The Qur’an An Abiding Wonder
Divine Arrangement
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(a large number of copies are still available in
museums and libraries) that, amazingly, there was
not the slightest difference between one manuscript
and another. If Muslims became so alert and
sensitive to maintaining the perfection of the
Qur’an, it was because of God’s special divine
succour.
Besides this, there was another God-inspired
arrangement. That is, the unique method of
committing all of the text to memory, which came
to be practiced in the case of the Qur’an—a method
which had never before been applied to any other
book in the history of mankind. Hundreds of
thousands of people were motivated (by God) to
learn by rote the text of the Qur’an from beginning
to end. Right from the beginning of the Qur’an
down to our own day, thousands of people known
as
hafiz
(those who commit the whole Qur’an to
memory) have existed in every generation. History
tells us that there is no other book whose followers
have shown such extreme care in memorizing its
text. It was this custom of remembering the Qur’an
by heart that made its preservation possible. This
unique system was termed by a French orientalist
