TAWAFUQ: A MIRACLE OF THE QUR’AN VISIBLE TO THE EYE

1. Introduction

The greatest miracle of Prophet Muhammad (Peace be Upon Him - PBUH), is the All-Wise Qur’an. In the Twenty Fifth Word, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi has pointed out forty aspects of its miraculousness. Moreover, he said: “we intended to show the aspect, one of the forty aspects of Qur’an’s miraculousness, which can be seen with the eyes, and only one sort of the ten sorts of that kind of miraculousness, on the patterns of the Qur’an” [1]. This sort of miraculousness pertaining to the patterns of the Qur’an is named as “tawafuq” which can be defined as “the coinciding of occurrences among seemingly disconnected and random events, that reveal evident patterns of a higher pre-determined arrangement by the Creator displaying His deliberate will and intent in the arrangement and correspondence.” Bediuzzaman was the first to discover and demonstrate the miracle of tawafuq in the patterns of the Qur’an. In this article, after a concise history of the All-Wise Qur'an, the miracle of tawafuq discovered by Bediuzzaman will be explained briefly.

2. Revelation and Arrangement of the All-Wise Qur’an

The revelation of the Qur’an started with the first verses brought by Jibreel (Gabriel) (PBUH) in 610 and continued for 23 years until the passing of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in 632. As the verses of the Qur’an were sent down, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) memorized them himself, communicated them to other people, and called some of the companions and made them write down the revelation. Those companions who wrote the revelation were called revelation scribes and were assigned by Prophet Muhammad. They wrote the revealed verses on various materials such as leather, bone, parchment, etc. Moreover, the society during that period was predominantly oral, and the revealed verses were widely memorized by the companions [2].

The Holy Quran was revealed gradually. The first revealed verses are the first five verses of 96th Surah (Chapter). As the different verses from different suras were revealed, Jibreel (PBUH) would inform which surah they belonged to and their sequence in the surah [3]. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) memorized and trained his companions in this way. Every year in the month of Ramadan, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and Jibreel (PBUH) recited mutually all the verses revealed thus far. Especially the last mutual recitation in the Ramadan of the year in which Prophet Muhammad passed away took place twice, and the Holy Qur'an took its final form [4].

Qur'an, whose layout was determined in the last recitation, was scribed and memorized by many companions, named as “hafez – keeper and memorizer of Qur’an”. During the period of Caliph Abu Bakr some of hafez were martyred in the battle of Yamama and in some other wars, which gave the need to gather the verses of the Quran and compile them between two covers. Caliph Abu Bakr charged this important task to Zayd ibn Thabit. Zayd ibn Thabit and the members of the delegation gathered all the written verses of the Qur'an, and taking also the final recitation into account, they wrote down all the verses. Thus, the Qur'an was
gathered completely with the help of written materials and memorization, and this compilation between the two covers was called "Mushaf" [5].

The increase in the number of muslims during the period of Caliph Uthman and their spread across a wide geography resulted in the need for the first Mushaf to be reproduced and sent to certain centers. The duty of reproduction was completed by a delegation of approximately twelve people, again chaired by Zayd ibn Thabit, between the years 646 and 651. Seven copies of the Mushaf, which were reproduced at the end of this study, were sent to Mecca, Kufa, Basra, Damascus, Yemen and Bahrain, and one copy was left in Medina [6].
The copies in the hands of the Muslims today were taken from Mushafs of Caliph Uthman or those copied from them. In the following periods, with the revival of science and art, the activities of reproduction of Qur’an began to increase rapidly. Number of scribes who wrote Mushaf multiplied and the art of writing gained an Islamic identity by rapid development and transformation. Mushafs were written in different styles with different page layouts. An example Mushaf with 11 lines per page is presented in Figure 1, and another example with 13 lines per page is shown in Figure 2

 

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