This opening chapter of The Quran, the Fatiah, is central in Islamic prayer. It contains the essence of The Quran and is recited during every prayer.
The Qur'an claims that it has been created miraculously as a revelation from Allah (God), as a perfect copy of what was written in heaven and existed there from all eternity. Therefore the verses of the book are referred to as ayat, which also means "a miracle" in the Arabic language. It is believed that the Qur'an as we know it today, is the same as was revealed to Muhammad in the year 610. The Qur'an itself gives an open challenge for anyone who denies its claimed divine origin to produce a text like it.
The miracles in the Qur’an can be classified into three distinct categories: inimitability, scientific miracles and prophecies.
Muslims believe that the speech in the Qur'an is like a rhymed pattern, which is characterized by the assonance at the end of the verses.
Islam holds that the Qur’an was revealed to Muhammad by the angel Jibrīl (Gabriel) from 610 CE to his death in 632 CE.
Such terms include kitāb (“book”); āyah (“sign”); and sūrah (“scripture”). The latter two terms also denote units of revelation. Other related words are: dhikr, meaning "remembrance," used to refer to the Qur’an in the sense of a reminder and warning; and hikma, meaning “wisdom”, sometimes referring to the revelation or part of it
The Qur’an has many other names. Among those found in the text itself are al-furqan (“discernment” or “criterion”), al-huda (“"the guide”), dhikrallah (“the remembrance of God”), al-hikmah (“the wisdom”), and kalamallah (“the word of God”). Another term is al-kitāb (“the book”), though it is also used in the Arabic language for other scriptures, such as the Torah and the Gospels. The term mus'haf ("written work") is often used to refer to particular Qur'anic manuscripts but is also used in the Qur’an to identify earlier revealed books.
Not one word of its 114 chapters, Suras, has been changed over the centuries, so that the Quran is in every detail the unique and miraculous text which was revealed to Muhammad fourteen centuries ago.
