history of the world. A complete change was wrought in the lives of a whole nation in an incredibly short time — a period of no more than twenty-three years. The Holy Qur’ān found the Arabs worshippers of idols, unhewn stones, trees and heaps of sand, yet in less than a quarter of a century the worship of the One God ruled the whole land and idolatry had been wiped out from one end of the country to the other. It swept all superstitions before it and, in their place, gave the most rational religion the world could dream of. The Arab who had been wont to pride himself on his ignorance transformed into the lover of knowledge, drinking deep at every fountain of learning to which he could gain access. And this was directly the effect of the teaching of the Holy Qur’ān, which not only appealed to reason, ever and again, but declared man’s thirst for knowledge to be insatiable. And along with superstition went the deepest vices of the Arab, and in their place the Holy Book put a burning desire for the best and noblest deeds in the service of humanity. Yet it was not the transformation of the individual alone that the Holy Qur’ān had accomplished; equally was it a transformation of the family, of society, of the very nation itself. From the warring elements of the Arab race, it welded a nation, united and full of life and vigour, before whose onward march the greatest kingdoms of the world crumbled as if they had been but toys before the reality of the new faith. Thus the Holy Qur’ān effected a transformation of humanity itself — a transformation material as well as moral, an awakening intellectual as well as spiritual. There is no other book which has brought about a change so miraculous in the lives of men.
To this position of the Holy Qur’ān in world literature, testimony is borne by even the most biased European writers:
“The style of the Koran is generally beautiful and fluent … and in many places, especially where the majesty and attributes of God are described, sublime and magnificent … He succeeded so well, and so strangely captivated the minds of his audience, that several of his opponents thought it the effect of withcraft and enchantment”.47
47 Sale, Preliminary Discourse, p. 48.