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As I understand Muslim tradition, the words of the Koran were related to Muhammad from the angel Gabriel for over a period of some thirty years.

Many of these revelations are believed to be a few sentences but some revelations must have been paragraphs in length.

Because Muhammad was illiterate and he often received his revelations in the desert away from the company of others, he would have been unable to set up a system where he could immediately jot angel Gabriel's revelation to him on paper, prohibiting him from faithfully transmitting his received message without some margin of error.

For someone with a rather awful memory, I must at least admire Muhammad for his ability to correctly, and with 100% accuracy, repeat the revelations that were first transmitted to him.

So, my question is, for those who do not have a photographic memory, what would be the likelihood that they would be able to hear a sentence or paragraph or several paragraphs and transmit the message to another person to record (we must also consider that when Muhammad was in the desert and received a message, he must have taken a reasonably long time before reaching another Muslim, who was literate and had possession of writing materials) all of those hundreds of revelations for a period of some thirty years without a single omission, addition or other error on their part?

Should we then conclude Muhammad was gifted with a photographic memory if some analysis of this reveals the likelihood of 100% error free, faithful transmissions is absurdly low?

Time were different. The time around Muhammed was a very oral culture. Poets used to travel around passing on events, stories and the news. This was passed on from person to person. People were more used to remembering stories word by word and literally. So, I donot think you can compare it with how stories would get distorted nowadays. We are not trained anymore that way.

in addition to what FD said, which I believe is true as well.

hi EH, nice way of presenting a point of view... I do seriously respect it...
and according to my limited information I believe I can answer some of these questions, and in fact I can shoot a short answer or go through a long one .

First the short one which apparently I have been discussing with a friend few days back, is he a prophet or not? according to the Quran, Torah, Bibile Prophets do exist, and according to history no prophet was given people believe easily, they all weren't accepted by their people easily, right? although we all agree they are supported by GOD.

Anyway, it happened that he proved that he is a Prophet, his followers increased, and then whatever comes from him is accepted by his followers, right? so if I accepted (after whatever number of tests or questions performed) a prophet I will take whatever comes from him.

Ok that was the short answer .. the normal one.

it was only 23 years since Muhammed (PBUH) started receiving the message till he passed away.
you are right some of them was short and some should have been really long paragraphs, even some was discussing cases happened in their time (read the Quran, you can find them out easily),

no one mentioned that most of them was received in the desert, up to my knowledge sometimes Gabriel has visited him while he is in the company of one or some of his friends (EX: Othman Bin Affan) and he used to write what prophet asks him to write.

Taking into consideration that, 1st: some ppl do have a very very strong memory (I have met some myself), so I won't be surprised if a prophet and his friends and followers have a great memory as well.

I feel it will take me long paragraphs :s, I just want to add something, the Quran when it was received by Muhammed (PBUH) wasn't in the same arrangement that we have today ( r u surprised ) and when the last sentence of it was received by Muhammed (PBUH) Gabriel recited it to him with the final arrangement for sometime I guess, then Muhammed himself recited it on his followers a couple of times (anyone can correct me if I missed something), then the Quran itself was collected and grouped into a single book few years after Muhammed (PBUH) death.

What's interesting is the possibility of just one error.

For instance, Mahmoud, if you were read a paragraph and expected to recite it word for word after hearing it, do you believe you could faithfully repeat what you were recited with 100% accuracy?

I would assume, even if you could remember the details of every line, there would be some paraphrasing in there.

I'm not sure people remembered better during Muhammad's day. I believe people remembered more often, but that is because they spent more time reciting what they were told. Without television or the internet, they certainly had more time on their hands for memorization. And without technology, they also had a need to memorize that we do not have today. But while people memorized more during Muhammad's time, I believe that was a result of more time spent memorizing than an acquired ability to recall new material they heard for the first time.

I agree 100% with ur point EH, if we are talking about ordinary ppl, but we are talking about a Prophet from GOD ( at least from my point of view, I wish u understand this).

so the possibility that something might be missed or forgotten doesn't really exist in the matter of the Quran, coz its the core of the message.

and when I see people in todays time (kids from 7 to 10, and up to 70 years) and can recite the whole Quran (about 600 pages) without a book, I can easily believe they did even more than we can imagine in the past with all the facts that u and FD stated.

event horizon wrote:Should we then conclude Muhammad was gifted with a photographic memory if some analysis of this reveals the likelihood of 100% error free, faithful transmissions is absurdly low?

You can conclude what ever the F*** you want

zubber wrote:

event horizon wrote:Should we then conclude Muhammad was gifted with a photographic memory if some analysis of this reveals the likelihood of 100% error free, faithful transmissions is absurdly low?

You can conclude what ever the F*** you want

Unfortunately, some who call themselves Muslim do not literally believe in any miraculous events described in the Koran. If Muhammad's faithful transmission of what was revealed to him from Gabriel is understood as being miraculous by most Muslims, then how do these other Muslims explain Muhammad's amazing memorization skills?

Was he basically the Dustin Hoffman character in Rainman?

But that's only a minor matter compared to how they interpret the existence of an angel who reveals to Muhammad the Koran.

I thinks it's called Chinese Whispers!

In the game variously known as Chinese whispers,[1] Telephone, Grapevine, Broken Telephone, Whisper Down the Lane, Gossip, Le téléphone arabe (French for "Arab Phone"),[citation needed] Stille Post (German for "Silent Post"), Gioco del Telefono (Italian for "Telephone Game"), Telefono senza fili (Italian for "Cordless Phone"), Telefone sem fio (Portuguese for "Cordless Phone"), Głuchy Telefon (Polish for "Dumb Telephone") and Pass the Message, the first player whispers a phrase or sentence to the next player. Each player successively whispers what that player believes he or she heard to the next. The last player announces the statement to the entire group. Errors typically accumulate in the retellings, so the statement announced by the last player differs significantly, and often amusingly, from the one uttered by the first. The game is often played by children as a party game or in the playground. It is often invoked as a metaphor for cumulative error, especially the inaccuracies as rumours or gossip spread,[2] or, more generally, for the unreliability of human recollection.

-- Sun May 15, 2011 2:02 am --

zubber wrote:

event horizon wrote:Should we then conclude Muhammad was gifted with a photographic memory if some analysis of this reveals the likelihood of 100% error free, faithful transmissions is absurdly low?

You can conclude what ever the F*** you want

Intelligent input Zubber.

Well that's just the result of faith. Christians don't have a problem thinking that the Bible is the book that God wants them to have despite being fallible. Presumably the Bible isn't infallible as there are minor inconsistancies where two different books in the Bible discuss the same thing.

It's just a matter of faith that Muslims take the Quran as infallible and believe it didn't get changed in the 25 or so years since the first verses were revealed up until the verses were compiled into one volume. A person who doesn't belong to the Muslim faith would naturally be skeptical of this belief. A lot could happen in 25 years.

blueshift wrote:Well that's just the result of faith. Christians don't have a problem thinking that the Bible is the book that God wants them to have despite being fallible. Presumably the Bible isn't infallible as there are minor inconsistancies where two different books in the Bible discuss the same thing.

It's just a matter of faith that Muslims take the Quran as infallible and believe it didn't get changed in the 25 or so years since the first verses were revealed up until the verses were compiled into one volume. A person who doesn't belong to the Muslim faith would naturally be skeptical of this belief. A lot could happen in 25 years.

Why don't Muslims question anything? They seem to believe everything they are drip fed even if it doesn't stand up.

blueshift wrote:Well that's just the result of faith. Christians don't have a problem thinking that the Bible is the book that God wants them to have despite being fallible. Presumably the Bible isn't infallible as there are minor inconsistancies where two different books in the Bible discuss the same thing.

It's just a matter of faith that Muslims take the Quran as infallible and believe it didn't get changed in the 25 or so years since the first verses were revealed up until the verses were compiled into one volume. A person who doesn't belong to the Muslim faith would naturally be skeptical of this belief. A lot could happen in 25 years.

Not only that, but it's interesting to imagine how Muhammad could have correctly transmitted what was dictated to him by Gabriel to another Muslim....ignoring everything you said.

That's like reading all the posts in this thread, going for a ten minute walk, and coming back to tell me, exactly, what everyone wrote.

Given that the Prophet Muhammad, pbuh, was illiterate (could not read) and that the Quran was an aural (spoken) revelation (and indeed, Quran, literally means 'recitation' or 'that which is recited widely') - the question should be whether the Prophet Muhammad, pbuh, could remember exactly the revelations from God received via the angel Gabriel.

Whether one believes the Prophet, pbuh, had perfect memory (when it came to the Quran) or not is a probably going to be down to what your prior beliefs are, whether you're willing to look at the evidence.

The manner of the revelation - piece by piece, line by line - and the fact the verses and chapters were recited daily and memorised by those listening, and the fact that the whole Quran was recited every Ramadhan (many times) - does show that the process of memorisation and checking was not a one-shot deal. The Quran was revealed over a period and each revelation was memorised and also written down (but the primary record was the memorisation - written records were checked against oral recitations)

The fact that children and hundreds of millions of people around the world remember the Quran from start to finish without error, shows that it is not a super-human feat to accurately remember the Quran.

This fact has a lot to do with the fulfilment of the unique prophecy in the Quran - it is the only Scripture in which God says He will protect the scripture from change - all other scriptures contain Divine warnings and punishments for those who DO change the (earlier) scriptures. The Quran contains no such warning or punishment - just a guarantee by God that He will maintain the integrity of the Quran.

Cheers,
Shafique

Unsurprisingly, the actual attempt to address the question was avoided and some cheesy talking points were given instead.

For those unable to comprehend the written word the first time around, the question is; what is the likelihood that Muhammad could 100% faithfully transmit what was recited to him by Gabriel to someone else?

Try it yourself, have someone read a paragraph from a book to you and recite what was read to the reader a minute later. See how accurate you are.

It's worth repeating for those who sat in the cheap seats at the Bible camp 'let's learn some misinformation about Islam' course:

The fact that children and hundreds of millions of people around the world remember the Quran from start to
finish without error, shows that it is not a super-human feat to accurately remember the Quran.

Cheers,
Shafique

absolutely, and many of them aren't especially gifted either...Just pure clean will and intention to memorize it do the trick for everyone and most of them memorize it spotless within 5 years at most, compare that with 23 years of deliverance to the prophet...People also forget that prophets are chosen and favorite servants(souls) of Allah before even they arrived to the world so they must have naturally/physically/characteristicly/mentally and intellectualy been prepared to receive and ricite verses and guide whichever tribes/people they were sent for...

why do I have the feeling that, Gabriel has visited u EH and u don't remember anything, thats why u brought it up
I understood ur point at the first point, the rest: "what do u want to say?" u r just repeating...

Bethsmum wrote:Why don't Muslims question anything? They seem to believe everything they are drip fed even if it doesn't stand up.

I do when anyone tells me anything about religion, I stop him and firmly say, what is your source? and is there a comparison between this situation and another? even if he is an Imam, if he doesn't provide the sources i am asking about, i close my ears...

Berrin wrote:absolutely, and many of them aren't especially gifted either...Just pure clean will and intention to memorize it do the trick for everyone and most of them memorize it spotless within 5 years at most, compare that with 23 years of deliverance to the prophet...People also forget that prophets are chosen and favorite servants(souls) of Allah before even they arrived to the world so they must have naturally/physically/characteristicly/mentally and intellectualy been prepared to receive and ricite verses and guide whichever tribes/people they were sent for...

The reason that you lot can recite the Koran from start to finish is that you are drip fed it 24/7 from being children. Children should not be sent to classes and have Islam thrown at them, they hearts and minds should be allowed to run free. Thats the reason you breed so many fanatics.

It's absurd to think Muhammad was some sort of super human. There's no way he could have remembered anything said to him word for word. After all wasn't he entertaining children during this period?

Aisha was the daughter of Muhammad's close friend Abu Bakr. She was initially betrothed to Jubayr ibn Mut'im, a Muslim whose father, though pagan, was friendly to the Muslims. When Khawlah bint Hakim suggested that Muhammad marry Aisha after the death of Muhammad's first wife (Khadijah), the previous agreement regarding marriage of Aisha with ibn Mut'im was put aside by common consent.[10] Aisha was six years old when betrothed to Muhammad.[10][14][15] She stayed in her parents' home until the age of nine or ten, when the marriage was consummated in Medina.[15][16][17][18] with the single exception of al-Tabari, who records that she was ten.[14] Some modern Islamic writers have disagreed with these sources, such as Ahmadiyya leader Maulana Muhammad Ali who wrote in the first half of the 20th century that "there is not the least doubt that Aisha was at least nine or ten years of age at the time of betrothal, and fourteen or fifteen years at the time of marriage.[19][20] Both Aisha and Sawda, his two wives, were given apartments adjoined to the Al-Masjid al-Nabawi mosque.[21]

You lot can't even agree what his marital arrangements were so how can you rely on anything from that period?

HI BM, H r u.
why do I feel like we are talking about something from the midway, for us we have heard the whole stories, with explanations, from the time of Muhammed (PBUH) childhood, to the time of his death, so it kinda make sense to us.

some ppl didn't hear any of the stories, so they start arguing about something in the middle, putting a side the fact that, the time Muhammed (PBUH) received the message he was in a community where they had customs, and I believe the worst of their time, and Islam didn't transform these customs over a night, but sometimes it took over years to change it,

So there is a sequence, there is preparations, and I agree we all had questions of how and why? I don't remember my parents were feeding me much.

anyway the point is, the questions in religion matters are endless in a way, so reading more is just helping to understand.

Berrin wrote:absolutely, and many of them aren't especially gifted either...Just pure clean will and intention to memorize it do the trick for everyone and most of them memorize it spotless within 5 years at most, compare that with 23 years of deliverance to the prophet...People also forget that prophets are chosen and favorite servants(souls) of Allah before even they arrived to the world so they must have naturally/physically/characteristicly/mentally and intellectualy been prepared to receive and ricite verses and guide whichever tribes/people they were sent for...

Berrin, I'm not asking if Muhammad could memorize the Koran if he sat down and spent months memorizing. I was asking if a person can flawlessly recite what is told to them the first time. Those people are able to process information they are reading into their long term memory.

For Muhammad, specifically, tradition says that angel Gabriel revealed the Koran to Muhammad piece by piece. So, it would be like if I were to appear to you on any random day and read you a line or even a few paragraphs and for you to run to the nearest pen and paper and write everything I said to you without forgetting anything.

Now, perhaps angel Gabriel hung out in this dimension and was kind enough to repeat what he revealed to Muhammad until he got everything right. That's a possibility but not something I can picture an angel doing.

But Mahmoud is right, I guess I will be repeating myself. I was curious to hear any non-supernatural reasons involving Muhammad's excellent short term memory.

Berrin wrote:absolutely, and many of them aren't especially gifted either...Just pure clean will and intention to memorize it do the trick for everyone and most of them memorize it spotless within 5 years at most, compare that with 23 years of deliverance to the prophet...

Good points Berrin.

The interesting thing is that the Quranic verses were revealed over 23 years - and as the new verses were revealed, the Muslims would memorise the new verses and spread them wide (and primarily by memory, as not everyone could read). At that pace, it is even less 'super-human' a feat - but rather something that is quite understandable.


There was a self-correcting mechanism built in - with the multiple redundancies built in and a hard re-set every Ramadhan when the Angel Gabriel would recite again all the verses previously revealed (up to that point).

One of the wonders of the Quran, is the ease with which verses can be memorised - and memorised without mistake.

A comparison I sometimes use is the way we all remember the words to our favourite songs - just from repetition.

Cheers,
Shafique

That would be a great experiment to perform - pull random people off the street, read them passages of various lengths and then have them repeat what they heard to measure how much they were able to recite and with what degree of accuracy these passages were recited.

It's just strange that tradition doesn't tell us of Muhammad's great ability to recall information with 100% accuracy...outside of his ability to recall what Gabriel revealed to him.

This study on short term memory just shows what kind of an amazing short term memory Muhammad was blessed with:

Procedure: A lab experiment was conducted. Participants had to recall trigrams (three letters, eg. TGH). To prevent rehersal participants were asked to count backwards in threes from a specified number. This is known as the brown peterson technique.

Participants were asked to recall the trigram after intervals of either 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds.

Findings: The longer the interval delay the less trigrams were recalled. Participants were able to recall 80% of trigrams after a 3 seconds delay. However, after 18 seconds less than 10% of trigrams were recalled correctly.

Conclusion: Short-term memory has a limited duraction when rehersal is prevented. It is thought that this information is lost from short-term memory from trace decay. The results of the study also show the short-term memory is different from long-term memory in terms of duration. Thus supporting the multi-store model of memory.

Criticisms: This experiment has low ecological validity as people do not try to recall trigrams in real life.

http://www.simplypsychology.org/peterson-peterson.html

^It would indeed be interesting to try the experiment with Quranic verses and native Arabic speakers.

Tony Buzan etc all have great techniques to improve and use our natural abilities of recall. The ease of which Quranic verses can be memorised by even non-Arabic speakers is another extra-ordinary feature of the Quran!

Great thread eh.

Cheers,
Shafique

Great thread eh

Only because you are replying to EH's posts! LOL
It was only 3 days ago you were claiming he was on your 'foe list' and you wouldn't answer any of his posts! I knew you weren't big enough to resist!

Let's face it! If you didn't repy to EH, you would be preaching at yourself for the majority of the time!

Another interesting fact on the subject of perfect recall of long texts - in William Dalrymple's book 'Nine Lives' he recounts the experience of the reciters of epic Hindu poems (which are multiple times longer than the Quran) and how they manage this feat. He pointed out that it was easier for the illiterate story tellers to remember the stories faultlessly, and that when some storytellers were taught to read and consult the Sanskrit texts, their recall suffered.

With its hundred thousand slokas, the Mahabharata is fifteen times the length of the Bible. My friend had asked the bard how he could possibly remember it all. The minstrel replied that, in his mind, each stanza was written on a pebble. The pile of pebbles lay before him always; all he had to do was remember the order in which they were arranged and to ‘read’ from one pebble after another.
...
Given all this, it seemed extraordinary to find in modern Rajasthan performers who were still the guardians of an entire oral culture. Apart from anything else, I longed to know how the bhopas, who were invariably simple villagers, shepherds, cowherds and so on, often illiterate, could remember such colossal quantities of verse....
...
I asked whether the bhopas were illiterate. Milman Parry had found in Yugoslavia that this was the one essential condition for preserving an oral epic. It was the ability of the bard to read, rather than changes in the tastes of his audience, that sounded the death knell for the oral tradition. Just as the blind can develop a heightened sense of hearing, smell and touch to compensate for their loss of vision, so it seems that the illiterate have a capacity to remember in a way that the literate simply do not. It was not lack of interest, but literacy itself, that was killing the oral epic.

This had also been the conclusion of the great Indian folklorist Komal Kothari. In the 1950s, Kothari came up with the idea of sending one of his principal sources, a singer from the Langa caste named Lakha, to adult education classes. The idea was that he would learn to read and write, thus making it easier to collect the many songs he had preserved. But soon Kothari noticed that Lakha needed to consult his diary before he began to sing, while the rest of the Langa singers were able to remember hundreds of songs – an ability that Lakha had somehow begun to lose as he slowly learned to write.

[From Ch4: Singer of Epics - Kindle version (so no pg numbers, sorry)]

Cheers,
Shafique

It's amazing how someone could misunderstand the actual question so profoundly.

I suppose it is an admission over the unlikeliness for anyone short of having a photographic memory to be able to do what Muhammad is alleged to have accomplished.

so, Did Moses speak with GOD, split the sea, convert a stick to a snake, etc...?
were Jesus able to do all this http://www.aboutbibleprophecy.com/miracles.htm ?
Did Ibrahim survive from the fire?
Did Soliman speake the animals language?
Did Younis stay in the stomach of the whale?
Did Marry born Jesus without being touched?

coz all researches done in the past 798403 years proved that can't happen

count this on, watch this video...

event horizon wrote:It's amazing how someone could misunderstand the actual question so profoundly.

I suppose it is an admission over the unlikeliness for anyone short of having a photographic memory to be able to do what Muhammad is alleged to have accomplished.

Blimey..Why do you keep talking about visual/photographic memory, when we are talking about echoic/auditory/phonetic memory...In this case there are two different types of memorising right.
Since the prophet was illiterate we can only estimate that angel gabriel's method was focusing on the phonetic memory as the arabic language was his only strength to work on..

-- Mon May 16, 2011 3:10 pm --

Eh as I was reading on this memory thingy I came across these people hearing voices in their head..If you experience that alone or if you get to know someone of that type then pls let us know how it feels scientifically..

http://scienceblog.com/cms/can-hearing- ... 11488.html

Berrin, 'photographic' memory is more of a euphemism that means being able to retain all information that enters the brain into long term memory.

I suppose that's why it is currently referred to as eidetic memory since 'photographic' may be misleading to some.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory

Since the prophet was illiterate we can only estimate that angel gabriel's method was focusing on the phonetic memory as the arabic language was his only strength to work on..

I'm curious what Muslim tradition says about that. I understand Gabriel's visists are where he manifests from nowhere, transmists a message to Muhammad and exits this dimension.

Do you believe it's possible or likely that during his visits, Gabriel repeated his messages to Muhammad enough times for Muhammad to absorb the material, enabling Muhammad to recall it with perfect accuracy anywhere from a minute to an hour later to be recorded by someone else?

Mahmoud04 wrote:so, Did Moses speak with GOD, split the sea, convert a stick to a snake, etc...?
were Jesus able to do all this http://www.aboutbibleprophecy.com/miracles.htm ?
Did Ibrahim survive from the fire?
Did Soliman speake the animals language?
Did Younis stay in the stomach of the whale?
Did Marry born Jesus without being touched?

coz all researches done in the past 798403 years proved that can't happen

Of course, if Muslims believe these were miracles, then Muhammad would not need a photographic memory or for angel Gabriel to rehearse with Muhammad for, perhaps, half an hour or longer, during each visitation to ensure Muhammad processed all the information he received.

But I was asking for explanations from people who do not believe Muhammad's recall ability to have been miraculous. I don't have a problem with Muslims if they believe this was miraculous, but I think Muslims who do not believe in a miraculous explanation need to explain how Muhammad was able to recite what he heard, ranging from a few sentences to entire paragraphs, from short term memory.

i see your point EH, its not for me then but did u watch the above video....

For a start you might actually want to look up what a photographic memory is, as clearly you don't really have an idea.

Photographic memory is being able to remember precisely what you SEE, not what you HEAR, that would be auditory memory. Duh!