Historical Errors in the Quran: Difference between revisions

*The people of ''Thamūd'' are killed instantly by an earthquake {{Quran|7|78}} or thunderous blast {{Quran|11|67}}, {{Quran-range|41|13|17}}, {{Quran|51|44}}, {{Quran|69|5}}.

* Moses's people who worship the Samaria's calf are struck with a thunderbolt {{Quran|2|55}} and later (after being brought back to life in {{Quran|2|56}} and continuing to transgress) a punishment from the sky ''rijz min al-samāʾi'' {{Quran|2|59}}.<ref>Marshall, David. ''God, Muhammad and the Unbelievers (p. 127).'' Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.</ref>

* The people of ''Tubba''' are listed as a destroyed people for denying their messenger in {{Quran|44|37}} and {{Quran|50|14}}, with Tubba' most commonly identified as a Himyarite (a Southern Arabian Empire primarily covering modern day Yemen) king by traditional Islamic scholars<ref>See classical commentaries [https://quranx.com/tafsirs/44.37 on Q44:37]</ref> without the method of destruction being specified in the Qur'an.

* The people of ''al-Rass'' are mentioned in destroyed people's lists in {{Quran|25|38}} (also mentioning many unnamed people's in-between them) and {{Quran|50|12}}. In traditional Islamic scholarship this is usually taken to refer to a 'well' though its location is disputed, with some saying Ṣāliḥ (who went to Thamūd) being their warner, whilst others say it was Shuʿayb who went to Madyan, and others Hanzala b. Safwān who is not mentioned in the Qur'an.<ref>See commentaries on [https://quranx.com/Tafsirs/50.12 Q50:12] and [https://quranx.com/tafsirs/25.38 Q25:38]</ref> Modern academic scholarship has identified the ''aṣḥāb al-Rass'' with another potential group on the Arabian peninsular further down on the West Coast by the Red sea known as the Arsians.<ref>Neuwirth, Angelika. The Qur'an: Text and Commentary, Volume 2.1: Early Middle Meccan Suras: The New Elect (p. 164). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition. ''The aṣḥāb al-Rass are new (on them KU, 94ff.), they will only be encountered once more (in Q 25:38). Puin (2005: 329–331) has been able to identify them, on the basis of pre-Islamic and Islamic geographical literature, with a people called Arsae in the Ptolemaic account of Arabia (c. AD 150) who “resided immediately north of Iambia, the holy Yanbuʿ . . . . The Semitic equivalent of the letter sequence ARS would be ʿ-r-s, the natural pronunciation of which is /ars/ or /aras/. It is then only a small step from here to ar-Rass, understood in Arabic and provided with an assimilated article.” The Arabic form of the name al-Rass is similarly secondary to that of al-ayka for Leuke Kome, but it is not first qurʾanic, but already attested by the ancient Arabic poet Zuhayr (see above Literary Criticism). Aṣḥāb al-Rass is translated as “the Arsians” in reference to the name of the people in Ptolemaic geography.'' See more discussions on al-Rass also on Ibid. pp.145-146, pp.159 & pp.171.</ref>

Instead of al-ayka (“the thicket of trees”) we read layka in v. 78. Gerd-Rüdiger Puin (2005) has been able to show that al-ayka is an Arabicized reading of layka, “Leuke Kome.” The identification is convincing, since in addition to al-ayka (Q 15:28 and 50:14) there is also an articleless layka in Q 26:176 and 38:18. The traditional readers draw various conclusions from this: in the two passages without an article in Q 26:176 and 38:13, the readers Nafiʿ, Ibn Kathīr, Ibn ʿĀmir, and Abū Jaʿfar mark their understanding of layka as a place-name even with the diptotic vocalization with—a. Warsh ʿan Nāfiʿ even reads layka against the rasm in Q 15:28. On the other hand, Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim also restitutes the reading al-ayka against the rasm. See www.corpuscoranicum.de, “Readings.” The reading al-ayka represented by Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim and others can easily be interpreted as a subsequent adjustment of a no longer understood rasm to a well-known lexeme, the appellative ayka (“thicket”). The phonetic difference between leuke and layka would be reduced if one took into account the postclassical pronunciation of leuke as levki, which is to be assumed for Late Antiquity, and read the rasm (al-)‘yka not as layka but as līka.