said that the angel Gabriel appeared to him and commanded him to recite (96:1-19). From that point on, Muhammad received revelations up to the time of his death, 23 years later in 632. In these encounters with the angel Gabriel, sometimes Muhammad would see the angel, other times he would only hear him, and at others he only heard the sound of a bell through which the words of the angel came. Since Muhammad could not read or write, his companions wrote down what he said. These recitations were copied onto a variety of materials: papyrus, flat stones, palm leaves, shoulder blades and ribs of animals, pieces of leather and wooden boards.1 Additionally, these sayings were also being memorized by Mohammad's followers. In fact, to this day, great emphasis is placed upon memorizing the entire Qur'an and there are many thousands of Muslims who have committed it to memory. The work is roughly the same size as the New Testament. Apparently, there was no attempt made to collect all of the savings given by Muhammad during his lifetime. After all, Mohammad was continuing to give ' recitations' on a somewhat regular basis. But, after he died in 632, Abu-Bakr, Muhammad's father in law, became the caliph (religious leader of the Muslims) and there was a small effort to collect the fragments of Qur'anic sayings into a common place. But, it wasn't until the fourth leader of Islam, Caliph Uthman, that the whole Qur'an was finally assemble, approved, and disseminated throughout the Muslim world. The Koran also contains many biblical figures (Abraham, David, Moses, and Jesus) as well as non-biblical figures. However, some of the accounts of biblical characters are different than the Bible. The Koran is divided into 114 chapters, called Surah's. The word surah means "row". Today the Koran is arranged with the longer surah's first and the shorter ones after. To with the whole thing that divided into 30 approximately equal l...
