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Textual History of the Qur'an (view source)

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A related question on which scholars differed was whether or not all the ahruf were preserved. One group including ibn Hazm (d.1064 CE) believed that all seven ahruf were accomodated by the Uthmanic rasm (consonantal skeleton), finding it unimaginable that anything would be omitted.<ref>Nasser, S. [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=mRAzAQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover ''The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qurʾān: The Problem of Tawātur and the Emergence of Shawādhdh''], Leiden, Boston:Brill, 2013, p.83</ref>. Al-Tabari argued that only one harf was preserved by Uthman, while Ibn al Jazari said the view of most scholars is that only as many of the ahruf as the Uthmanic rasm accommodated were preserved<ref>Ahmad 'Ali al Imam (1998), "Variant Readings of the Quran: A critical study of their historical and linguistic origins", Institute of Islamic Thought: Virginia, USA, pp.65-67</ref>. Indeed, this latter is more viable theologically, for the non-Uthmanic companion readings must be fraudulent under the first view, and problems with the second view include those mentioned above.
A related question on which scholars differed was whether or not all the ahruf were preserved. One group including ibn Hazm (d.1064 CE) believed that all seven ahruf were accomodated by the Uthmanic rasm (consonantal skeleton), finding it unimaginable that anything would be omitted.<ref>Nasser, S. [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=mRAzAQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover ''The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qurʾān: The Problem of Tawātur and the Emergence of Shawādhdh''], Leiden, Boston:Brill, 2013, p.83</ref>. Al-Tabari argued that only one harf was preserved by Uthman, while Ibn al Jazari said the view of most scholars is that only as many of the ahruf as the Uthmanic rasm accommodated were preserved<ref>Ahmad 'Ali al Imam (1998), "Variant Readings of the Quran: A critical study of their historical and linguistic origins", Institute of Islamic Thought: Virginia, USA, pp.65-67</ref>. Indeed, this latter is more viable theologically, for the non-Uthmanic companion readings must be fraudulent under the first view, and problems with the second view include those mentioned above.


As part of the majority view reported by ibn al Jazari, the Uthmanic codex was based on the harf of the "final review" or final revealed version of the Quran<ref>Ibid. p.66</ref>. However, there were around 40 scribal errors in the official copies of the Uthmanic text (see below).<ref>See the list in Cook, M. (2004) “The Stemma of the Regional Codices of the Koran,” ''Graeco-Arabica'', 9-10</ref> Canonical qira'at were required to comply with this range rather than an entirely unified text. Indeed, in some cases they even strayed beyond these boundaries.<ref>See for example {{Quran|19|19}}, where Abu Amr and the transmission of Warsh from Nafi have Gabriel saying to Mary li-yahaba ("that he may give") instead of li-'ahaba ("that I may give") [https://corpuscoranicum.de/lesarten/index/sure/19/vers/19 corpuscoranicum.de]. The ya consonant for this variant is sometimes written in red ink on manuscripts or superscript in print.<BR>The non-canonical Ṣan'ā' 1 palimpsest solves the theologically awkward reading in another way, using li-nahaba ("that we may give") - See p.64, line 15 of Folio 22B in  
As part of the majority view reported by ibn al Jazari, the Uthmanic codex was based on the harf of the "final review" or final revealed version of the Quran<ref>Ibid. p.66</ref>. However, there were around 40 scribal errors in the official copies of the Uthmanic text (see below).<ref>See the list in Cook, M. (2004) “The Stemma of the Regional Codices of the Koran,” ''Graeco-Arabica'', 9-10 or Nasser, S. "The Second Canonization of the Qurʾān (324/936)" Brill, 2020, pp.143-150</ref> Canonical qira'at were required to comply with this range rather than an entirely unified text. Indeed, in some cases they even strayed beyond these boundaries.<ref>See for example {{Quran|19|19}}, where Abu Amr and the transmission of Warsh from Nafi have Gabriel saying to Mary li-yahaba ("that he may give") instead of li-'ahaba ("that I may give") [https://corpuscoranicum.de/lesarten/index/sure/19/vers/19 corpuscoranicum.de]. The ya consonant for this variant is sometimes written in red ink on manuscripts or superscript in print.<BR>The non-canonical Ṣan'ā' 1 palimpsest solves the theologically awkward reading in another way, using li-nahaba ("that we may give") - See p.64, line 15 of Folio 22B in  
Sadeghi & Goudarzi, "San'a' 1 and the Origins of the Qur'an," Der Islam 87, No. 1-2 (February 2012) 1-129</ref>
Sadeghi & Goudarzi, "San'a' 1 and the Origins of the Qur'an," Der Islam 87, No. 1-2 (February 2012) 1-129</ref>


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===Differences Between Other Canonical Readings===
===Differences Between Other Canonical Readings===


There are many more differences between other transmissions besides those of Hafs and Warsh. All are available in printed form and in the online sources mentioned above. The following are a few examples of conflicting variants in quoted dialogue incidents.
There are many more differences between other transmissions besides those of Hafs and Warsh. All are available in printed form and in the online sources mentioned above. The following are a few examples, mostly of conflicting variants in quoted dialogue incidents.


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Professor Shady Nasser shows that at the time when ibn Mujahid wrote his ''Kitab al Sab'ah'' selecting the 7 eponymous readings that later became canonical, adherence of readings to the Uthmanic rasm and good Arabic grammar were already important criteria <ref>Nasser, S. [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=mRAzAQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover ''The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qurʾān: The Problem of Tawātur and the Emergence of Shawādhdh''], Leiden, Boston:Brill, 2013, p.53</ref>, but ibn Mujahid restricted his selection to just 7 by choosing the consensus readings from each of Mecca, Medina, Basra, Damascus and the 3 most popular readers from Kufah, where the legacy of Ibn Mas'ud's (now banned) reading meant that there was no dominant Uthmanic reading in that city.<ref>Ibid. pp. 47-61</ref>.
Professor Shady Nasser shows that at the time when ibn Mujahid wrote his ''Kitab al Sab'ah'' selecting the 7 eponymous readings that later became canonical, adherence of readings to the Uthmanic rasm and good Arabic grammar were already important criteria <ref>Nasser, S. [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=mRAzAQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover ''The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qurʾān: The Problem of Tawātur and the Emergence of Shawādhdh''], Leiden, Boston:Brill, 2013, p.53</ref>, but ibn Mujahid restricted his selection to just 7 by choosing the consensus readings from each of Mecca, Medina, Basra, Damascus and the 3 most popular readers from Kufah, where the legacy of Ibn Mas'ud's (now banned) reading meant that there was no dominant Uthmanic reading in that city.<ref>Ibid. pp. 47-61</ref>.


Nasser further shows that scholars such as al-Tabari (one of ibn Mujahid's teachers) readily criticised variants in these same readings shortly before they were canonised<ref>Ibid. pp.41-47</ref> (as did al-Zamakhshari 200 years afterwards)<ref>Ibid. pp.6-7</ref>). Even ibn Mujahid said variants now considered canonical were wrong.<ref>Ibid. pp.59-61 (for specific examples of him criticising such variants, many of which are unique to particular readers or transmitters, see the list in chapter 2 of Nasser's follow-up book Nasser, S. H. "The Second Canonization of the Qurʾān (324/936)" Brill, 2020; or see the examples given by van Putten on Twitter.com [https://twitter.com/PhDniX/status/1296392400735277057 here] and [https://twitter.com/PhDniX/status/1090545330402267136 here]</ref> After ibn Mujahid's book, a genre of literature arose that "''indicates the rising need to provide grammatical and syntactic proofs in order to back up the arguments necessary to assess the superiority of one reading over another.''" <ref>Ibid. pp.60-61 (see also the footnote on p.61)</ref>. Ibn Mujahid's decision to select just 7 readings drew frequent criticism after its publication<ref>Ibid. p.64</ref>. The consensus notion that these 7 were divinely preserved in a chain back to the Prophet himself only came about later, by which time there was of course no room for arguments and reasoning to try to prove the superiority of one variant over another.<ref>Ibid. pp. 59-61</ref> As Nasser writes, "''The problem that caused heated discussion for centuries afterwards was the origin and transmission of the eponymous Readings; were these Readings transmitted through tawātur or single chains of transmission? Are there Readings better than others or are they equally divine?''"<ref>ibid. p.65</ref>.
Nasser further shows that grammarians such as al-Faraa<ref>Ibid. p.167</ref>, and scholars such as al-Tabari readily criticised variants in these same readings shortly before they were canonised<ref>Ibid. pp.41-47</ref> (as did al-Zamakhshari 200 years afterwards)<ref>Ibid. pp.6-7</ref>). Even ibn Mujahid said variants now considered canonical were wrong.<ref>Ibid. pp.59-61 (for specific examples of him criticising such variants, many of which are unique to particular readers or transmitters, see the list and summary table in chapter 2, pp.64-89 of Nasser's follow-up book Nasser, S. H. "The Second Canonization of the Qurʾān (324/936)" Brill, 2020; or see the examples given by van Putten on Twitter.com [https://twitter.com/PhDniX/status/1296392400735277057 here] and [https://twitter.com/PhDniX/status/1090545330402267136 here]</ref> After ibn Mujahid's book, a genre of literature arose that "''indicates the rising need to provide grammatical and syntactic proofs in order to back up the arguments necessary to assess the superiority of one reading over another.''" <ref>Ibid. pp.60-61 (see also the footnote on p.61)</ref>. Ibn Mujahid's decision to select just 7 readings drew frequent criticism after its publication<ref>Ibid. p.64</ref>. The consensus notion that these 7 were divinely preserved in a chain back to the Prophet himself only came about later, by which time there was of course no room for arguments and reasoning to try to prove the superiority of one variant over another.<ref>Ibid. pp. 59-61</ref> As Nasser writes, "''The problem that caused heated discussion for centuries afterwards was the origin and transmission of the eponymous Readings; were these Readings transmitted through tawātur or single chains of transmission? Are there Readings better than others or are they equally divine?''"<ref>ibid. p.65</ref>.


Dr Marijn Van Putten has shown that while the canonical readings largely comply with the Uthmanic rasm, more specifically they also each closely comply with the regional variants of that rasm, which were sent out to the major intellectual centres of early Islam and contained a small number of copying mistakes. So, the Kufan readings closely correspond to the variants found in the rasm of the codex given to that city and so on.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Van Putten |first1=Marijn |date=April 2020|title=Hišām's ʾIbrāhām : Evidence for a Canonical Quranic Reading Based on the Rasm |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338434122_Hisam%27s_Ibraham_Evidence_for_a_Canonical_Quranic_Reading_Based_on_the_Rasm |journal=Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society |volume=30 |issue=2 |pages=251 |doi=10.1017/S1356186320000218 |access-date=7 July 2020}} pp.13-15 of the open access pdf</ref><ref>He elaborates in much more detail in this Twitter thread in which he also explains why the opposite explanation, that the regional rasm variants are adaptations to the readings in those places, is "untenable" {{cite web| url=https://twitter.com/PhDniX/status/1218669152371650560 | title=Twitter.com| author=Dr Marijn Van Putten | date= 18 January 2020| archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200119002517/https://twitter.com/PhDniX/status/1218669152371650560|deadurl=no}}</ref>
Dr Marijn Van Putten has shown that while the canonical readings largely comply with the Uthmanic rasm, more specifically they also each closely comply with the regional variants of that rasm, which were sent out to the major intellectual centres of early Islam and contained a small number of copying mistakes. So, the Kufan readings closely correspond to the variants found in the rasm of the codex given to that city and so on.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Van Putten |first1=Marijn |date=April 2020|title=Hišām's ʾIbrāhām : Evidence for a Canonical Quranic Reading Based on the Rasm |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338434122_Hisam%27s_Ibraham_Evidence_for_a_Canonical_Quranic_Reading_Based_on_the_Rasm |journal=Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society |volume=30 |issue=2 |pages=251 |doi=10.1017/S1356186320000218 |access-date=7 July 2020}} pp.13-15 of the open access pdf</ref><ref>He elaborates in much more detail in this Twitter thread in which he also explains why the opposite explanation, that the regional rasm variants are adaptations to the readings in those places, is "untenable" {{cite web| url=https://twitter.com/PhDniX/status/1218669152371650560 | title=Twitter.com| author=Dr Marijn Van Putten | date= 18 January 2020| archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200119002517/https://twitter.com/PhDniX/status/1218669152371650560|deadurl=no}}</ref>
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The variants in the seven eponymous readings are only rarely evident in the earliest manuscripts. They contain the above mentioned regional differences, but otherwise tend to reflect dotting and lettering traceable to the more substantial variant readings of the Companions and not necessarily of the seven.<ref name="Morteza Karimi-Nia" />
The variants in the seven eponymous readings are only rarely evident in the earliest manuscripts. They contain the above mentioned regional differences, but otherwise tend to reflect dotting and lettering traceable to the more substantial variant readings of the Companions and not necessarily of the seven.<ref name="Morteza Karimi-Nia" />


==Diacritical Marks and Grammatical Mistakes==  
===The Qurra' Community===
In a detailed monograph on ibn Mujahid's canonization of the seven readings, Nasser shows that written notes played a significant role in transmission of the readings in the 2nd century. He quotes canonical readers and their transmitters being said to have doubted and retracted their (often unique) readings in certain verses, not remembering what they had been taught and asking others or checking notes, being confused by the difference between their recollection and their notes, resorting to qiyas (analogy) when a specific part of a reading was unknown, transmitters admitting that they had forgotten parts of a reading, canonical transmitters misattributing variants to the wrong eponymous reader (some transmitted more than one reading), and readers adapting to what they regarded as flawed parts of the Uthmanic rasm.<ref>See especially chapter 4, pp.159, 163-164, 172-176, 178-180 of Nasser, S. "The Second Canonization of the Qurʾān (324/936)" Brill, 2020</ref>


The Qur'an was first written without [[Diacritical Marks of the Qur'an|diacritical marks]]. At the time of Muhammad, Arabic orthography was yet to develop into what we have known for centuries.  
In one summary he writes, "''The multiple readings reported on behalf of the same Eponymous Reader or Canonical Rāwī, were not only due to transmission errors, inaccuracies, the 'flexibility' of the consonantal rasm, and the existance of a depository of different, yet acceptable traditions from the previous generations of Qurʾān masters. These readings were also generated because Qurʾān Readers occasionally modified and changed their readings over time, retracted certain readings, corrected others, and struggled to remember how precisely some variants were performed.''"<ref>Ibid. p.173</ref>


For the early interpreters who added diacritical marks, to read the Qur'an as it was originally written, would lead the reader to interpret and choose for themselves from the many possible meanings available.  
While ibn Mujahid only gave formal isnads from himself to the Eponymous readers (whose readings he documented partially based on written notes<ref>Ibid. p.171</ref>), he gave some biographical sketches of the transmissions between the Prophet and these readers, the chains of which generally had at least 4 or 5 links though occasionally 3.<ref>Ibid. See the isnad diagrams in chapter 3</ref> Most of the seven main readers and their canonical transmitters did not escape criticism for their reliability in hadith and/or their Qur'an recitations in at least some biographical sources<ref>Ibid. pp.131-136</ref>.
 
Muslims began using diacritical marks because reading "errors" began to appear,<ref>"''The companions (Muhammad’s friends or “Sahaba”) did not vocalize or provide diacritical points for the letters of the Qur’anic copies which they wrote, but later during the last part of the companions’ era, when reading errors came into being, they began to provide diacritical points for the copies of the Qur’an and to vocalize them. This was admissible by the authority of the majority of the scholars, though some of them disliked it. The truth is, it should not be disliked because the situation necessitated it, and the diacritical points distinguish the letters from each other while vocalization explains the grammatical inflection.''" - Ibn Taymiyyah, "Sheik of the Muslims" vol. XII, pp. 576 and 586</ref> and the differences this created had led to differences in Islamic law.<ref>As-Suyuti, Al-Itqan fii Ulum al-Qur'an, p.226</ref>
 
The following are just a couple of examples from among many grammatical ''mistakes'' which show that the Qur'an is not flawless.
 
1. ''Butunihi'' is a mistake in 16:66. It must be ''Butuniha'', because it is referring to the plural (cattle).  
 
2. ''Kon fayakoon'', meaning "be and it is", must be ''kon fakana'', meaning "be and he was" in 3:59, because it refers to the past not present.


==Corruption of Previous Scriptures==
==Corruption of Previous Scriptures==


Many Muslims believe that the Qur'an claims the [[Corruption of Previous Scriptures (Qur'an 2:79)|corruption of previous scriptures]]. However with this erroneous belief comes a new set of problems.
Many Muslims believe that the Qur'an claims the [[Corruption of Previous Scriptures (Qur'an 2:79)|corruption of previous scriptures]]. The Qur'an says of the Qur'an in 15:9, "We have revealed the ''dhikr'' (reminder) and we surely will preserve it,".
 
The Qur'an says of the Qur'an in 15:9, "We have revealed the ''dhikr'' (reminder) and we surely will preserve it,".


The [[Taurat]] and [[Injil]] are also referred to as ''dhikr'' in 21:48, 21:7, and 40:53-54. So if Allah could not protect these ''dhikrs'', how can we expect him to protect the last ''dhikr''?
The [[Taurat]] and [[Injil]] are also referred to as ''dhikr'' in 21:48, 21:7, and 40:53-54. The Quran says that he will protect the last ''dhikr'', but on this basis did not protect these other ''dhikrs''.


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