Huruf Muqatta'at (Disjointed Letters in the Qur'an): Difference between revisions

'''ḥurūf muqaṭṭaʿāt''' (حُرُوف مُقَطَّعَات), are mysterious letter combinations which occur at the beginning of 29 of the 114 chapters of the [[Qur'an]] and are present even in the earliest available Quranic manuscripts. Ḥurūf means letters and muqatta`āt literally means abbreviated or shortened. They are also known as '''Fawātih''' ({{lang|ar|فواتح}}) or openers as they form the opening verse of the respective chapters. The classical Muslim scholars considered the text of the Qur'an to be unchanged. Thus, they do not consider that the muqattā'at may [[Textual History of the Qur'an|possibly have been added after the prophet's lifetime]], and proposed a variety of possible meanings for the letters. Aided by additional observations, modern academic scholars have proposed interpretations in which the letters are an original feature of the surahs, as well as suggesting theories in which the letters were added after Muhammad's death. The Muqatta'at continue to be a topic of research and academic discussions in Islamic literature and Qur'anic studies.  

In [[Arabic]] language, these letters are written together like a word, but each letter is pronounced separately. None of these combinations, however, come together to form a meaningful Arabic word. Still, these letters appear joined together in print.  

The letters are found even in the oldest Quranic manuscripts dating to the 7th century CE (occasionally with diacritical dots to disambiguate the letters Nūn in surah 68, Qāf in surahs 42 and 50, and Yā' in surahs 19 and 36).<ref>For discussion and images see this [https://twitter.com/PhDniX/status/1468684386044362761 Twitter.com thread] by Quranic manuscripts academic expert Marijn van Putten - 8 December 2021 ([https://web.archive.org/web/20211208205355/https://twitter.com/PhDniX/status/1468684386044362761 archive])</ref> This includes the lower text of the famous [[Sana'a_Manuscript|Sana'a palimpsest]], which preserves very few surah openings, though includes the start of Surah Maryam with its five-letter combination included in the examples shown above.<ref>See line 24 of Folio 22 A transcribed on page 63 in Sadeghi, Behnam; Goudarzi, Mohsen (2012). [https://bible-quran.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Sadeghi-Goudarzi-sana-Origins-of-the-Quran.pdf Ṣan'ā' 1 and the Origins of the Qur'ān]. Der Islam. Berlin: De Gruyter. 87 (1–2): 1–129. doi: 10.1515/islam-2011-0025</ref> Hence, the letters date back at least to the common ancestor of the palimpsest and the standard Uthmanic text.

[[Image:Qur'anic initial letters en.PNG|right|frame|A [[w:tree diagram | tree diagram]] of the Qur'anic initial letters, labeled with the respective numbers of occurrences. To be read right to left.]]

Academic scholar Daniel Beck has further observed that when the surahs are sorted using the chronology proposed by Theodore Noldeke, 17 of the 18 occurances from the third Meccan period (and including the two occurances in surahs attributed to the Medinan period) are limited to combinations which comprise (or include) the letters 'Alif Lām Mīm, 'Alif Lām Rā', or Ḥā' Mīm. There is considerably more diversity of letter combinations in Noldeke's second Meccan period plus the sole occurance in the first Meccan period (the letter Nūn at the start of Surah 68, by far the earliest occurance).<ref name="Beck2020">Daniel Beck (2020) [https://www.academia.edu/43721657 Reconnecting Al-Ḥurūf Al-Muqaṭṭa'āt To Oracular Truth-A New Chronological Analysis of the Qur'ān's Mysterious Letters"]</ref>

Many tomes have been written over the centuries on the possible meanings and probable significance of these 'mystical letters', as they are sometimes called. Opinions have been numerous but a consensus remains elusive. There is no report in the [[hadith|Ahadith]] or [[Sirat Rasul Allah|Sirat]] of [[Muhammad|Muhammad's]] having used such expressions in his ordinary speech, or his having thrown light as to its usage in the Qur'an. And, more importantly, none of his [[Sahabah|Companions]] seemed to have asked him, regarding it. This apparent lack of examples of this sort of inquisitiveness is cited as proof that the usage of such abbreviations were well known to the Arabs of the time and were in vogue long before the advent of Islam.

Though plausible, this opinion does not find favor among other classical commentators, the reason given being that the possible combinations of letters are virtually infinite and the Attributes they represent seem to be chosen arbitrarily

In 1974, an Egyptian biochemist named [[Rashad Khalifa]] announced he had discovered a mathematical code in the Qur'an based on these initials and the number 19,<ref>Rashad Khalifa, ''[http://submission.org/miracle/visual.html Quran: Visual Presentation of the Miracle]'', Islamic Productions International, 1982. ISBN 0-934894-30-2</ref> which is mentioned in {{Quran|74|30}} (However, Günter Lüling claims that the number is really 7, as in the 7 gates of the Christian [[Hell]].  See [http://www.christoph-heger.de/Surah_74_30.htm "Above it are neither nineteen nor seventeen"]).  According to his research, these initials which prefix 29 chapters of the Qur'an occur throughout their respective chapters in multiples of this very number, nineteen. He has noted other mathematical phenomena throughout the Quran, all related to what he describes as the "mathematical miracle of the Qur'an."  Although subsequently dismissed as a heretic by Muslim scholars, his work did receive some acclaim by notable sources:

Farahi links these letters back to Hebrew alphabet and suggests that those letters not only represented phonetic sounds but also contained a symbolic meaning to them, and Qur'an perhaps uses the same meanings when choosing the letters for surahs. For instance, in support of his opinion, he presents the letter Nun (ن), which symbolizes fish and Surah Nun mentions Jonah as 'companion of the fish'. Similarly, the letter Ṭa (ط) represents a serpent and all the Surahs that begin with this letter mention the story of Moses and serpents.<ref>{{cite book|author=Islahi, Amin Ahsan|title=Taddabur-i-Quran|publisher=Faraan Foundation| year=2004| pages=82-85}}</ref>

Daniel Beck observes that academic scholars commonly at first suppose that the letters conveyed textual information regarding the scribes or manuscripts used during the inital compilation process of the Quranic materials. Indeed, it is tempting to imagine the letters were the initals of scribes or an alphabetic index of small collections of surahs. Generally (like Noldeke), they abandon such a view when exposed to other considerations.<ref name="Beck2020" /> The main motivation for preferring to view them instead as features of the original recitation is the one mentioned above - the observation that the letters almost always immediately precede mention of the Quran or revelation itself. Other reasons include the observation that the letter combinations tend to rhyme (or near-rhyme) with the rhyming schema of the verses which follow them.<ref>Devin Stewart, "Notes on Medieval and Modern Emendations of the Qur'an." Pp. 225-48 in The Qur'an in Its Historical Context. Ed. Gabriel Said Reynolds. London: Routledge, 2008. See p. 234.</ref>  

Other observations by historical-critical academic scholars include:

These other points on their own would seem to be supportive of theories linking the letters to the initial compilation of the scripture; perhaps the initials of the scribes who worked to make the original copy of the complete Quran (a theory slightly complicated by the presence of two sets of muqatta`āt in Surah 42), or some kind of filing system for the source parchments, although it is to be noted that when the Quran was compiled into a single book a general sequence of longest to shortest surahs was used (a method employed also in other late antique literary compilations). The source materials for the muqatta'at surahs would not likely each have contained only surahs of similar size such that their sequences would be largely maintained in the compiled Quran. It has at the same time, however, been noted that the consecutive sequence of Ḥā' Mīm surahs (which are even consecutive in the reported non-standard surah sequences of early Companion codices) form a clear literally unit with similar themes.

*[[Textual History of the Qur'an]]

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