The One Who Preserves It

But the ḥāfiẓ, or the one who preserves the Qurʾān, is somebody who has memorised it by rote. In the Indian subcontinent they will usually do it in between a year and a half and two and a half years. In Mauritania they have more rigorous standards, because they have other things to learn than just rote memorisation; they usually take about four years doing it. And they do it with their children. The Arabs say: memorisation in youth is like carving in stone, and memorisation in old age is like painting on water. And one of the scholars said: it is not that the memory is gone; it is that we have got too many worries when we get older. Children do not have to worry, so it all just sticks there; whereas when one gets older, one is thinking about a lot of other things. But it is still phenomenal what we memorise.

So during these thirteen years the Qurʾān is being memorised in this way. It is also being written by the few people who know how to write it, because most of the Arabs were illiterate. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said, in a sound transmission: we are an illiterate people; we do not read and we do not calculate. So he was admitting that about his people. The Qurʾān itself says that He is the One who sent amongst the illiterates a messenger:

He recites to them His signs, and he purifies them, and he teaches them the book and wisdom, even if they were in clear error before that. So the Prophet (peace be upon him) is seen as a messenger first and foremost to the Arabs, who are an illiterate people.