egypt, the Egyptians had pioneered a technology
		

			whereby they had invented the earliest form of paper you can say like it was it was quite thick as a
material and they were using
		

			this plant, they would press it and they would make paper
		

			paper out of it and they would write on it.
		

			So the Quran was the first book in the Arabic language that was pinned down, initially on different
materials and later on vellum was used that membrane that skin was used to write the Quran.
		

			And some of those copies are still around in the world in different libraries. You can see some of
the copies of the Quran that come from the first century of Islam from the very lives of the
disciples of the Prophet of Islam. sallallahu actually didn't know that the Quran was a very first
actual Arabic book.