Word: koran
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...years Mohammed, with a handful of followers, struggled vainly in Mecca to convince the town leaders that there was no God but Allah. During these years he began to produce the Koran, which he said was not written by him but by God, and transmitted to him by the Angel Gabriel...
...20th Century unbelievers the Koran seems a most uneven book; ethical and religious ideas of a high order sparkle amid dreary ruminations of a desert Dorothy Dix. Yet among Mo hammed's contemporaries (and among Arabs today) the style of the Koran was considered superb...
...even to govern the people they conquered. They applied the Aylah treatment: tribute and religious freedom. In some periods, the tribute from unbelievers poured in so fast that the Caliphs were not interested a conversion. The religious leaders of Islam formed a body called the Ulema, learned in the Koran and the Sharia [law]. They tended to be manuscript-eaters, verbal hair-splitters, not a type useful in missionary work. So far as the official religious leadership was concerned, the victories of Islam might have added up to no more than an ephemeral Arab conquest...
...centuries passed, these mystical Moslems became known as sufis (from their garb of suf, or undyed wool). They were loosely organized around leaders, or saints, who sought from the Koran not learning, but direct "experience...
Three days later in Amman, its dusty capital, Jordan buried Abdullah. In his simple palace, men chanted verses from the Koran. As Abdullah's coffin was carried out to a waiting caisson, crowds of women wailed "Sayedna" (Our Master), tore their clothes and beat their bodies...