What is it that repeats in history?

One of the stops to which the quest to understand the Qur'an better, indeed to understand it in the most correct way, like those who were the first addressees of the revelation, leads is to read it according to the order in which its verses were revealed. For this purpose, translations and exegeses arranged according to the order of revelation have formed a literature of their own. In addition to exegeses and translations, each as valuable as the next, such as İzzet Derveze's Et-Tefsirü'l-Hadis: Nüzul Sırasına Göre Kur'an Tefsiri (Ekin Yayınları), Mehmet Ali Baltaşı's İlk Mesajlar, and Tuncer Namlı's Kur'an Aydınlığı: Kronolojik Kur'an Mesajı (Fecr Yayınları), Muhammed Abid el Cabiri's "Fehmü'l Kur'an: Nüzul Sırasına Göre Tefsir," recently published by Mana Yayınları, is one of the fine examples of the effort to understand the Qur'an in the company of the sira.

Undoubtedly, as a way of understanding the sira of our Prophet, rethinking the Qur'an according to the order of revelation is very meaningful and, besides giving the most effective and soundest knowledge historically, it is very valuable for being able to feel anew today the living dialogue between the Prophet and his companions' lived experiences and the Qur'an. This enables both a better understanding of the Qur'an and of the experience of the Prophet and his companions, who represented it in the most ideal manner within a human life.

However, even the productivity of this way of reading raises all the more the question of why the Qur'an was arranged not according to the order in which it was revealed but according to the form we have at hand. Moreover, according to the view accepted as the most authentic, this arrangement too is tawqifi, that is, derived from revelation; it is not random or the result of an ijtihad of the Prophet (pbuh).

Since this is so, would there be any meaning in insisting on reading according to the order of revelation? Of course; there is nothing that forbids reading according to the order of revelation or following that order, and moreover the benefits of such following for understanding the spirit of the sira are beyond dispute. Of course, this is on the condition that an alternative arrangement based on the order of revelation is not substituted. The alternative would mean ignoring a decision given again by the Owner of the revelation, that is, again by a revelation.

But we touched on another idea behind reading according to the order of revelation. That is the idea of reliving or feeling anew the experience of the birth of a Muslim community around the Qur'an. At that point we stopped and asked this: What are we repeating, and how are we repeating it? Is following the Sunnah a repetition? How can an experience be repeated in the same way by others?

It is a fact that history is a repetition. But one must not imagine that this repetition occurs in accordance with the story in our minds. What is it that repeats in history? And what is this repetition that we can see repeating in the Sunnah, and which therefore we too must take part in?

In fact, the Qur'an refers, one after another, to the stories of many prophets and righteous people. All of them have very different experiences, different conditions, different problems, histories and social environments. But in all of them attention is drawn to a dimension that is experienced in common, that repeats. In the experience of every one of them there is a struggle against jahiliyya, against servitude to fellow human beings. The dialogues that take place in this struggle resemble one another closely enough to give a feeling of repetition. But at the same time, in every period of history servitude to fellow human beings is a continually repeating tendency of humankind. Jahiliyya, which gives rise to servitude to fellow human beings, and all its characteristics are seen everywhere in history and in the world. The struggle waged against them also repeats itself in the history of the struggle of all the prophets, but in different biographies and different lives.

That is why, in the life of the Prophet, which we are trying to understand today through the order of revelation of the Qur'anic verses, we see that the verses of the Qur'an constantly bring examples from the struggles of earlier prophets in very different histories. It invites us to travel the earth and, knowing what the earlier peoples experienced and what befell them, to take a lesson for our own experiences. The mistakes of earlier peoples, Christians, Jews or polytheists, are not mentioned as past behaviors that will never be repeated. They are recounted because the possibility of repeating the same mistakes will never disappear. In other words, Muslims have no guarantee simply by virtue of being Muslim. Everyone has the disposition to make the same mistakes.

Behind reading according to the order of revelation there can also be a desire to live, to repeat, the Prophet's experience one to one. The assumption that leads to this is that the world we live in too has returned to the beginning and requires the revelation of a Qur'an anew and from the start. Revival, nahda, ihya require this. There is a lack of faith, and the foundations of faith must first be laid with the Meccan surahs. Then one must walk step by step to Medina, accompanied by the verses revealed in Medina.

Yet one of the wisdoms behind this arrangement of the Qur'an, decided by a divine determination, God knows best, is the fact that an experience in this form can never be experienced in the same way anywhere else. There is surely something that repeats in all human experiences, but this repetition is not the repetition of the things we consider important or identify in our minds. It is revelation, in fact, that tells us what repeats. Just as it shows, with its verses, to the Prophet and to us what repeats in all the different historical experiences.

Following the Sunnah is of course an expression of the desire to repeat the Prophet's experience, to take part in that experience. But one must also see well what really repeats within this experience. One must reflect on the things that repeat and that we too must repeat, that we are in fact already repeating by taking part.

It is impossible for the experience that the Prophet and his companions lived from Mecca toward Medina to be repeated again in the same way. Just as it is impossible for the experiences that Prophet Moses lived with Pharaoh and on the path of liberating the Children of Israel to be repeated in the same way. Or just as the life stories of Prophet Noah, Prophet Solomon, Prophet Shuayb, Prophet Joseph or all the others are unique, singular, unrepeatable. But within each unique experience one must see well, understand well, what it is that repeats to which the Qur'an draws attention.

After the revelation of the Qur'an the world is no longer the old world; it is a world that has been intervened upon by the Qur'an, and there is neither a possibility nor a point in turning things back to the beginning.