Amajur Quran

[Herodoto Tenk]

Thisarticle examines the transmission history of the Quran. The perfect preservation of the Quran is an article of faith for most schools and sects of Islam and figures highly in the beliefs of Muslims around the divine nature of their religion. Orthodox Islamic scholars argue that the Qur'an today is identical to that received by Prophet Muhammad. This contention however is challenged both by parts of the Islamic tradition itself and the findings of modern scholarship.

Before Caliph Uthman standardised the Quranic consonantal text (QCT) around 650 CE, large numbers of variants later documented by Muslim scholars were read by various companions of Muhammad, often differing in whole words and phrases. Academic experts have found material support for such reports in some of the oldest Quran manuscripts. There are also hadith reports that substantial numbers of verses had already been lost. The fear of permanently losing verses is said to have motivated the initial collection of the Qur'an under Caliph Abu Bakr. Notwithstanding a number of scribal errors during the initial copying process, Uthman was essentially successful in stabilising the QCT, or rasm. However, due to limitations in the early stage of Arabic orthography in use at that time, a wide variety of oral readings (qira'at) within this standardised rasm was possible. This continued until the oral readings too were stabilised over centuries and orthography developed to more fully document them. Tens of thousands of variants are attributed to readers of the first couple of centuries, which include Muhammad's companions and early reciters, within and outside the standard rasm, besides those found in the ten canonical readings and their transmitters. The vast majority of recitation and printed Qurans in use today are based on the transmission of Hafs from the reading of 'Asim.

The textual and oral transmission history of the Quran are interconnected. As discussed in this article, standardisation first occured in the written consonantal skeleton. This acted as a constraint on the variant oral readings (qira'at), which too eventually became standardised and written down in stages. This was accomplished by Muslims over a period of many centuries. Muslims would argue that the Qur'an was preserved by Allah, who promised to "guard it"[2] and that "none can change his words".[3]

The story that the Quran had yet to be collected together when Muhammad died might conflict with two (slightly contradictory) accounts collected in Sahih Bukhari, although scholars have noted that the verb jama'a (جَمَعَ) can also mean memorized:

While even today there are many memorizers (huffaz) of the complete Qur'an, the earliest Muslims did not have the benefit of choosing a standard qira'at (reading) and standard written Qur'an complete with diacritics in book form to help them or their teachers in the learning process.

The Qur'an itself records that Muhammad himself had forgotten portions of the Qur'an[5][6] Muhammad may also have had a somewhat flexible approach to variant readings, typical of oral performance traditions - see the Qira'at section later in this article.

A widely transmitted hadith reports that the third caliph Uthman was concerned because there were clear differences in the recitation of the Qur'an among the people of the Sham (modern day Israel/Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) and the people of Iraq. The differences were so great Uthman and his companions feared future dispute about the true Qur'an and its contents. So Uthman asked Hafsa for her copy so that a committee could write a single version of the rasm (an early stage of Arabic orthography, often called the Qur'anic consonantal text (QCT), which lacked most word-internal ʾalifs, lacked diacritics such as short vowel signs and with limited use of dotting to distinguish certain consonants). Uthman then sent out his official Quranic codex to a small number of important cities and ordered that all other copies and fragments be burned. This occurred around 650 CE. During the prior 20 years since Muhammad's death, and for some time afterwards, thousands of variants read by the companions which often did not fit this rasm were in circulation, as documented in hadiths and works such as Ibn Abi Dawud's Kitab al Masahif.[7]

The above quoted hadith of the Uthmanic standardisation was found by Harald Motzki to be very early.[8] His analysis of isnads (transmission chains) matched with changes to the matn (content) showed it to be widely transmitted through the common link of Ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī (d. 124). It mentions that Hafsa allowed Uthman to borrow and return the Qur'an manuscripts (ṣuḥuf الصُّحُفُ) in her possession. They were also mentioned in the hadith about the initial collection of the Qur'an quoted further above, which says she had inherited them after they were compiled by Zayd ibn Thabit under Abu Bakr twenty years earlier (this too was widely transmitted through al-Zuhri, and considered by Motzki to be very early for the same reason).[4].

Some Muslim scholars sought to explain the reported differences in the mushafs (codices) of the companions as merely being their own exegetical glosses. Such an explanation may be possible in some instances, but certainly not in others such as when pronouns or grammatical forms are changed or words are reported to have been simply omitted, for example in Quran 112:1 where Ibn Mas'ud and Ubayy omitted the word "Say" (qul)[14][15], or Ibn Mas'ud's omission of the entire verse Quran 94:6.[16][17] Other explanations were that these were variations in the revelation ("ahruf", discussed in a section below) or abrogated versions of the verses, which encounter some of the same problems as just mentioned, as well as the issue of their sheer quantity and the difficulty of explaining the purpose of the less clear or specific wordings of the same sentences in the Uthmanic Qur'an.

Many other examples of such variations among the sahaba are discussed in another online article and in the next few sections below.[18] A full translation of the variants documented in Abu Ubayd's (d. 244 H.) Fudail al-Quran is also available.[19]

It was widely reported that Abdullah ibn Mas'ud's Qur'anic text omitted surah al-Fatiha and the mu'awwithatayni (surahs 113 and 114).[20][21] Ibn Mas'ud's denial that the last two surahs were part of the Qur'an is also recorded in Sahih Bukhari.[22]

When we come to the rest of the Qur'an, we find that there were numerous differences of reading between the texts of Zaid and Ibn Mas'ud. The records in Ibn Abu Dawud's Kitab al-Masahif fill up no less than nineteen pages[23] and, from all the sources available, one can trace no less than 101 variants in the Surah al-Baqarah alone.[24]

This variant is recorded by al-Tabari and was also mentioned by Abu Ubaid and al Zamakhshari.[30] This variant reading was, significantly, found in Ubayy ibn Ka'b's text as well[31] and in the texts of Ibn 'Abbas[32] and Ibn Mas'ud's pupil Ar-Rabi ibn Khuthaim.[33] Ibn Mas'ud's reading was used by Hanafi scholars to rule that the fasting must be on successive days while Shafi scholars said this was not necessary. This and other Ibn Mas'ud variant readings used in Hanafi jurisprudence (such as restricting hand amputation to right hands) are discussed by Dr Ramon Harvey.[34]

Ibn Mas'ud swore that he knew all the surahs of the Qur'an, saying "By Allah other than Whom none has the right to be worshipped! There is no Sura revealed in Allah's Book but I know at what place it was revealed; and there is no verse revealed in Allah's Book but I know about whom it was revealed. And if I know that there is somebody who knows Allah's Book better than I, and he is at a place that camels can reach, I would go to him".[36]

After Muhammad's choice of Abdullah bin Mas'ud, he was followed by Salim, the freed slave of Abu Hudhaifa, Mu'adh bin Jabal and Ubai bin Ka'b.[35]It is notable that we do not find any mention of Zayd Bin Thabit who was ultimately entrusted by Abu Bakr with the task of collecting the Qur'an and later or alternatively as part of Uthman's Committee.

The Qur'an that Ibn Mas'ud had was known and agreed upon by many Muslims in Kufa. When Uthman ordered that all codices must be destroyed and that only Zayd's codex is to be preserved, the reaction of Abdallah ibn Mas'ud was defensive.

"I have not led them [the people of Kufa] astray. There is no verse in the Book of Allah that I do not know where it was revealed and why it was revealed, and if I knew anyone more learned in the Book of Allah and I could be conveyed there, I would set out to him".[37]

Ubayy ibn Ka'b, was another one of the four which were singled-out by Muhammad,[35] and was considered the best reciter of the Qur'an.[40] He was known as Sayidul Qura' (The Master of Reciters). Umar the Caliph also agreed that Ubayy was the best reciter, even though he rejected some of what he recited, and said that Ubayy refused to change his recitation.[41] As detailed in another section below, Ubayy had 116 surahs in his codex, two more than the Uthmanic Qur'an.

A significant number of early Hijazi manuscript fragments have been radio-carbon dated to the first Islamic century, collectively covering the Qur'an between them (for a detailed discussion with images, see the article by Michael Marx and Tobias Jocham[58]).

All but one of the early Quran manuscripts discovered so far have been of the Uthmanic text type (the exception being the lower text of the Ṣan'ā' 1 manuscript, which is a palimpsest (codex which was washed and written over) found in Sana'a, Yemen, and which contains variants not found in any of the accepted readings of the Qur'an.[59]). However, these manuscripts are not identical. Every early manuscript falls into a small number of regional families (identified by variants in their rasm, or consonantal text), and each moreover contains non-canonical variants in dotting and lettering that can sometimes be traced back to those reported of the Companions.[60] The Ṣan'ā' 1 manuscript is especially known to have this feature.[61][62][63]

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