Introduction to the Study of The Holy Quran — Page 268
268 writer was on pilgrimage to Mecca, he met the grandson of Munshi Muhammad Jamal-ud-Din Khan (who had for a number of years been Minister in Bhopal State) and he told the writer that he had succeeded in committing the Quran to memory within one month. These instances show that the text of the Quran is couched in language which lends itself easily to memorization. It has been related to the writer by very aged persons that Mirza Gul Muhammad, great grandfather of the Founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement who lived in the time of the Mughal Emperor, Alamgir II, used to maintain five hundred people at his court who knew the whole of the Quran by heart. Mirza Gul Muhammad was a chieftain who exercised authority over only two hundred and fifty square miles of territory. In some parts of India, which is a country where the Arabic language is not widely understood, it has been the practice of a majority of Muslims through the centuries to commit the Quran to memory. One of the devices adopted by Muslims for safeguarding the purity of the text of the Quran and one which has been acted upon for centuries is that children who are born blind or who lose their sight during infancy are encouraged to commit the Quran to memory. This is done out of a feeling that as a blind person is not competent to adopt a normal occupation he can turn his handicap to account by becoming a guardian of the text of the Quran. This practice is so common that in India a blind Muslim is indiscriminately given the courtesy-title of Hafiz (i. e. the guardian) meaning a person who has become the guardian of the text of the Quran by committing it to memory. During the month of Ramadan the whole of the Quran is recited aloud in the course of congregational prayers in all the principal mosques throughout the world. The Imam recites the Quran and another Hafiz stands immediately behind him and keeps watch over the accuracy of the recitation, prompting the Imam when necessary. In this manner the whole of the Quran is recited from memory during the month of Ramadan in hundreds and thousands of mosques all over the world. These are the various devices and precautions adopted by Muslims to safeguard the purity and accuracy of the text of the Quran, with the result that even the bitterest enemies of Islam have had to admit that the text of the Quran has been fully safeguarded since the time of the Holy Prophet. It can, therefore, be asserted with the utmost confidence that the Quran exists today exactly as the Holy Prophet gave it to the world. We set out below the testimony of some Western writers in this behalf: Sir William Muir in his work, The Life of Mahomet (p. xxviii) sums up his conclusion on this matter as follows: What we have, though possibly corrected by himself, is still his own… We may, upon the strongest presumption, affirm that every verse in the Quran is the genuine and unaltered composition of Mohammad himself. 342 There is otherwise every security, internal and external, that we possess the text which Mohammad himself gave forth and used. " 343