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Old Hijazi is the underlying Language of the Qur'an, as revealed by investigation into the Quranic Consonantal Text (QCT), the underlying consonantal skeleton (in Arabic, rasm رسم) of the Qur'an. This language differs markedly in pronunciation and grammar from the later classical Arabic that is imposed upon the text by modern day Muslims and scholars who follow the Muslim tradition of Quranic readings. | Old Hijazi is the underlying Language of the Qur'an, as revealed by investigation into the Quranic Consonantal Text (QCT), the underlying consonantal skeleton (in Arabic, rasm رسم) of the Qur'an. This language differs markedly in pronunciation and grammar from the later classical Arabic that is imposed upon the text by modern day Muslims and scholars who follow the Muslim tradition of Quranic readings. | ||
==Introduction to the | ==Introduction to the I'rāb== | ||
In order to understand how the language of the QCT differs from the later classical Arabic it is now read in, it's important to understand the i'arab. | In order to understand how the language of the QCT differs from the later classical Arabic it is now read in, it's important to understand the i'arab. | ||
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Q96:15 (later Arabic: )la-nasfa’an لنفسعا ‘We will surely drag’Q12:32 | Q96:15 (later Arabic: )la-nasfa’an لنفسعا ‘We will surely drag’Q12:32 | ||
Q12:32 (later Arabic: ) la-yakunan لىكونا ‘he will surely be’ | Q12:32 (later Arabic: ) la-yakunan لىكونا ‘he will surely be’ | ||
== The meaning of Hamzah (glottal stop) == | |||
A glottal stop naturally occurs in every language when the first word to be uttered begins with a vowel. The glottal stop in Arabic is called “Hamzah” and it has the symbol: ء . This symbol wasn’t invented yet at the time of Muhammad. The Hamzah can occur at the beginning, middle or end of a word. | |||
== Enforcement of Classical Arabic on Early Arabic Texts == | == Enforcement of Classical Arabic on Early Arabic Texts == | ||
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Classical Arabic: yahrubūn | Classical Arabic: yahrubūn | ||
== The Hamzah in the Quranic Reading Traditions == | |||
The third caliph’s standardization of the Quran unified the Quranic consonantal text. But as this standardized Quran lacked diacritics, this allowed for the emergence of readings that differ in short vowels, dotting and linguistic characteristics. | |||
In their recitation of the Quran, Muslims follow early Quran scholars whose readings became named after them, hence called eponymous readings. In the third Islamic century, the Quranic readings were canonized into 7 readings. And in the ninth Islamic century another 3 were added making the total number of canonical readings 10. Today the reading of Ḥafṣ is the most popular in the world. | |||
The use of Hamzah is among the differences in linguistic characteristics between the 10 canonical readings. A lot of the readings, including the reading of Ḥafṣ, heavily use the Hamzah while other readings use it moderately. The Hamzah isn’t an original part of the Quran (except in word-final Hamzah that’s preceded by the long vowel ā). There are reports clearly showing that the Hamzah was a later addition. One of these reports says that Nāfiʕ, the founder of one of the ten canonical readings, was asked if it’s possible to introduce the Hamzah to (the two words in the Quran) “al-dhīb” and “al-bīr”. He replied: “If there are Arabs who use the Hamzah with these words then you can use the Hamzah”. | |||
السبعة في القراءات لابن مجاهد، ص346، تحقيق شوقي ضيف | |||
Al-Sabʕah Fil-Qirāʾāt, p.346, Tahqiq by Shawqi Ḍayf | |||
Khalaf, another founder of one of the ten canonical readings, says: “Quraish (Muhammad’s tribe) doesn't use the Hamzah. It's not in their dialect. The eponymous readers took the Hamzah from non-Quraishi dialects.” | |||
رسم المصحف لغانم قدوري ص357 | |||
Rasm Al-Mishaf by Ghanim Qadduuri, p357 | |||
Khalaf’s statement agrees with what early grammarians report. Mukhtār Al-Ghawth says in his book "The dialect of Quraish": “Since that the Hamzah is hard to pronounce, some early Arabic dialects leaned towards dropping the hamzah. This was most notable in the dialect of Quraish as all early sources agree that this dialect lacked the hamzah.” p.39 | |||
== The Hamzah and the Consonantal Text of the Quran == | |||
The consonantal text of the Quran provides evidence that the original language of the Quran lacked the Hamzah. | |||
<big>'''A- The introduction of the Hamzah breaks the rhyme in the following verses'''<ref>Marijn Van Putten, [https://www.academia.edu/35556452/Hamzah_in_the_Quranic_Consonantal_Text_Orientalia_87_1_2018_pp_93_120 Hamzah in the Quranic Consonantal Text], 2018, p.101</ref>''':'''</big> | |||
1- In Surah Ar-raḥmān (No.55), all verse-final words end with “ān”: | |||
ar-raḥmān, al-qurʾān, al-ʾinsān…etc. الرحمن، القرآن، الإنسان | |||
Verse no.29 ends with the word shaʾn شأن (with the Hamzah). By dropping the Hamzah from the word it becomes shān شان and thus the word fits the Surah’s rhyme. | |||
Al-Farrāʾ, an early Arab grammarian, noted this when he said<ref>معاني القرآن للفراء، ج3 ص116، دار المصرية | |||
Al- Farrāʾ, maʕāni l-qurʾān, vol.3 p.116</ref>: You can use the Hamzah with the word “shaʾn” in the entirety of the Quran except for the one in Surah ar- raḥmān (No.55) because the word comes in the middle of verses that lack the Hamzah. | |||
2- In Surah no.19, the rhyme is a short vowel + yyā: zakariyyaā, khafiyyā, shaqiyyā...etc. | |||
زكريَّا، خفيَّا، شقيَّا | |||
Verses 9, 42, 60 and 67 end with the word: shayʾā شيئا. | |||
By dropping the hamzah, the word becomes: shayyā شيَّا . | |||
The reading tradition of ḥamzah reads the word shayʾā without the hamzah. | |||
3- Verse 47 of the same Surah ends with the word riʾyā رئيا . Without the Hamzah the word becomes: riyyā. It’s read as such in the reading of ḥamzah. | |||
4- In Surah no.96, verses from 15 to 18 end with the following words: | |||
nāṣiyah, khāṭiʾah, nādiyah, zabāniyah. | |||
كَلَّا لَئِنْ لَمْ يَنْتَهِ لَنَسْفَعًا بِالنَّاصِيَةِ (15) نَاصِيَةٍ كَاذِبَةٍ خَاطِئَةٍ (16) فَلْيَدْعُ نَادِيَهُ (17) سَنَدْعُ الزَّبَانِيَةَ (18) | |||
By dropping the Hamzah from the word khāṭiʾah, the word perfectly rhymes with the final words of the surrounding verses: | |||
nāṣiyah, khāṭiyah, nādiyah, zabāniyah. | |||
The reading of Abū jaʕfar reads it as khāṭiyah. | |||
5- In surah no.69, verses 8-10 end with following words: | |||
Bāqiyah, khāṭiʾah, rābiyah. | |||
فَهَلْ تَرَى لَهُمْ مِنْ بَاقِيَةٍ (8) وَجَاءَ فِرْعَوْنُ وَمَنْ قَبْلَهُ وَالْمُؤْتَفِكَاتُ بِالْخَاطِئَةِ (9) فَعَصَوْا رَسُولَ رَبِّهِمْ فَأَخَذَهُمْ أَخْذَةً رَابِيَةً (10) | |||
By dropping the Hamzah from khāṭiʾah, it becomes: khāṭiyah خاطية. It’s read as such in the reading of Abū jaʕfar. | |||
The second evidence the QCT provides for the lack of Hamzah: | |||
'''<big>B- The shapes the Hamzah takes in the QCT.</big>''' | |||
The sign for the Hamzah in Arabic is ء. But the Hamzah in Arabic orthography is rarely written with the Hamzah sign ء alone. In most cases, the Hamzah is written by adding the Hamzah symbol to one of the three vowel letters like this: | |||
أ ؤ ئ | |||
The letter for a long 'a' vowel is Alef ا . As in: kitāb (book). كتاب | |||
The letter for a long 'u' vowel or the 'w' sound is: و . As in: rʕḥ (soul) روح | |||
The letter for a long 'i' vowel or the 'y' sound is: ي , يـ . As in: fī (in) في | |||
All these different forms: ء , ئ , ؤ, أ are pronounced the same: a glottal stop. | |||
The Hamzah takes all these different shapes because Arabic orthography was standardized based on the QCT which represents a dialect that lacks the hamzah. | |||
Marijn Van Putten, Hamzah in the Quranic Consonantal Text, 2018, p.94 | |||
In many cases, the dropping of Hamzah leads to the creation of a long vowel, the w sound or the y sound. Prior to the standardization of Arabic orthography, the Alef used to be the symbol of the Hamzah or the long vowel ā. For example, the word for "believer" is مؤمن muʾmin. Before the first half of the first century of Islam, Arabs who had the Hamzah in their dialects wrote this word as مامن . The Alef is the sign for the Hamzah in this word. But for Arabs who didn't have the Hamzah like Quraish, they wrote the word like this: mūmin مومن . It’s written as such because the dropping of the Hamzah in this word creates the long vowel ū. That's why in the QCT the word is written as مومن instead of مامن. | |||
Nearly 25 years after the death of the prophet, the third caliph Uthman decided to create a standard copy of the Quran to put an end to disputes over the different readings of the Quran. He assigned the job to a team of scribes most of whom belonged to the Quraishi tribe. This standard copy that Uthman assembled is called the Uthmanic Quran. All Qurans in the world today follow the exact script of the Uthmanic Quran (QCT) except for signs that were later invented like the dots, the Hamzah and diacritics short vowels. | |||
In the original Uthmanic text that lacks diacritics (QCT), the Hamzah is only written when it's located at the beginning of a word. That's because in the dialect of Quraish, the Hamzah is only pronounced when it's at the beginning of speech. | |||
Example:اغفر "ighfir" . Note that the Hamzah is written as an Alef because the Alef was the symbol for Hamzah or the long vowel ā. | |||
After Uthman created the standard copy of the Quran, he sent copies to all different regions of the caliphate. The inhabitants of these regions started basing their Arabic orthography on these Qurans. So an Arab who had the Hamzah in his dialect started writing the word muʾmin as مومن instead of مامن although he kept pronouncing the Hamzah in it. One century later when the sign of Hamzah ء was created, those Arabs who had the Hamzah in their dialects added the Hamzah sign over the long vowels, turning words like | |||
Mūmin muʾmin | |||
Yastahzī yastahziʾ | |||
Rās raʾs | |||
مومن to مؤمن. | |||
يستهزي to يستهزئ | |||
راس to رأس | |||
That's why Arabic today writes the Hamzah in four different shapes: ء, أ, ؤ, ئ | |||
The Iraqi Quran scholar and linguist Ghānim Qaddūrī says: {{Quote|Ghānim Qaddūrī, Rasm Al-Miṣḥaf, 1982, p.575-577|After Uthman sent copies of the standardized Quran to the different regions of the caliphate, these copies became the reference not only in recitation but also in orthography. (Note: The "newly formed societies" in the next line means the cities in Iraq that were formed after the Muslim conquest of Iraq, especially the cities of Kūfah and Baṣrah which were the capitols of Arab grammarians). | |||
The Arabic language in the newly formed societies went through a phase of linguistic mixing between the dialects of the people of the Arabian peninsula (who migrated to these newly formed cities). The Arabic language there started adopting the hamzah. This was boosted by: | |||
1- The adoption of Hamzah by the scholarly movement of Iraq because the scholars tended to study the Arabic of the tribes of central and eastern Arabia (whose dialects use the hamzah). | |||
2- Iraq is open and connected to central Arabia. | |||
3- Many central Arabian tribes migrated to Iraq. | |||
People started writing the Hamzah as one of the three letters ا ي و following the steps of the Uthmanic script. It became forgotten that the Alef is the supposed shape of hamzah. And it became forgotten that the Uthmanic Qurans were written in the dialect of the people of Hijaz who drop the hamzah. People were careful to follow the Uthmanic Quranic text which was agreed upon by the prophet's companions. This made people stick to the shapes of words as written in Uthmanic text. The Hamzah in the Uthmanic text was written as the vowels و ي ا . So when people copied this orthography, they added dots over these letters to indicate the hamzahs. Then the dot changed to the ء symbol after Al-Khalīl invented it.}} | |||
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