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==Tawatur in transmission of the Quran== | ==Tawatur in transmission of the Quran== | ||
Tawaatur is often invoked to substantiate the reliable transmission of the Quran. The point of tawaatur is that many people say the same thing, therefore it must be true; yet in the case of the Quran, this criterion is not met. There are many versions (qira'aat) of the Arabic Quran accepted by traditional scholars as being authentic. We have 10 "reciters" (in Arabic ''qurra'', plural of ''qari''): | |||
*Ibn Kathir al-Makki | *Ibn Kathir al-Makki | ||
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And for every qari, there are two rawi's which also sometimes differ, even though they had the same teacher. The most popular version of the Arabic Quran today is the version of Hafs, who was one of the students of Aasim. Since other versions of the Quran differ from Hafs' version, the most popular version of the Quran is ahad. And even if all 10 qari had exactly the same text of the Quran, according to some scholars mutawaatir requires 70 chains, so 60 chains would be missing. | And for every qari, there are two rawi's which also sometimes differ, even though they had the same teacher. The most popular version of the Arabic Quran today is the version of Hafs, who was one of the students of Aasim. Since other versions of the Quran differ from Hafs' version, the most popular version of the Quran is ahad. And even if all 10 qari had exactly the same text of the Quran, according to some scholars mutawaatir requires 70 chains, so 60 chains would be missing. | ||
* | On top of this, modern scholarship has uncovered variants such as the Sana'a palimpset which preserve readings not found in any of the qira'aat, further making it impossible to make the claim of being mutawattir of the text of the Quran. | ||
*The claim that the Hafs version is mutawattir does not stand to scrutiny, despite the current widespread usage in Muslim devotion and liturgy. It's reasonable to assume that many other Muslims were memorizing the Quran through the ages, but their is no evidence they were all using the Hafs version and much evidence to the contrary. | |||
==References== | ==References== | ||
<references /> | <references /> | ||