32 Preface وَقالَ الَّذينَ كَفَروا لَولا نُزِّلَ عَلَيهِ القُرآنُ جُملَةً واحِدَةً ۚ كَذٰلِكَ لِنُثَبِّتَ بِهِ فُؤادَكَ ۖ وَرَتَّلناهُ تَرتيلًاYusuf AliThose who reject Faith say: “Why is not the Qur-ān revealed to him all at once? Thus (is it revealed), that We may strengthen thy heart1 thereby, and We have rehearsed it to thee in slow, well-arranged stages, gradually.Three reasons are given for the gradual revelation of the Qur-ān. (1) “To strengthen thy heart': the tremendous task of winning the Arab nation, and, through them, the whole world, to Islam, required superhuman patience, constancy, and firmness, and these qualities were strengthened by the gradual promulgation of solutions to each difficulty as it arose. (2) “Slow, well-arranged stages”: though the stages were gradual, as the occasion demanded from time to time, in the course of twenty-three years, the whole emerged, when completed, as a well-arranged scheme of spiritual instruction, as we have seen in following the arrangement of the Sūras. (3) Questions put and answers given: see next note.