48 Preface وَما كُنتَ تَتلو مِن قَبلِهِ مِن كِتابٍ وَلا تَخُطُّهُ بِيَمينِكَ ۖ إِذًا لَارتابَ المُبطِلونَYusuf AliAnd thou wast not (able) to recite a Book before this (Book came), nor art thou (able) to transcribe it with thy right hand:1 In that case, indeed, would the talkers of vanities have doubted.The Holy Prophet was not a learned man. Before the Qur-ān was revealed to him, he never claimed to proclaim a Message from God. He was not in the habit of preaching eloquent truths as from a Book, before he received his Revelations, nor was he able to write or transcribe with his own hand. If he had had these worldly gifts, there would have been some plausibility in the charge of the talkers of vanities that he spoke not from inspiration but from other people’s books, or that he composed the beautiful verses of the Qur-ān himself and committed them to memory in order to recite them to people. The circumstance in which the Qur-ān came bear their own testimony to its truth as from God.