What is Islam

Creed (Kalima)- One must state, "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the Prophet of Allah." publicly to become a Muslim.
Prayer (Salat)- Prayer must be done five times a day (upon rising, at noon, in mid-afternoon, after sunset, and before going to sleep) towards the direction of Mecca. The call to prayer is sounded by the muezzin (Muslim crier) from a tower (minaret) within the mosque.
Almsgiving (Zakat)- Muslims are legally required to give one-fortieth of their income to the needy. Since those whom alms are given are helping the giver achieve salvation, there is no sense of shame in receiving charity.
Fasting (Ramadan)- During the holy month of Ramadan, faithful Muslims fast from sunup to sundown each day. This develops self-control, devotion to God, and identity with the needy.
Pilgrimage (Hajj)- Each Muslim is expected to make the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in their lifetime if they have the means to do it and are physically capable of the trip. It is an essential part of gaining salvation, so the old or infirm may send someone in their place. It involves a set of rituals and ceremonies.

A sixth religious duty associated with the five pillars is Jihad, or Holy War. This duty requires that if the situation warrants, men are required to go to war to defend or spread Islam. If they are killed, they are guaranteed eternal life in Paradise.

Five Articles of Faith

The five articles of faith are the main doctrines of Islam. All Muslims are expected to believe the following:

God. There is one true God and his name is Allah.
Angels. Angels exist and interact with human lives. They are comprised of light, and each have different purposes or messages to bring to earth. Each man or woman has two angels who record his actions; one records good deeds, the other bad deeds.
Scripture. There are four inspired books, the Torah of Moses, the Psalms (Zabin) of David, the Gospel of Jesus Christ (Injil) and the Qur'an. All but the Qur'an have been corrupted by Jews and Christians.
Prophets. God has spoken through numerous prophets throughout time. The six greatest are: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. Muhammad is the last and greatest of Allah's messengers.
Last Days. On the last day there will be a time of resurrection and judgment. Those who follow Allah and Muhammad will go to Islamic heaven, or Paradise. Those who do not will go to hell.

References

McDowell, Josh and Don Stewart, Handbook of Today's Religions. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1983. Twelfth printing, June 1992.

Shelley, Fred M. and Audrey E. Clarke, eds. Human and Cultural Geography. Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown Publishers, 1994.

http://emuseum.mnsu.edu/cultural/religion/islam/beliefs.html 4/1/03 10:09:09 AM

What is Islam?
Thanks to: http://www.nicheoftruth.org/

The Arabic word ' Islam' stands for 'Submission' or 'Peace'. In a religious context, it implies the peace that reaches out to one when one completely submits oneself to the will of Almighty God. This is achieved only when the individual acts in accordance with the direction of his Creator in all spheres of life.

Who is the founder of Islam?
The Almighty God who created the universe, endowed man with a special gift of intelligence and thought, to enable him to discriminate between good and bad. Man has also been given, the freedom to choose his own path by either accepting or rejecting the instructions of the Almighty Creator. The divine revelations were conveyed by God to mankind through numerous prophets who preached the ideals to all communities during different periods of human history. The thousands of prophets whom God selected for human guidance have promulgated the basic doctrine with remarkable similarity. The belief in and the profound reverence for all messengers and revealed scriptures from God forms an integral part of Islamic faith. Islam is not a religion founded by Prophet Mohammed, (Peace Be Upon Him). The Qur'an has most emphatically corroborated the fact that the Islamic conception of life was revealed to man by a long chain of prophets chosen by the Almighty Creator.

Who is Muslim?
The word 'Muslim' means one who has submitted oneself to the Omnipotent Creator. A true Muslim is one who has disciplined his life in accordance with the instructions conveyed by God through His messengers. A person becomes a Muslim not by birth alone, but by his faith and deeds.

How can one be a Muslim?
"I testify that there is none who deserves to be worshipped but Allah. I testify that Mohammed is the messenger of Allah". By taking this solemn oath sincerely and endeavouring to regulate one's life following the instructions conveyed by Allah through his messengers, one becomes a true Muslim. By declaring that there is none worthy of worship save Allah, and that Mohammed is the Prophet of Allah, the believer announces his or her faith in God's oneness, His sole right to be worshipped and that Muhammed is the last of the prophets. It also confirms his or her belief in all prophets and the scriptures they brought.

Why does Islam seem to be strict?
No prophet taught that religion is to be confined within the walls of places of worship. On the contrary, Muslims are expected to follow the instructions of Almighty Allah in the course of all their activities in life. The word 'Muslim' means 'one who has submitted his self to the will of Allah', and for the same reason a true Muslim cannot compromise on anything that stands in the way of guiding his life according to divine strictures. The view that consciousness of God is to be confined only to the place of worship is alien to Islam. Muslims always have religion foremost in their minds whereas many others consider religion as irrelevant in the present age.

ISLAMIC BELIEFS
"O people! Worship your Guardian Lord, Who created you and those who came before you that you may become righteous. Who has made the earth your couch, and the heavens your canopy; and sent down rain from the heavens; and brought forth therewith fruits for your sustenance; Then set not up rivals unto Allah when you know (the truth)." Holy Qur'an 2:21, 22

What are the Islamic beliefs?
Muslims believe in one, unique, incomparable God, in the angels created by Him, in the revealed Scriptures, in the prophets through whom His revelations were made to mankind, in the Day of Judgement and life after death, individual accountability for actions, and in God's complete authority over human destiny.

What does faith in 'One God' mean?
Allah, the Creator and Protector of all beings in the universe, big and small, in His essence His goodness and his deeds, remains alone and unique. One offers worship only to Him, who is Almighty, higher than everyone else and Himself being perfect in everything. By monotheism, Islam implies, not the mere belief that there is just one God, but it power the way for prayers and offerings to the one who is all Merciful and Omniscient.

Who is Allah?
The Arabic word 'Allah' is the shortened form of 'al-ilah', 'The God, the one and only God, the first, the last, the eternal, the hidden, the manifest, the ultimate reality'. Even non-Muslim Arabs use the term 'Allah' when they speak of God. The basic creed of Islam is this simple formula: 'There is no God but Allah' ('La ilaha illallah'). The Arabic term 'Allah' denoting God, is unique in many ways. It has no plural like 'gods'; it has no gender like 'godess'; nor does this word generate a visual image of any kind. "Allah", He is God, the One true God, He is the one who deserves all worship and there is nothing comparable to him. Nevertheless, ninety-nine different attributes of Allah are named in the Qur'an.

Who are the angels?
Angels are the servants of God and they were created from light. They are beyond the realm and reach of human comprehension. They do not have freedom of action and can only carry out the command of God.

What are the Scriptures?
The Scriptures are the sacred books containing divine revelations from God which were conveyed through His messengers for the guidance of man. Prophets were sent to all peoples of all ages, to warn them and guide them to righteousness and virtue. The names of the four known scriptures are 'the Torah', 'the Zabur', 'the Injeel' and 'the Qur'an'. 'The Torah' was revealed to Prophet Moses (Peace be upon him) and it is the greatest among the Israelites books. The Zabur was revealed to Prophet David (Peace be upon him). 'The Injeel' which Allah revealed to Prophet Jesus (Peace be upon him), is a confirmation of 'the Torah' and a complement to it. The Qur'an, which was revealed to the last of the prophets, is but a restatement of the faith delivered to the prophets before him. The more the Qur'an is studied with an unprejudiced mind, the more this truth emerges, that the Qur'an is a confirmation of all the earlier scriptures and messages sent by God through His messengers who lived and preached among various sects of humanity.

Who are the prophets?
Prophets are men, chosen by God at various stages and under varying circumstances of history, to lead men from darkness to light. The Qur'an repeatedly states the fact that prophets with the same message were sent to each and every community. The process of revelation continued unabated, sometimes in succession, at other times in broken sequences until the period in history, when the termination of Divine revelation and messengership, with the Qur'an and Prophet Mohammed (Peace be upon him) became a significant milestone in the history of mankind. It is true that the lives and mission of many a prophet has been made obscure and distorted by legends that grew around them or by people with vested interests, who used the names of these prophets to exploit men and mislead them from the right faith. No prophet of God has claimed himself to be divine. They were all mortals who lived and passed away from this earth after completing their mission of conveying the basic message to mankind, which was a call for the recognition and affirmation of God's existence, uniqueness and Lordship over all creation. It is an integral part of Islamic faith to believe in all the prophets of God.

What does Islam say about life after death?
Death does not terminate man's life. On the other hand, Islam teaches that it is the door that opens to an eternal lifer after death. The appropriate reward for one's earthly deeds, good or bad, is disbursed only in the Hereafter. The Islamic belief is that mankind will be resurrected, on the Day of Judgement, after every creation is destroyed. After being reborn, man will face a trial which will be in absolute control of the Almighty. Here, all the good and bad acts of man during his sojourn on earth will be unfurled before his eyes in order to be ultimately judged by God. The virtuous will be rewarded with virtue and the wrong doers punished appropriately. Those who have made sacrifices and discharges noble deeds will receive the shelter of peace in Heaven and those who have denigrated their lives through vices and evil will be condemned to suffer horrors of Hell. Islam inculcates the concept of accountability both in public and private life of a person by emphasizing the paramount importance of life Hereafter for mankind.

What does faith in destiny mean in Islam?
The Law of God, the Creator and Ruler of the worlds, is a powerful, all pervasive law which governs all that comprises the universe. No creation can lodge this Law and man's position is no different. Even man's environment and physical constitution are regulated on the basis of this divine law. The good and the bad that befall him happen on the basis of divine Destiny. How they befall on each one is in accordance with the predetermined decision made by the Omniscient Creator, who is aware of the ultimate good and evil of mankind. Hence, Islam directs man to believe in Destiny, whether good or bad, which Allah has measured and ordained for all creatures according to His previous knowledge and as deemed suitable by His wisdom.

MUHAMMED (PBUH) AND THE QUR'AN
"Those who follow the Messenger, the unlettered Prophet, whom they find mentioned in their own (scriptures), in the Taurat and the Gospel; For he commands them what is just and forbids them what is evil; he allows them as lawful what is good (and pure) and prohibits them from their heavy burdens and from the yokes that are upon them. So it is those who believe in him, honour him, help him and follow the Light which is sent down with him, It is they
who will prosper.." Holy Qur'an 37:15

What are the fundamental sources of Islamic faith?
The sacred fundamental sources of Islamic faith are the Qur'an, and the practice and example of Prophet Muhammed (PBUH).

Who is Muhammed?
Muhammed (PBUH) is the last of the prophets of Islam. It is through him that the religion of absolute submission to God, was perfected. Muhammed (PBUH) is not just the successor of Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus, but of all the prophets who were sent across the world, whose names are either known or unknown. His mission was not to establish new religion, but on the other hand, to perfect the Religion taught by the earlier prophets.

"We have not sent thee but as a (Messenger) to all mankind, giving them glad tidings, and warning them (against sin), but most men know not." Holy Qur'an 37:15

How was the life of Muhammed?
Muhammed (PBUH) was born at Mecca in AD 570. Having lost his father before his birth and his mother at the age of seven, he grew up as an orphan. Despite the immoral circumstances prevailing in the Arabia of his time, Muhammed was particularly well known for his personality radiating honesty, nobility, sincerity, generosity and trustworthiness. Mohammed (PBUH), at the age of twenty five married Khadeeja, a forty year old trader. He started receiving divine revelations at the age of forty. Being chosen as a prophet, he preached the divine messages to the people of Mecca. Their response however was bitter, arrogant and violent. Beaten up, tortured, and threatened with death, he fled his motherland to Yathrib (Medin) a city in the northern side of Arabia. Consequently a Muslim nation was formed in Madina and its leadership was taken up by him. Battle after battle had to be fought while in Madina when unbelievers attacked the Muslims seeking to destroy the religion of truth. In fact, they were battles fought for freedom to practice religion. The most amazing success of the Prophet's life is the tremendous success which he achieved in transforming the life of his followers in all aspects. In a span of just 23 years, he raised them from the depth of degradation to great moral and spiritual heights so as to make them a model for future generations. He passed away at the age of 63 in Medina, having lived a most fruitful life.

Why is Muhammed called the last prophet?

"Muhammed is not the father of any of your men, but (he is) the messenger of Allah, and the seal of prophets; and Allah has full knowledge of all things." Holy Qur'an 33:40

The earlier prophets had been sent exclusively to particular regions or sects. We learn that many prophets had predicted the arrival of a great prophet who would be a blessing to the whole world. Muhammed (PBUH) is indeed a prophet to the entire world. The messages presented through him are applicable to the last of man on earth. The super human powers which were bestowed on some prophets never lasted beyond their lives. However, the Qur'an which proves the prophethood of Muhammed (PBUH), illustrates its consistency and supremacy and is open for verification by anyone. All authorities are unanimously agreed upon the fact that the life and mission of prophet Muhammed (PBUH) was realised completely under the fullest glare of documented history. The whole life of Muhammed (PBUH) has been recorded in detail and each incident, whether major or minor is worthy to be adopted as a model. It has been emphatically asserted that no messenger of God would appear after Muhammed and that all mankind ought to adopt the guidelines laid down in the Qur'an and to emulate the practice and example of Muhammed (PBUH) since the religion of Islam was perfected by them.

What is Qur'an?
The Qur'an is the final sacred scripture presented through the Last Prophet of Islam. It contains nothing but the words of God. It is the sctipture that can guide all mankind to the last day. For the same reason, the very God who presented it, promised mankind that the Qur'an will be protected and preserved to the last without any alteratoin or interpolation. The Qur'an is the only religious text that is free from any human tampering. It is at the same time a text that can guide men of all times through the right path and is also an irrefutable evidence for the prophethood fo Muhammed (PBUH).

What does Qur'an narrate?
The Qur'an contains the moral instruction, essential for man to suceed during this life on earth and during the life after death. We may say that, the central theme of the Qur'an borders on the relationship between the Creator and the created. The Qur'an is full of narrations that speak of beliefs and practices needed to guide one's life through the path of virtue. The purpose of illustrating incidents of the past that have provided lessons for mankind, is to warn mankind against deviating from the path of God. Along with the precepts that aid to the refinement of the self, if contains the rules and regulations to be observed in life. Besides, the Qur'an also explains various universal phenomena, in a manner that convinces anyone of the existence of God. The Qur'an can also be said to be the crystallisation of one and the same religious consciousness preached by all prophets, and the collection of the essence and clarification of all the scriptures of the past.

Why is Qur'an considered divine?
The Qur'an is a unique book, the like of which is no man is capable of composing. Despite being compiled by an illiterate, who had displayed no literary flair until the age of forty, the unique literary style of the Qur'an, is one that remains absolutely inimitable. Amongst the existing scriptures, the Qur'an remains apart, for it can claim to be the only divine text that maintains the very form in which it was first presented. The moral codes laid down in the Qur'an are applicable for all times and matchless is the righteousness that they manifest. It is indeed a wonder, that over a spell of twenty three years, under varied circumstances, the Qur'an verses dealt with subjects that are vast and intense, without any disscrepancy whatsoever. Incomparable and great is the transformation that the Qur'an engendered. In such a short span, the Qur'an transformed a degraded and depraved society to a point that attained the highest levels of moral excellence, making them the models for the future generation of men. It has been proved beyond doubt that, word for word the prophecies in the Qur'an stem from a supreme source. It is a greater wonder that the Qur'an, which was revealed fourteen centuries ago, at a time when the world was in absolute darkness in the fields of science and technology, does not contain a single statement that is contradictory to modern scientific knowledge. Yet another explicit evidence that indicates the supremacy of the Qur'an is that many of the findings of modern science attest the view that the Qur'an is indeed the word of the Almighty, the Creator of the universe.

"And if you are in doubt as to what We have revealed from time to time to Our servant then produce a Sura like thereunto; And call your witness or helpers (if there are any) besides Allah, if your are truthful. But if you cannot - and of a surety you cannot then fear the fire whose fuel is men and stones, - which is prepared for those who reject faith." Holy Qur'an 33:40

ISLAMIC RITES
"Recite what is sent of the book by inspiration to thee, and establish regular prayer: for prayer restains from shameful and evil deeds; and remembrance of Alah is the greatest (thing in life) without doubt and Allah ows the (deeds) that you do."

'Five Pillars of Islam'

Shahada, Salat, Zakaat, Saum, Hajj
There are five compulsory acts of worship that are paramount to Islam. They are the Vow of truth (Shahada), Salat (Prayer), Zakaat (Charity), Fasting (Saum), and Hajj (Pilgrimage).

What is the Vow of truth? Shahada
"I testify that, none but Allah deserves to be worshipped and Muhammed (PBUH) is the messenger of Allah". It is after taking this pledge that one becomes a Muslim. The person who chants this pledge vows that he will offer worship to the One and Only creator and none else, and that he will lead his life, following the practice and example of Prophet Muhammed (PBUH).

What is Salat (Prayer)?

"A person, who does not desist from bad and unjust deeds after offering prayers, strays away from Allah." Prophet Muhammed (PBUH)

It is the compulsory responsibility of every Muslim to offer Salaat five times a day. The timings to be strictly adhered to fallbefore sunrise, during midday, evening, after sunset and at night. The Salaat is to be performed after doing ritual ablutions which symbolises purification of body and soul. It is certain that the life of a true Muslim who sincerely takes the vow of truth and offers prayer five times, meticulously standing with folded hands, bowing, prostrating and sitting, thus involving oneself in a conversation with Creator, will be freed of all wrongs.

What is Zakaat (Charity)?

"Of their wealth take alms, that so thou mightest purify and sanctify them; and invoke Allah for them. Verily! Your invocations are a source of security for them, and Allah is All-Hearer, All-Knower." ( Holy Qur'an 9:103 )

The literal meaning of Zakat is 'to purify'. It is not just a form of charity or almsgiving. Muslims are liable to set apart a share of their own wealth for those who suffer poverty and want in the society. This compulsory charity is known as Zakaat. The Zakaat rate of per annum is fixed at the of 2.5% for goods to be traded and 10% for agriculture produce, (5% if the produce is the result of irrigation). Certain minimum limits have been prescribed for each item, above which 'Zakaat' is due. The Zakaat is to be collected from those liable by the government or by an institution entrusted by the community, in order to distribute to the deserving.

What is Fasting ( Saum )?

"Ramadhan is the (month) in which was sent down the Qur'an, as a guide to mankind, also clear (signs) for guidance and judgement (between right and wrong). So everyone of you who is present (at his home) during that month should spent it in fasting." Holy Qur'an 2:185

It is the responsibility of a Muslim to abstain from taking food and drink and also to abstain from sexual intercourse during day time for a period of one month. Ramadhan, the month in which the Qur'an was first revealed, is the stipulated month for fasting. The believer who observes fasting for a month is able to elevate his self above all temptations of a physical nature.

What is Hajj ( Pilgrimage )?

"Whoever performs Hajj solely for the sake of Allah and, in the course of it, abstains from sensuality and disobedience, he returns from there as immaculate as a child just born." Prophet Muhammed (PBUH)

Every healthy and affluent Muslim should undertake a pilgrimage to Mecca, once in his life time. This pilgrimage is known as Hajj. People of different nationalities, languages and colours, gather in millions at Mecca during the month of Hajj. The concept of one humanity upheld by Islam is explicit during Hajj pilgrimage when the pilgrims have the same thought, carry the same prayer on their lips, and are uniformly dressed (the man using just two pieces of cloth - one to wear and the other to cover and the women covering all the parts of their bodies except their face and hands). A single humanity, where there is no discrimination between master or labourer, black or white, elite or lowly, native or foreigner, is symolized by the multitude of humanity that assemble for this holy pilgrimage.

http://www.anzwers.org/free/cybermasti/webpage/islam.htm 4/1/03 9:33:06 AM

Beliefs and Laws of Islam
Stephen Bates explains the basics to non-Muslims with little previous knowledge.

Origins Islam is the religion of allegiance to God and his prophet Mohammed, who lived around 570-632 and came from a family of traders at Mecca. The religion's book of revelation, mediated by the prophet, is the Koran. The word Islam derives from the same semitic root as the Hebrew word Shalom, which means peace. Islam means "entering into a condition of peace and security with God, through allegiance or surrender to him".

Mohammed is said to have received his revelations over a period of 23 years from the Angel Jibreel, or Gabriel, who was relaying the word of God.

It was not a completely new faith but is the third great monotheistic religion. In Muslim eyes, Mohammed completes a succession of prophets, including Abraham, Moses and Jesus, each of whom refined and restated the message of God.

The Koran therefore corroborates, updates and expands the Old and New Testaments.

It contains 114 chapters, written in vivid, rhyming prose, and was settled in its current form within 30 years of Mohammed's death.

Main tenets Central to Islam is the absolute sense that there can only be one God - Allah - and that he is the source of all creation and disposer of all lives and events. Hence, there is no God but God and Mohammed is his messenger.

All people should become a single Umma - community - witnessing to that fact. On the day of judgment, all will rise from the dead and be sent to heaven or hell.

The Koran contains many moral exhortations, forming the basis of Islamic (sharia) law. It lays down generosity and fairness and the requirements for daily prayer, alms giving, abstinence during daylight hours in the month of Ramadan and pilgrimage to Mecca.

The five pillars of the Islamic faith - the fundamental constituents of Muslim life - are: · Shahada, the profession of faith in the uniqueness of Allah and the centrality of Mohammed as his prophet · Salat, formal worship or prayer · Zakat, the giving of alms for the poor, assessed on all adult Muslims as 2.5% of capital assets once a year · Hajj, pilgrimage to Mecca, which every Muslim should undertake at least once in their lifetime; the annual hajj takes place during the last 10 days of the 12th lunar month every year · Sawm, fasting during Ramadan, the holy ninth month of the lunar year.

Early history In 622, Mohammed travelled from Mecca to Medina in the hijrah (emigration) - this forms the starting point in the Muslim dating system.

After the prophet's death his community split into followers of the caliph Abu Bakr and those who supported Mohammed's closest relative, his son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib.

This division between Shia (followers of Ali) and Sunni (followers of the custom of the caliphate) persists to this day. Although both share most of the customs of the religion, Shiites place more emphasis on the guiding role of the imam.

About 90% of the world's Muslims are Sunni and about 10% Shia.

Sharia The divine law of Islam by which Muslims should live their lives.

It embraces every aspect of life, including family relations, inheritance, taxation, purification and prayer and observes no distinction between secular and religious law.

How far modern Islamic states follow this principle depends on the degree of secularisation they permit. It is essentially laid down by the Koran but has been updated and extended by fatwa (legal opinion), consensus and custom.

· The Guardian (London) Monday June 17, 2002

http://www.islamfortoday.com/beliefs01.htm 4/1/03 9:55:02 AM

JIHAD: LOOKING BEYOND THE MYTHS

WHAT JIHAD IS:

• The Arabic word Jihad is often translated as holy war, but a more accurate translation is holy struggle. Islamic scholars say the term holy war was actually coined in Europe during the Crusades to mean a war against the Muslims.

• In a purely linguistic sense, the word Jihad means struggling or striving. There are two different, unrelated words which mean war.

• In a religious sense, as described by the Koran and teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, Jihad means striving for the benefit of the community or the restraint of personal sins. It can refer to internal as well as external efforts to be a good Muslim, or believer. Scholars say it primarily refers to efforts to improve oneself.

• Jihad is a religious duty.

• If Jihad is required to protect the faith against others, it can be performed using anything from legal, diplomatic and economic to political means. If there is no peaceful alternative, Islam also allows the use of force, but there are strict rules of engagement. Innocents -- such as women, children, or invalids -- must never be harmed, and any peaceful overtures from the enemy must be accepted.

• Military action is therefore only one means of Jihad, and is very rare. To highlight this point, the Prophet Mohammed told his followers returning from a military campaign: "This day we have returned from the minor Jihad to the major Jihad," which he said meant returning from armed battle to the peaceful battle for self-control and betterment.

• In case military action appears necessary, not everyone can declare Jihad. The religious military campaign has to be declared by a proper authority, advised by scholars, who say the religion and people are under threat and violence is imperative to defend them. The concept of "just war" is very important.

• The concept of Jihad has been hijacked by many political and religious groups over the ages in a bid to justify various forms of violence. In most cases, Islamic splinter groups invoked Jihad to fight against the established Islamic order. Scholars says this misuse of Jihad contradicts Islam.

• Examples of sanctioned military Jihad include the Muslims' defensive battles against the Crusaders in medieval times, and before that some responses by Muslims against Byzantine and Persian attacks during the period of the early Islamic conquests.

WHAT JIHAD IS NOT

• Jihad is not a violent concept.

• Jihad is not a declaration of war against other religions. It is worth noting that the Koran specifically refers to Jews and Christians as "people of the book" who should be protected and respected. All three faiths worship the same God. Allah is just the Arabic word for God, and is used by Christian Arabs as well as Muslims.

• Military action in the name of Islam has not been common in the history of Islam. Scholars says most calls for violent Jihad are not sanctioned by Islam.

• Warfare in the name of God is not unique to Islam. Other faiths throughout the world have waged wars with religious justifications.

Source: REUTERS

This article previously appeared in The Times of India on Thursday, November 22, 2001.

http://www.islamfortoday.com/jihad01.htm 4/1/03 9:57:12 AM

What's in a name? - The Problem

with the "Nation of Islam"
A court ruling overturning a fifteen year British ban on its leader, Louis Farrakhan, has propelled the so-called Nation of Islam into the headlines. Michael Young examines the Islamic credentials of these self-styled "Muslims".
August 1, 2001

The Fundamentals of Islamic Belief
One could be forgiven for assuming that any group with the word Islam in its title would be Muslim. But when it comes to the group calling itself the "Nation of Islam", one must be very wary indeed. To be Muslim means to hold certain fundamental theological beliefs. The Muslim profession of faith is:

"I bear witness that there is no god but God, and I bear witness that Mohammed is a prophet of God."

To elaborate on these statements, to be a Muslim means to believe that God is One, unique. He has no partners, no associates, no Son, nor did He ever become incarnate. As chapter 112 of the Quran makes clear:

"He is God, the only One,
God the Everlasting.
He did not beget and is not begotten,
And none is His equal."

In Islam the ascribing of partners to God, referred to as shirk, is the greatest of all sins. The Quran states explicitly in chapter 4, verse 36:

"Serve Allah, and join not any partners with Him."

Secondly, Muslims believe Mohammed to have been the "Seal" or last of the prophets. To recognize anyone after Mohammed claiming to be a prophet, negates one's Islam. As is stated in the Quran:

"O people! Mohammed has no sons among ye men, but verily, he is the Messenger of Allah and the last in the line of Prophets. And Allah is aware of everything." (33:40)

This is reinforced by various sayings of Prophet Mohammed :

"The tribe of Israel was guided by prophets. When a prophet passed away, another succeeded him. But no prophet will come after me; only caliphs will succeed me." (Bukhari)

"In My Ummah, there shall be born Thirty Grand Liars (Dajjals), each of whom will claim to be a prophet, But I am the Last Prophet; there is No Prophet after Me." (Abu Dawood, at-Tirmidhi)

THE ERRANT THEOLOGY OF THE "NATION OF ISLAM"
The "Nation of Islam" does not adhere to these core tenets of Islamic theology. They believe that God appeared on earth in the person of their founder, a "great man from the East", Master W. Fard Muhammad, a preacher who first came to public attention in the USA on July 4, 1930 then mysteriously "departed the scene" on February 26, 1934. As the NOI website unambiguously declares:

"WE BELIEVE that Allah (God) appeared in the Person of Master W. Fard Muhammad, July, 1930; the long-awaited "Messiah" of the Christians and the "Mahdi" of the Muslims."

In 1934 following the unexplained departure of the "Master", the organization he founded came to be headed by one Elijah Poole, who became known as the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Until very recently, the "Nation of Islam" accorded the status of prophet to Elijah Muhammad.

Therefore it is clear that despite their name and calling themselves Muslims, "Nation of Islam" beliefs about God and prophethood are glaringly incompatible with Islam.

RACIST IDEOLOGY ALSO AT ODDS WITH UNIVERSAL ISLAM
A third area of non-compliance with Islam, and the one which receives by far the greatest attention in the secular media, is the issue of race. The present "Nation of Islam" leader, Louis Farrakhan, is on record as having made objectionable anti-Jewish (as distinct from anti-Zionist) remarks. Among other unfortunate utterances, he is alleged to have referred to Judaism as a "gutter religion".

Moreover, the NOI is a segregationalist organization exclusively for black people descended from slaves. Proper Islam is a universal religion open to people of every race. Muslims are supposed to differentiate between people on the basis not of ethnic origin but of piety and upright behavior. As the Quran makes clear:

"And mankind is naught but a single nation." Holy Quran 2:213

"O Mankind! Most certainly, it is We (God almighty) who have Created you all from a single (pair) of a male and a female, And it is We who have made you into nations and tribes, that ye may recognize each other. Verily, the noblest of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you." Holy Quran 49:13

And in his final sermon, Prophet Mohammed made clear that racism has no place in Islam:

"O people! Verily your Lord is one and your father is one. All of you belong to one ancestry of Adam and Adam was created out of clay. There is no superiority for an Arab over a non-Arab and for a non-Arab over an Arab; nor for white over the black nor for the black over the white except in piety. Verily the noblest among you is he who is the most pious."

In contrast, the NOI has a pronounced anti-white bias. They refer to blacks as God's chosen people and Caucasians as white devils. They call for a separate homeland for American blacks, for racially segregated education and for a ban on interracial marriage. To quote again from their website:

· We believe we are the people of God's choice.

· WE BELIEVE this is the time in history for the separation of the so-called Negroes and the so-called white Americans.

· We want our people in America whose parents or grandparents were descendants from slaves, to be allowed to establish a separate state or territory of their own--either on this continent or elsewhere.

· We want all black children educated, taught and trained by their own teachers.

· We believe that intermarriage or race mixing should be prohibited.

Fellow Muslims with eyes the bluest of blue and skin the whitest of white...
Former NOI members who recognized anti-white racism as folly and converted to proper Islam include Malcolm X and the world champion heavyweight boxer, Muhammad Ali. Both spoke out on the subject:

"[The Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca] was an exhilarating experience to see people belonging to different colors, races and nationalities, kings, heads of states and ordinary men from very poor countries all clad in two simple white sheets praying to God without any sense of either pride or inferiority. It was a practical manifestation of the concept of equality in Islam." Muhammed Ali

"During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug) -- while praying to the same God -- with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the 'white' Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan and Ghana."

"We were truly all the same -- because their belief in the one God had removed the 'white' from their minds, the 'white' from their behavior, and the 'white' from their attitude."

"This religion recognizes all men as brothers. It accepts all human beings as equals before God, and as equal members in the Human Family of Mankind. I totally reject Elijah Muhammad's racist philosophy, which he has labeled 'Islam' only to fool and misuse gullible people as he fooled and misused me. But I blame only myself, and no one else for the fool that I was, and the harm that my evangelical foolishness on his behalf has done to others." Malcolm X

Any areas of common ground between Islam and the "Nation of Islam"?
Despite the major negatives, there are some elements of NOI beliefs with which Muslims can more or less agree: For example:

· WE BELIEVE In the One God whose proper Name is Allah.

· WE BELIEVE in the Holy Qur'an and in the Scriptures of all the Prophets of God.

· WE BELIEVE in Allah's Prophets and the Scriptures they brought to the people.

· WE BELIEVE our women should be respected and protected as the women of other nationalities are respected and protected.

And there is much on the practical side of the NOI which we can admire. The NOI prohibits among its members drinking, smoking and gambling. They are also known for their social work among the black community and their often successful efforts to raise levels of self-discipline and self-confidence in a community which has suffered from historical injustice and its debilitating long-term social and psychological effects often manifested in nihilistic, violent, drug-ridden American inner city and housing project ghettos and characterized by family breakdown including a high illegitimate birth rate.

Whither the "Nation of Islam"?
Laudable as the lifestyle espoused by the NOI may be, one cannot escape the fact that despite some of the trappings of Islam, the theology and ideology they currently espouse are not only non-Islamic but actually anathema to Islam. There are, however, some signs that things may be changing for the better.

On the death of Elijah Mohammed in 1976 his son Wallace D. Muhammad (now known as Imam Warrithuddin Mohammed) assumed NOI leadership, renamed the organization the Muslim American Society and steered it toward Islamic orthodoxy. After three years a disgruntled Louis Farrakhan broke away and re-founded the NOI in line with the teachings of Elijah Mohammed. But in February this year, Farrakhan, recovering from a serious battle with prostate cancer which may have given him cause to reflect, shared a platform with Wallace and made an important move toward mainstream Islam by declaring:

"Allah sent Mohammed with the final revelation to the world. ... There is no prophet after the Prophet Mohammed , and no book after the Koran."

Let us hope that similarly orthodox statements on the nature of God and on race will also soon be forthcoming. Let us look forward to the day when Louis Farrakhan and his NOI follow the example of their former colleague, Malcolm X, who eventually found his way from the so-called "Nation of Islam" to genuine Islam and stated:

"I declare emphatically that I am no longer in Elijah Muhammad's 'strait jacket', and I don't intend to replace his with one woven by someone else. I am a Muslim in the most orthodox sense; my religion is Islam as it is believed in and practiced by the Muslims in the Holy City of Mecca." Alhamdulillah.

Allahu a`lam. God knows best.

http://www.islamfortoday.com/nationofislam.htm 4/1/03 10:07:01 AM

A Partial List of Problems and Contradictions in the Quran

This is a partial list of problems found in the Quran, which to the best of our knowledge remain unanswered. Your thoughts, comments, or explanations of any of the below are welcomed.

1. Creation: The biblical Genesis account says God created all in six days (see Genesis 1:1 - 2:2). The Quran, however, has a real problem here as Surah 41:9, 10, 12 have a total of eight days of creation (4+2+2=8) Meanwhile, Surah 10:3 gives the total number of days of creation as six. This is a problem of self-contradiction.

2. Pharaoh: According to the Quran (Surah 7:120-125) Pharaoh used crucifixion in dealing with the sorcerers - a practice which historical evidence gives no precedent to before the Babylonian Empire. This is once again a problem of historical compression.

3. The Golden Calf: According to the Quran (Surah 20:90-100)a Samaritan helped the Israelites build the golden calf, and it mooed after coming out of the fire. In reality, Samaritans did not exist as a people until at least 1000 years after the time of the Moses and the Israelite exodus from Egypt. Again a problem of historical compression.

4. Judaism: According to the Quran (Surah 9:30) the Jews believe that Ezra is the Son of God - the Messiah. This never has been a tenet of Judaism. This is a clear problem of distorted knowledge of other religions and historical fact.

5. Alexander the Great: According to the Quran (Surah 18:89-98) Alexander the Great was a devout Muslim and lived to a ripe old age. Historical records however show that Alexander the Great died young at 33 years of age (b. 356 B.C. - d. 323 B.C.), and believed he was divine, forcing others to recognize him as such. In India on the Hyphasis River (now Beas) Alexander erected twelve altars to twelve Olympian gods. Once again the Quran shows errors in historical and religious fact.

6. The Trinity: According to the Quran (Surah 5:116, 5:73-75) the Christians believe in "three Gods" - Father, Mother, and Son. This shows the influence of heretical 'Christian' sects in central Arabia at the time of Muhammad. In contrast, Christianity has always distinctly stated that the Trinity is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The teaching of the Quran on the Trinity has undoubtedly led to confusion among many Muslims on what the Bible (and thus Christianity) teaches about the Triune God.

7. Mary: According to the Quran (Surah 19:28, 3:33-36), Mary, the mother of Jesus, was the daughter of Imran or Amram, the father of Moses and Aaron. Mary is also said to be the sister of Moses and Aaron. Clearly Muhammad confused Mary with Miriam.
A second interesting point about Mary is the story of the date palm speaking and offering its fruit to her (Surah 19:23). This legend is easily traced to similar legends found in the apocryphal "Protoevangelium of James" the "Pseudo-Matthew" and "the Gospel of the Nativity of Mary" all of which have been dated to the fourth to sixth centuries, and were again believed by the sects found in Arabia. (More indepth information on Quranic sources may be found in Rev. W. St. Clair Tisdall's The Religion of the Crescent).

8. Textual Variants in the Quran: Many Muslims claim that the Quran today is identical to the revelations received by Muhammad. However, there is overwhelming unanswered evidence to the contrary. This includes evidence of variations both prior to, and after Uthman.

How do we view and respond to these unresolved problems of logic, history and religious knowledge? While they do not serve as the basis for our belief that the Quran is not the revelation of God (as there are issues of far greater consequence between the message of the Bible and the message of the Quran), they do show us that there are legitimate problems with the belief that the Quran is God's revelation to man, as God who is all knowing and infallible could not give statements of error, and then claim them as His Truth. As Christians we find the answer in the Bible. Numbers 23 tells us,

God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man that He should repent. Has He said, and He will not do? Or has He spoken, and He will not make it good? (vs.19)

God, who is all knowing and all powerful, cannot be errant in His revelation to man. The problems in the Quran and differences between the Bible and Quran are numerous, leaving an unresolved difficulty for Islam which claims to be a fulfillment of the Bible. The following link provides further, more indepth discussion of the above and otherproblems in the Quran.

http://www.rim.org/muslim/quranproblems.htm 4/1/03 10:23:01 AM

Text Of The Qur'ân

The primary source of the missionaries' argument is at Answering Islam.We have also retained their pattern so as to facilitate the identification of rebuttals.

The Qur'ânic Manuscripts

Click here to see them.

What About Changes In The Qur'ân Before ^cUthmânic Recension?

Jam^c al-Qur'ân: An Exposition Of John Gilchrist's Deceptive Methodology

i. The Qur'ân, Jeffery and Missionaries: What Does Jeffery Actually Say?

ii. al-Hajjâj, Kitâb al-Masâhif and Gilchrist

Abdullah Ibn Sad Ibn Abi Sarh: Where Is the Truth?

i. Apostacy Of Ibn Sarh

ii. ^cUlum al-Qur'ân and Revelation

iii. What Does Sirah Of al-Iraqî Actually Say?

iv. Discussion

Was There A Change In The Qur'ân After ^cUthmânic Recension?

Did al-Hajjâj Change The Qur'ân? A Reply To Christian Polemic

i. The Christian Source

ii. Muslim and Non-Muslim Sources: Importance Of Oral Transmission Of The Qur'ân

iii. al-Hajjâj and His Influence In The Ummayad Regime

iv. al-Hajjâj and The State Of Arabic Language

v. Conclusions

al-Hajjâj, Kitâb al-Masâhif and Missionaries

i. What al-Hajjâj Had Changed in ^cUthmân's Mushâf?

ii. The Nature Of Changes Which al-Hajjâj Made

iii. Orientalists' and Missionaries' View

iv. Conclusions

Well, What About The "Variant Texts" and Two Shi'ite Sûrahs?

Versions Of The Qur'ân?

i. Revelation Of The Qur'ân In Seven Ahruf

ii. Difference Between Ahruf and Qirâ'ât

iii. Conditions For The Validity Of Different Qirâ'ât

iv. The Chain of Narration Of Different Qirâ'ât

v. Hafs and Warsh Qirâ'ât: Are They Different Versions Of The Qur'ân?

vi. Recitation Of The Qur'ân In Hafs, Warsh and Other Qirâ'â

vii. Printed Edition Of The Qur'ân In Various Qirâ'ât

viii. Books On Mutawatir Qirâ'ât

The Qur'ân, Jeffery and Missionaries: What Does Jeffery Actually Say?

Sûrah al-Walayah and Sûrah al-Nurayn: Their Authenticity and Literary Style

i. The Shi'ite Sources

ii. Sûrah al-Walayah and al-Nurayn: Their History and Studies On Them

iii. Do These Sûrahs Exist In The Early Codices Of The Companions?

iv. Conclusions

Are Not There Any Grammatical Errors?

Responses To The Grammatical Errors In The Qur'ân

Grammatical Shift For The Rhetorical Purposes: Iltifât And Related Features In The Qur'ân , M A S Abdel Haleem, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 1992, Volume LV, Part 3.

This article deals with the misunderstandings of various Orientalists on the issue of grammatical shifts arising in Arabic rhetoric; some them even called these linguistic features as linguistic defects in the Qur'ân. Notable of them are the works of Theodor Nöldeke, Bell and Watt, Rudi Paret and John Burton.

Sudden Change In Person and Number: Neal Robinson On Iltifât, Neal Robinson, Discovering The Qur'ân: A Contemporary Approach To A Veiled Text (1996, SCM Press Ltd.). The chapter is "The Dynamics Of The Qur'ânic Discourse", [pp. 245-252].

This article is packed with some examples taken from the above work on Iltifât by M A S Abdel Haleem.

Between Grammar And Rhetoric (Balâghah): A Look At Qur'ân 2:217, Mustansir Mir, Islamic Studies, 1990, Volume 29, No. 3. pp. 277-285.

The article deals with various problems raised by the verse 2:217 concerning the case ending of the phrase wa'l-masjidi 'l-harâmi in the verse. Rudi Paret has called this verse as 'rough' (perhaps taking a clue from the work of Theodor Nöldeke). Is it an issue of grammar or balâghah?

Orientalists' View About The Arab Grammarians

How Did The Qur'ân Influence The Interpretation Of The Jewish Bible?

What About The Scribal Errors?

Are There Scribal Errors In The Qur'ân?

i. The Rise and Development Of The Qur'ânic Script

ii. The Alleged Scribal Errors

iii. The Qur'ânic Orthography

Qur'ânic Orthography: The Written Representation Of The Recited Text Of The Qur'ân

What Is There To Hide About Textual Criticism Of The Bible and The Qur'ân?

Who Is Afraid Of Textual Criticism?

i. Variant Readings In The Qur'an and In The Bible

a. The Qur'an, Its Variant Readings and Islamic Scholarship

b. The New Testament, Its Problems and The Critical Texts

ii. Textual Criticism and The Reaction Of The Church

a. J Mill

b. R Bentley

c. J J Wettstein

d. B F Westcott and J A Hort

The NT Manuscript Tradition Versus The Tradition Of The OT and The Qur'ân

Miscellaneous: Refutations and Other Issues

Nevo and Negev Inscriptions: The Use and Abuse Of The Evidence

i. Introduction

ii. Background

iii. The Use and Abuse Of The Evidence

iv. Early Islamic Architecture

v. Conclusions

Reply To Mr. Samuel Green's "The Seven Readings Of The Qur'ân"

i. Introduction

ii. Qirâ'ât Or 'Variant' Readings?

iii. Are Qirâ'ât Due To The Lack Of Vowel and Diacritical Points In The Early Qur'âns?

iv. Masâhif Surprises?

v. The Abuse of Brockett's Material On Qirâ'ât

vi. No Books On Mutawatir Readings Available?

vii. Conclusions

a. Variant Readings Of The New Testament: Their Origin and Significance

b. Critical Editions and The Methodlogies

c. Conclusions

Burton, Wansbrough and 'Logic' Of Christian Missionaries

On Pre-Islamic Poetry and The Qur'ân

Qur'anic Manuscripts

There has been a polemic going on that the Qur'an does not have manuscripts from the first century of Hijra. However, this is not true. Many fragments of early Qur'anic manuscripts were shown by Orientalists notably Nabia Abbott in her work The Rise of the North Arabic script and its Kur'ânic development, with a full description of the Kur'ân manuscripts in the Oriental Institute (1939, University of Chicago Press). There she discusses some of the Qurânic manuscripts, dated from second half of the first century Hijra onwards, at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. The aim of this page is to highlight some of the early Qur'anic manuscripts to refute the claim that the Qur'an lacks manuscripts from the first century of Hijra.

The dig at the Great Mosque in San^câ', Yemen, had found a large number of manuscripts of the Qur'an dating from first century of Hijra. The date of building the Great Mosque in San^câ' goes back to 6th year of Hijra when the Prophet^(P) entrusted one of his companions to build a mosque. The mosque was extended and enlarged by Islamic rulers from time to time. In 1385 H/1965 CE heavy rains fell on San^câ'. The Great Mosque was affected and the ceiling in the north west corner was damaged. During the survey, the workers discovered a large vault full of parchment and paper manuscripts of both the Qur'an and non-Qur'anic material.

The UNESCO, an arm of the United Nations, had compiled a CD containing some of the dated San^câ' manuscripts as a part of "Memory of the World" programme. In this CD there are more than 40 Qur'anic manuscripts which are dated from 1st century of Hijra, one of them belonging to early 1st century. More than 45 manuscripts have been dated from the period 1st / 2nd century of Hijra. We will be showing only a few examples below.

A few more examples of the 1st and 1st / 2nd century Qur'anic manuscripts can be found in the book Masâhif San^câ' (1985, Dâr al-Athâr al-Islâmiyyah). This book is a catalogue of an exhibition at the Kuwait National Museum, with articles by Hussa Sabah Salîm al-Sabah, G. R. Puin, M. Jenkins, U. Dreibholz in both Arabic and English. It is expected that the San^câ' manuscripts will throw a great deal of light on the early Islamic history of calligraphy and illumination and even the various ahrûf (they were seven) in which the Qur'an was revealed.

A few words of caution concerning the dating of the Qur'anic manuscripts need to be mentioned. It is to be remembered that assigning a date to an undated early Qur'anic manuscript is rarely simple especially in the absence of Wakf marking. There is a tendency to assume that those in large scripts and without vowels are of the earliest date. This assumption, true to some extent, is nevertheless misleading in two respects. It ignores that fact that small as well as large masâhif of the Qur'an were among the earliest written and that both types continued to be written thereafter. Though the assumption that manuscripts with the vowels must be considered later than those without is true in some cases, it is not always so, for some very early manuscripts of the Qur'an, originally written without vowels, may well have been voweled later. Furthermore, the first vowel system came into use shortly after the first masâhif were written. There are also examples of later masâhif which were unvoweled even after 3 centuries after Hijra!

As a matter of caution, we stress the fact that we are only showing a single leaf of the manuscripts in the cases below. A manuscript may contain additional Sûrahs. The reader is advised to go through the references for additional information.

Looking for something similar? Try

The Arabic Papyri | Islamic Inscriptions

The Qur'anic Script

On The Origins Of Kufic Script

i. Introduction

ii. The Origins Of Kufic Scripts

iii. Martin Lings and Yasin Safadi On Kûfic Script

iv. Kufic Qur'anic Manuscripts From First and Second Centuries Of Hijra

v. Kufic Inscriptions From 1st Century Of Hijra

vi. Dated Manuscripts and Dating Of The Manuscripts: The Difference

The Dotting Of A Script And The Dating Of An Era: The Strange Neglect Of PERF 558, A. Jones, Islamic Culture, 1998, Volume LXXII, No. 4, pp. 95-103.

It is usually assumed that the dotting of the Arabic script began with the advent of dotting of Qur'anic manuscripts. However, recent observation on a 70 year old Arabic papyri has shown conclusively that dotting was available as early as 22 AH, perhaps even earlier.

The Qur'anic Manuscripts In Museums, Institutes, Libraries and Collections

Maktabat al-Jâmi^c al-Kabîr (Maktabat al-Awqâf), The Great Mosque, San^câ', Yemen (See the manuscripts from 1st, 1st/2nd, 2nd and 2nd/3rd century of Hijra).

Dâr al-Kutub al-Misrîyya (Egyptian National Library), Cairo, Egypt.

Âstân-i Quds-i Razavî Library, Mashhad, Iran.

Islamic Museum, Jerusalem, Palestine.

Beit al-Qur'an, Manama, Bahrain (See the manuscripts from 1st and 1st/2nd century of Hijra).

The Nasser David Khalili Collection Of Islamic Art, London, United Kingdom.

Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France.

The Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago, Chicago, United States of America.

The Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Ireland.

The Institute Of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia (See the manuscript from 1st/2nd century of Hijra).

Examples Of The Qur'anic Manuscripts

The^cUthmânic Manuscripts

No discussion about the Qur'anic manuscripts begins without the mention of the ^cUthmânic manuscripts of the Qur'an. Narrations differ as to how many copies were directly ordered and sent out by the Caliph ^cUthmân, but they range from four to seven. It seems certain from various Muslim historical sources that several were lost, through fire amongst other things. There are some copies that are attributed to ^cUthmân. However, it is to be added that there is a disagreement between the scholars whether they are truly ^cUthmânic. Some Western scholars have rejected the Qur'anic manuscripts attributed to ^cUthmân as "pious forgeries" without showing any scientific evidence (i.e., study of the parchment, script, ink etc.). This itself is unscientific to an extreme. We will discuss some important manuscripts attributed to ^cUthmân below.

The Tashkent (or Samarqand) Manuscript.

The Topkapi Manuscript.

The Al-Hussein Mosque Manuscript.

1st Century Hijra

Below are the examples of the 1st century Hijra manuscripts from Maktabat al-Jâmi^c al-Kabîr (Maktabat al-Awqâf), The Great Mosque, San^câ', Yemen. The following manuscripts are written in the Hijâzî (Makkan or Madînan) script, the script in which the earliest masâhif of the Qur'an were written.

Sûrah al-Shûra, Sûrah al-Zukhruf. Verses number : End of verse 49 of Sûrah al-Shûra to verse 31 of Sûrah al-Zukhruf and part of 32.

Sûrah âl-^cImrân. Verses number : End of verse 45 to 54 and part of 55 (early first century Hijra).

Sûrah al-An^câm. Verses number : Part of verse 5 to 19 and part of 20.

Sûrah al-Nahl. Verses number : End of verse 73 to 88 and part of 89.

Manuscript from the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana [Vatican Library], written in Makkan script.

Vat. Ar. 1605: A Qur'anic Manuscript From 1st Century Hijra In Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.

Manuscript from the Austrian National Library, Vienna, written in Makkan script.

A Perg. 2: A Qur'anic Manuscript From 1st Century Hijra.

Manuscript from the Beit al-Qur'an, Manama, Bahrain, written in Kûfic script.

Sûrah al-Mâ'idah. Verses 7 through 12.

Manuscript from the Collection George Michaélidès, Cairo, Egypt, written in Kûfic(?) script.

P. Michaélidès No. 32 - A Qur'anic Manuscript From First Century Hijra.

1st / 2nd Century Hijra

Below are the examples of the 1st / 2nd century Hijra manuscripts from Maktabat al-Jâmi^c al-Kabîr (Maktabat al-Awqâf), The Great Mosque, San^câ', Yemen.

Sûrah al-Isrâ' (17) Verses number : From 20 to 22 and part of 23.

Sûrah al-Kahf (18) Verses number : Part of 17 to 27 and part of 28.

Sûrah al-Mumtahinah (60) Verses number : Part of 4 to 8 and part of 9.

Manuscript from the Beit al-Qur'an, Manama, Bahrain, written in Kûfic script.

Sûrah al-Mâ'idah. Verses number : Part of verse 94 to part of verse 97.

Manuscript from The Institute Of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia, written in Hijâzî script.

A Qur'anic Manuscript From Late 1st Or Early 2nd Century Hijra From The Institute Of Oriental Studies, St. Petersburg, Russia.

2nd Century Hijra

Below are the examples of the 2nd century Hijra manuscripts from Maktabat al-Jâmi^c al-Kabîr (Maktabat al-Awqâf), The Great Mosque, San^câ', Yemen.

Sûrah al-Tawba, Sûrah Yûnus: Part of 129 from Sûrah al-Tawba to part of 4 from Sûrah Yûnus.

Manuscript from the Austrian National Library, Vienna.

A Perg. 203: A Qur'anic Manuscript From The Beginning Of 2nd Century Hijra In The Austrian National Library. [Kufic script]

A Perg. 201: A Qur'anic Manuscript From The Beginning Of 2nd Century Hijra In The Austrian National Library. [Kufic script]

A Perg. 213: A Qur'anic Manuscript From The Beginning Of 2nd Century Hijra. [Makkan script]

A Perg. 186: A Qur'anic Manuscript From Middle Of 2nd Century Hijra In The Austrian National Library. [Kufic script]

A Perg. 202: A Qur'anic Manuscript From 2nd Century Hijra In The Austrian National Museum. [Makkan script]

A Perg. 207: A Qur'anic Manuscript From 2nd Century Hijra In The Austrian National Museum. [Makkan script]

A Perg. 27: A Qur'anic Manuscript From The End Of 2nd Century Hijra In The Austrian National Museum. [Mashq script]

Below is an example of one of the earliest dated Qur'anic manuscripts at the Dâr al-Kutub al-Misrîyya (Egyptian National Library), Cairo, Egypt.

One Of The Earliest Dated Qur'anic Manuscript (107 AH / 725 CE) At Egyptian National Library.

2nd / 3rd Century Hijra

Below are the examples of the 2nd / 3rd century Hijra manuscripts from Maktabat al-Jâmi^c al-Kabîr (Maktabat al-Awqâf), The Great Mosque, San^câ', Yemen.

Sûrah al-Mâ'idah, Sûrah al-An^câm. Part of 117 (Sûrah al-Mâ'idah) to part of 1 of Sûrah al-An^câm.

Sûrah al-Nâs. Part of 3 to the end of the Sûrah.

Sûrah al-Baqarah. Part of 80 to part of 81.

Sûrah al-Mursalât. 5 to 26 and part of 27.

Some Unique Manuscripts

The Famous "Blue" Qur'an.

The Qirâ'ât In The Qur'anic Manuscripts

Early Qur'anic manuscripts, unlike the modern printed editions, rarely contain information of the Qirâ'ât in which they were written. Deciphering the Qirâ'ât in the Qur'anic manuscripts is a recent endeavour and a very tedious task. Scholars like Nabia Abbott had only mentioned about Qirâ'ât in the manuscripts in a very cursory way. Recently, in-depth studies have been undertaken to decipher the Qirâ'ât in the Qur'anic manuscripts by Dr. Yasin Dutton of University of Edinburgh. He has been looking into various Qur'anic manuscripts to understand the purpose of using various coloured dots in the writing of the Qur'an and studying the consonantal structure (where dotting is nearly absent as in early Qur'ans written in Hijâzî or Ma'il script) to find out the Qirâ'ât in which the Qur'an manuscript was written. Here are a few examples of the manuscripts in which the Qirâ'ât has been identified.

The Qirâ'ât Identified In Qur'anic Manuscripts

We will also mention Dr. Dutton's publications and provide a brief overview. This section is primarily for those who have access to journals in their libraries.

Y. Dutton, "An Early Mushâf According To The Reading Of Ibn ^cÂmir", Journal Of Qur'anic Studies, 2001, Volume III (no. I), pp. 71-89.

This study is based on 1st century Qur'anic manuscript "Arabe 328a" in Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, written in Hijâzî (or Ma'il) script. This manuscript has enough material to be able to ascertain the reading it represents. This manuscript is almost devoid of dotting and hence the consonantal structure is used to determine the Qirâ'ât and it was found to be that of Ibn ^cÂmir (d. 118 / 736) - one of the reading later to be declared indisputably mutawâtir by Ibn Mujahid (d. 324 / 926). This study is first of its kind on early Qur'anic manuscripts.

Y. Dutton, "Red Dots, Green Dots, Yellow Dots and Blue: Some Reflections On The Vocalisation Of Early Qur'anic Manuscripts - Part I", Journal Of Qur'anic Studies, 1999, Volume I (no. I), pp. 115-140.

Y. Dutton, "Red Dots, Green Dots, Yellow Dots and Blue: Some Reflections On The Vocalisation Of Early Qur'anic Manuscripts - Part II", Journal Of Qur'anic Studies, 2000, Volume II (no. I), pp. 1-24.

This two-part detailed study is done on the Qur'anic manuscripts from Bodleian Library (Oxford) that date from 3rd / 4th century of hijra. The broad conclusions of this study are:

i. Variants, including shâdhdh variants, are not only marked, but in a sense, highlighted by the use of different coloured dots.

ii. The presence of shâdhdh variants alongside Seven, Ten or Fourteen Qirâ'â suggests that the shâdhdh variants were treated as seriously as the main readings by those responsible for vocalization.

iii. The vocalized manuscript enables us to have some idea of the reading, or readings, represented. Where there are only single or limited folios available this is not usually possible, but where there is either a distinctive feature, or enough of a sufficiently well-vocalized manuscript, it is often possible to fix the reading with some precision.

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/ 4/1/03 10:26:39 AM

ISLAMIC AWARENESS

Did al-Hajjâj Change The Qur'ân?

A Reply To The Christian Polemic

M S M Saifullah

Last Modified: 30th December 2001

Assalamu-alaikum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu:

To start with, my sincere thanks are to brother ^cAbd ar-Rahmân Lomax for his useful comments and drawing my attention to certain points that I missed on the issue of al-Hajjâj. Thanks are also due to Mr. Nicholas, Asst. Librarian, Center for African Studies, University of Cambridge, for drawing my attention to modern scholarship on Islam.

For the sake of ease, the contents of this document are divided as follows:

Introduction

It has become a disgraceful practice amongst Christian missionaries to explore the most immoral possibilities in their quest to spread misinformation about the Qur'ân and Islam. The Internet captain of this juvenile movement, a one Jochen Katz, has offered an example of this type of foul ethics in an article posted on his website. The missionary has fantasized the following about al-Hajjâj bin Yûsuf:

he gave himself the liberty to change several words of Caliph Uthman's Koran, which is an indication that he did not believe that the Koran was verbally inspired or was inscribed in a "tablet preserved".

Every missionary scandal is rooted in some source or another. The scandal surrounding al-Hajjâj is apparently based on two different traditions, one Christian and one Muslim. We would like to begin by examining the origins of the Christian tradition and then address the problems surrounding the missionary's interpretation of the Muslim tradition.

The Christian Source

There is a persistent tradition in the eastern Christian churches, often referred to by oriental Christians even in the present day, to the effect that early during the 8th century, there had been an exchange of letters on the question of the respective merits of Christianity and Islam, between the Ummayad Caliph ^cUmar II and the Byzantine Emperor Leo III. The details of the letter can be seen in an article the appeared in the Harvard Theological Review in 1944. In the letter to ^cUmar II, the Byzantine emperor Leo III writes:

In brief you admit that we say that it (i.e., the Qur'ân) was written by God, and brought down from the heavens, as you pretend for your furqan, although we know that it was ^cUmar, Abû Turâb and Salmân the Persian, who composed that, even though the rumour has got around among you that God sent it down from the heavens.^[1]

This is a rather peculiar statement from Leo III, as Arthur Jeffery comments in the footnotes. By Abû Turâb, Leo III meant ^cAlî^(R), son-in-law of the Prophet^(P).

Continuing the letter to ^cUmar II, Leo III writes:

As for your (book), you have already given us examples of such falsifications, and one knows, among others, of a certain Hajjâj, named by you as the governer of Persia, who had men gathered up your ancient books, which he replaced by others composed by himself, according to his taste, and which he propagated everywhere in your nation, because it was easier by far to undertake such a task among the people speaking a single language. from this destruction, nevertheless, there escaped a few works of Abû Turâb, for Hajjâj could not make them disappear completely.^[2]

Compare this with the boasting from the missionary's webpage:

The similarities are only all too striking. Regarding Leo's letter, Jeffery comments:

This is a rather confused reference to the work of al-Hajjâj on the text of the Qur'ân. The orthodox Muslim theory assumes that the text as canonized by ^cUthmân was the final canonization, but there is a reason to believe that a recension of ^cUthmân's text was made by the direction of al-Hajjâj, so that we only know of the text of ^cUthmân in this later recension. This fact was apparently well known to oriental Christian writers, for al-Kindî in his apology, speaks of al-Hajjâj not leaving a single codex that he did not gather up, and left out many things, and of which he sent out copies of his new recension, and directed his attention to destroying the older codices. This statement of al-Kindî has always been looked at askance as a piece of Christian polemic.^[3]

Jeffery also discusses the addition of diacritical marks in the Qur'ânic text by al-Hajjâj to make the reading more certain, as mentioned in the work of Ibn Abî Dâwûd (to be discussed later, inshallah). Proceeding, Jeffery states:

It would thus seem that some revision of the text, as well as clarification by division and pointing, was undertaken by al-Hajjâj, and that this was known to the Christians of that day, and naturally exagerrated by them for polemical purposes.^[4]

And further

As this work would have been done by al-Hajjâj during the period of office under Caliph ^cAbd al-Mâlik bin Marwan who died in 86AH = 705AD, there is no difficulty in supposing that Leo may have heard of it during his official life in Syria.^[5]

It becomes quite obvious as to whether the document between ^cUmar II and Leo III is authentic. The author's opinion on this issue is as follows:

The question remains as to the genuineness of this correspondence, and that is a matter for the historians to argue on the basis of the material itself.^[6]

Now that the authenticity of this document has fallen on the grounds of suspicion, we would like to push the question even further and consider the ramifications. Patricia Crone and Michael Cook in their book, Hagarism: The Making Of The Islamic World, use the aforementioned Christian polemic to reconstruct, Islamic history before even verifying the facts.

Now both Christian and Muslim sources attribute some kind of role to Hajjâj in the history of Muslim scripture. In the account attributed to Leo by Levond, Hajjâj is said to have collected and destroyed the old Hagarene writings and replaced them with others composed according to his own tastes.^[7]

John Wansbrough, reviewing Hagarism: The Making Of The Islamic World, simply makes a mockery of the poor scholarship of Crone and Cook:

The material is upon occasion misleadingly presented, e.g., Ephrem certainly did not prophesy an exodus of Hagarenes from the desert, nor did Levond report Leo's description of Hajjâj destroying old Hagarene writings.^[8]

In other words, the account attributed to Leo by Levond (or Ghevond) is a forgery that was constructed to scandalize the question of al-Hajjâj by some later Christian writer. This point is also echoed by Neal Robinson in his book, Discovering The Qur'ân: A Contemporary Approach To a Veiled Text, where he states:

The letter ascribed to Pope Leo may simply be a convenient literary device used by a Christian polemicist living at a later date. Even if it is authentic, and the allegations which it contains have some substance, the activity of Hajjâj may have been limited to destroying the sectarian writings, and early codices of the Qur'ân which preserved the surahs in a different order.^[9]

Now that the issue of Leo has been closed, let us now move over to the other Christian polemic associated with al-Hajjâj, the apology of ^cAbd al-Masîh al-Kindî. We have already noted above that the work of al-Kindî was of a disputatious nature. Arthur Jeffery says:

The Christian writer al-Kindî in his polemical work known as the Apology of al-Kindî, makes a controversial point out of the alterations he claimed that al-Hajjâj, as everyone knew, had made in the text of Qur'ân, but this was regarded by scholars as just a polemical exagerration such as one might expect in a controversial writing.^[10]

Jeffery seems to miss the point that is mentioned in the book Kitâb al-Masâhif of Ibn Abî Dâwûd which he quotes to say:

When we come to examine the accounts of the activity of al-Hajjâj in this matter, however, we discover to our own surprise that the evidence points strongly to the fact that his work was not confined to fixing more precisely the text of the Qur'ân by a set of points showing how it was to be read, but he seems to have made an entirely new recension of the Qur'ân, having copies of his new text sent to the great metropolitan centres and ordering the destruction of earlier copies in existence there, much as ^cUthmân had done earlier. Moreover, this new text promulgated by al-Hajjâj seems to have undergone more or less extensive alterations.^[11]

It is quite surprising that the author Arthur Jeffery on one hand relies on Kitâb al-Masâhif of Ibn Abî Dâwûd and on the other hand always makes the statements starting with "he seems" or "al-Hajjâj seems" to draw the attention towards uncertainity of the extent to which al-Hajjâj was responsible for the changes in the text. The nature of the changes which al-Hajjâj made can be seen here.

Summarizing the Christian sources: We see that the Christian sources of Leo III and ^cAbd al-Masîh al-Kindî have a purely polemical purpose and exaggerate the events that took place during al-Hajjâj's time. The sources lack factual bases and their historicity is doubtful. Furthermore, this view is solidified by modern scholarship.

The Muslim Tradition: Importance Of Oral Transmission Of The Qur'ân

It is important to focus on two aspects when we examine the transmission of the Qur'ân. Till now the fundamental issue has only been with the written text. The oral transmission seems to have taken the backseat and been neglected by Arthur Jeffery. Were the changes made by al-Hajjâj confined to the text of the Qur'ân or did it also affect the oral transmission? Unless the latter possibility is proved by solid, historical evidence and not missionary patchwork, it is baseless to assert that al-Hajjâj changed the Qur'ân. A change should reflect in textual as well as oral transmission of the Qur'ân. Sadly, this point has been overlooked by Arthur Jeffery in his work.

In this section, we will deal with the Muslim sources as well as some of the non-Muslim sources. Let us first deal with the idea of introducing vowel signs into the Qur'ân and the need for it. The Qur'ân holds a unique status in the history of Arabic literature as being the first book ever in the Arabic language. However, the oral recitation of the Qur'ân was and is considered the primary mode of transmission, with the written form playing a secondary role. Producing a written form of the Qur'ân without diacritical marks would have been useful only to those who were masters of the language. The rapid number of foreign converts to Islam, whose native language was not Arabic, would have a very difficult time with an Arabic text that lacked these diacritical marks. The same is quite true today for students of Arabic who attempt to learn even modern, colloquial Arabic. These marks, called tashkîl in Arabic, help to determine the correct pronunciation of the word, and thus, avoid the mistakes. When the Islamic state expanded, more and more Muslims of non-Arab origin and also many ignorant Arabs began to study the Qur'ân, and faulty pronunciation started to increase. It is important for the missionaries to come to grips, as difficult as it may be, with the fact that faulty pronunciation does not magically result in a "different version". This foolish idea should be erased from the minds of the sincere. Abû 'Ubaydah narrated about Abû al-Aswad al-Du'alî:

Abû al-Aswad derived grammar from ^cAlî Ibn Abî Tâlib, for whom may there be peace, but he did not disclose to anyone what he had learned from ^cAlî, whose countenance may Allah honour, until Ziyad appointed him for the composition of something to serve as a guide to the people, so that they could understand the book of Allah. Abû al-Aswad asked to excused from this task, until one time when he heard a reader recite, Allah is quit of the idolators and of His Apostle (Qur'ân 9:3 should have been read as Allah is quit of the idolators and so is His Apostle). Then he said, "I never supposed that the condition of the people would come to this!" So he returned to Ziyad and said, "I will do what the emir has ordered. Let there be sought for me a scribe who is intelligent and obedient to what I say". They brought, therefore, a scribe from the ^cAbd al-Kays Tribe, but he [Abû al-Aswad] was not satisfied with him. Then they came with another one, about whom Abû al-^cAbbas al-Mubarrad said, "I regard him to be one of those [who are intelligent]." So Abû al-Aswad said [to the new scribe], "If you see that I open my mouth in pronouncing a letter, place a mark above, on top of it. If I close my mouth [making a u sound], place a mark in front of the letter, and if I split [my lips] double the mark." So this was the marking system of Abu al-Aswad.^[12]

Ahmad von Denffor quotes the above story and explains the mistake that occurred in the improper reading of the Qur'ân.

It is related that at the time of Du'alî someone from Basra read the ayah 9:3 from the Qur'ân in a faulty way, which changed the meaning completely:

from

that God and his Apostle dissolves obligations with the pagans

that God dissolves obligations with the pagans and the Apostle

This mistake occured wrongly reading rasulihi in place of rasuluhu which could not be distinguished from written text, because they were no signs or accents indicating the correct pronunciation. Unless someone had memorized the correct version he could out of ignorance commit the mistake.^[13]

In the footnotes, we read that:

Yaqut reports in his book that al-Hajjâj bin-Yûsuf himself once read ahabba in 9:24 wrongly as ahabbu.^[14]

Hence, there arose a need to introduce tashkîl in order for the non-Arabs to read the Qur'ân in the correct manner. The oriental sources make use of this Muslim tradition as well as other traditions and expand the argument to draw supportive conclusions.

On this issue, Nabia Abbott writes:

When we come to consider the vowel signs, 1st century manuscripts are of no aid, since no such signs appear in any secular document of that date. However, Kur'ân manuscripts credited to the period show a consistent vowel system in which a single red dot above, below, or to the side of a letter stood for the vowels A, I, and U respectively, and two such dots indicated the tanwin. The text of early Kur'âns, however, is never completely voweled, the vowel sign for one or more of the letters of a given word being used only where it was essential for a correct reading. The Arabic traditions place the introduction of the system early in the Muslim era, in fact crediting ^cAlî with it. Whether ^cAlî deserves the credit or not makes little difference for the date in question, for the majority of the sources credit a contemporary of ^cAlî, Abû al-Aswad al-Du'alî, with the system. They tell how, having at first refused to introduce the system at the request of Ziyad Ibn Abihi, governor of Irak, he finally did so when he heard the Kur'ân being wrongly recited. The system could not have been widely spread or generally used, for we find Hajjâj facing the same problem in Irak and ordering Nasr Ibn ^cAsim to safeguard the pronunciation of the Kur'ân; Nasr, so the story goes, introduced the double dots for the tanwin. even this did not estabish the general use of the system, for again we find Yahya Ibn Ya^cmar given credit for it, which credit is likewise shared by Hasan al-Basri. Still these efforts and their results proved insufficient, for again Khalîl Ibn Ahmad is credited with introducing the hamzah and the shaddah, the raum and the ishmam, as he is also credited with the vowel signs that are still in use for A, I, and U. The last were originally miniatures of the letters alif, y and w, respectively.^[15]

In the book Arabic Literature To The End Of The Ummayad Period, regarding the introduction of dots and strokes in the Qur'ân, we read that:

Dots and strokes were introduced to mark readings, a method apparently copied from the use in Syriac texts. From the limited information we have, it seems that these marking were used at first simply to indicate the variants, with those parts of the texts that were not in dispute being left unmarked. This practice was frowned upon in many quarters as a dangerous innovation. However, with the strong support of the governer of Iraq, the famous al-Hajjâj bin-Yûsuf, it was developed into a consistent system which could be applied to the whole text. This allowed not only for letters of the same basic form to be distinguished from one another, but also for short vowels to be added. In addition the use of weak letters to mark long vowels became more systematic, and the marking of hamza was introduced.^[16]

Going further:

It is difficult to assess the role of al-Hajjâj. We may ignore the arguments of the Christian ^cAbd al-Masîh al-Kindî that al-Hajjâj was very much responsible for our text, as these have a polemical rather than factual basis. The account most widely found has him ordering Nasr bin ^cAsim to introduce the markings to safeguard the protection of the text. This is a plausible reason for the innovation, and the story is unchallenged, despite strong hostility of the sources towards al-Hajjâj.^[17]

Further, it should be emphasized that the dotting of the Arabic script was already available as early as 22 AH, perhaps even earlier. Alan Jones, from his observation on Arabic papyri PERF 558 says that

... but the most that al-Hajjâj could have insisted on was the revival and regular use of earlier features.^[18]

In other words, al-Hajjâj only revived the early practice of dotting to ensure the correct recitation of the Qur'ân. If anything, the role of al-Hajjâj is therefore a supportive one that strove to maintain the authenticity of the Qur'ân in recitation. Now we have established following facts:

The Christian polemics of ^cAbd al-Masîh al-Kindî and Leo III have no factual basis and even if they have any factual basis it is all exaggerated view of what al-Hajjâj did.
The need for tashkil or vowel signs arose because of the wrong readings by non-Arabs and ignorant Arabs. Al-Hajjâj played an important role in introducing these signs.

Our aim now is to establish the exact role of al-Hajjâj and what he did after the ^cUthmanic collection. Ahmed Von Denffer writes:

According to Ibn Abî Dâwûd eleven changes were made under al-Hajjâj. These are again according to Ibn Abî Dâwûd, mistakes which were made in the preparation of ^cUthmân's copy.^[19]

A further explanation of the changes that al-Hajjâj made is dealt with in the book Arabic Literature To The End Of The Ummayad Period.

However, this seems to be only a partial explanation of what happened. On the other hand we have the tradition in Ibn Abi-Da'ud that al-Hajjâj was responsible for eleven changes in the consonantal text. If this is so, he is responsible for a minor recension at least. Against this we must set the evidence of early copies of the Qur'ân that have survived. These show that for some considerable amount of time the new system was used sparingly and mainly in connection with the variants.^[20]

There is definitely a problem with the sentence

If this is so, he is responsible for a minor recension at least.

The eleven changes which al-Hajjâj made was in the copy of ^cUthmân not in all the copies around the Muslim world. It is not clear whether these are the mistakes of the scribes or preference of one Qirâ'at over the other. It seems that the changes involved a combination of correction of the errors of the scribes as well as preference of one Qirâ'a over the other.

But then what happened to the oral transmission? Were there any changes in that part of the transmission when al-Hajjâj corrected the Qur'ânic texts of ^cUthmân? There is no such historical evidence to show if that sort of an event happened.

The tradition of oral transmission in Arabia is well know and does not need to be over-emphasized.^[21] Professor Zwettler referring to the transmission of Arabic poetry, states:

The poetry of Arabs, in the ages which preceded the rise of Islamism, was perpetuated by oral tradition; for in ancient times, when writing was not used or scarcely used, memory was exercised and strengthened to a degree now almost unknown. In those countries of Arabia where Arabian poetry may be justly considered to have had its origin or to have attained its earliest growth, there lived reciters, or Râwis, as the Arabs called them, who got by heart numerous songs of their poets, and recited them, occasionally, in public assemblies and private parties... This impression, in essence, has been shared by a great majority of medieval and modern scholars who have dealt to any degree with Arabic poetry.^[22]

This aspect of oral transmission is equally applicable to the Qur'ân. Adrian Brockett, in his article "The Value Of Hafs And Warsh Transmissions For The Textual History Of The Qur'ân", deals with various issues of the orally transmitted traditions and the seven Qirâ'at in which the Qur'ân can be recited. His conclusions regarding the oral side of Qur'ân's transmission is:

If this is the case with oral transmission of the Hafs and Warsh Qirâ'at then can we not conclude that al-Hajjâj did not tamper with the text of the Qur'ân as alleged by the Christian polemics (and consequently the Christian missionaries)?

It should be mentioned what John Burton has argued in the conclusions of his book The Collection Of The Qur'ân:

What we have today in our hands is the mushaf of Muhammad.^[24]

This conclusion has been an Orientalist consensus for quite some time, not a recent phenomenon. The impassioned W Muir, in his book, The Life Of Mohammad, states:

The recension of 'Uthman has been handed down to us unaltered. so carefully, indeed, has it been preserved, that there are no varaitions of importance, - we might almost say no variations at all, - amongst the innumerable copies of the Koran scattered throughout the vast bounds of empire of Islam. Contending and embittered factions, taking their rise in the murder of 'Uthman himself within a quarter of a century from the death of Muhammad have ever since rent the Muslim world. Yet but ONE KORAN has always been current amongst them.... There is probably in the world no other work which has remained twelve centuries with so pure a text.^[25]

The merit of this conclusion rests on the venomous nature of the author himself. Returning to the more recent scholarship and solidifying the issue:

Modern study of the Qur'ân has not in fact raised any serious questions of its authenticity. The style varies, but is almost unmistakable. So clearly that the whole bear the stamp of uniformity that doubts of its genuineness hardly arise.^[26]

Bear in mind that these are not the pleas of Muslims but the testimonies of zealous Orientalists. The conclusion is virtually unanimous: the transmission of the Qur'ân has remained firm from the beginning. Historically speaking, there is no evidence for a sudden change in the oral transmission when al-Hajjâj corrected the ^cUthmanic copy either.

This leads us to the conclusion that al-Hajjâj did not tamper with the text of the Qur'ân in the manner that the Christian missionaries would like to fantasize. Rather he made corrections to the errors which the scribes made in the ^cUthmanic text and introduced the diacritical marks to facilitate a correct reading of the text.

Al-Hajjâj & His Influence In The Ummayad Regime

No attempt at modifying the Qur'ân is known to have occurred after the era of the four Caliphs, except for a report that al-Hajjâj had omitted many verses from the Qur'ân, dealing disparagingly with the rule of the Ummayads, and that he had also added to it some verses, that were not originally present. Then he was alleged to have prepared a new codex for distribution in Egypt, Syria, Mecca, Medina, Basra and Kufah. Thus, it is presumed that the present Qur'ân is the one prepared by al-Hajjâj, who methodically destroyed all the previous copies, allowing not a single one to remain. This briefly characterizes the pubescent fantasy adopted by Christian missionaries.

From a historical point of view, this claim is based upon conjecture and smacks of delirium. For al-Hajjâj was merely one of the generals in the Ummayad regime, with little influence and almost no ability to do the Qur'ân any harm. In fact, he was utterly incapable of effecting any change in the most elementary laws of Islam, not to speak of the Qur'ân, which is the foundation of Islamic faith, and pillar of Islamic laws. One wonders how he could influence any change in the Qur'ân after it had gained currency in the vast Muslim empire. Not a single historian or commentator has chronicled this change, the importance of which should not have escaped their notice. No contemporary Muslim ever objected to this, and even after his rule, the Muslims seem to have condoned this abominable fact. Moreover, if it is all believed that he managed to withdraw all the copies of the Qur'ân, and replacing it with his new codex, how could he eradicate it from the hearts of great numbers of Muslims who had committed it to memory? Had there been anything in the Qur'ân which was uncomplimentary to the Ummayads, Mu'âwiyah would have been the first to see it omitted because, compared to al-Hajjâj, he was more influential and powerful. Of course, if Mu'âwiyah had done this, the companions of ^cAlî would have argued with him, the way they did on many occasions, as recorded in the books of history, hadîth and theology. An example would be of the battle of Siffîn (AH 37), 27 years after the death of the Prophet^(P), and five years after ^cUthmân's copies were distributed.

Mu'âwiyah's troops fixed sheets from the Qur'ân on their spears to interrupt the battle. However, nobody accused anyone else of using a 'partisan' version of the text, which would have made a splendid accusation against the enemy.^[27]

The pretence that the Qur'ân has been tampered with has no substance whatsoever.

Al-Hajjâj & The State of Arabic Language

Interestingly enough the line of attack against the Qur'ân is not yet exhausted. We have browsed through various references concerning the use of these Christian polemics by modern Orientalists. One such reference is from the Journal of The Manchester Egyptian and Oriental Society, regarding "The Transmission Of The Qur'ân". Due to the substantial length of the article, we will simply quote the conclusions of the author, Alphonse Mingana, whose focus is the "rudimentary" state of the Arabic language during the time of the Prophet^(P). He says:

If all the signs do not mislead us, very few oracular sentences, if any, were written in the time of the Prophet. The kind of life he led, and the rudimentary character of reading and writing in that part of the world in which he appeared, are sufficient witnesses in favour of this view. Our ignorance of the Arabic language in that early period of its evolution is such that we can not even know with certainity whether it had any writings of its own in Maccah or Madinah. If any writing existed in these two localities, it must have been something very similar to the Estrangelo or the Hebraic characters.^[28]

The author also claims that Arabs learnt the art of writing from Jews and Christians.^[29] He also claims that only during the time of ^cAbd al-Mâlik and al-Hajjâj (using the al-Kindî polemic) the Qur'ân was brought into the shape that we have today.

As we are naturally inclined to examine the genuine condition of the Arabic language during the advent of the Qur'ân, we will investigate the sources themselves. Nabia Abbott answers the above allegations of Mingana in her book:

The condition of Arabic writing in Muhammad's time is indicated by perf no. 558 (our plates iv-v), an Arabic papyrus of the reign of ^cUmar dated AH 22 and written in a fairly well developed manuscript hand in the distant province of Egypt, where Greek and Coptic were the written languages in general use. If written Arabic was so primitive and rare in its own homeland at the time of Muhammad's death, how do we account for its practical use in egypt only a short dozen years after that event? Again to grant the incomplete development of orthography would give us reason to suspect only the orthographic accuracy of early Qur'ânic editions but not the possibility of their existence. In this connection it is interesting to note that nowhere in the traditions of the earliest transmission of the Qur'ân is there any hint of serious orthographic or vowel difficulties; rather it is the differences in the Arabic tribal dialects and differences arising out of foreigner's use of Arabic that seem to demand attention. the foregoing considerations lead one to believe that, if we allow for such common mistakes as writers and copyists are liable to make, the Arabic writers of Muhammad's time and of the time of early Caliphs were able scribes capable of producing an acceptable edition of a written Qur'ân despite the lack of all the improvements of modern written Arabic.^[30]

Thus, our point has been proven. Considering the possibility that missionary zealots might insidiously attempt to transform this point into another piece of sensationalist controversy, we would rather meet them ahead of time with the answer.

Another interesting point raised by Nadia Abbott is that there was no mention of the Qur'ân in the writings of the contemporary Christian writers. About the ignorance of Christian writers in early Islam she says:

Why should we expect writers whom their own testimony proves to have been so incapable of keeping up with the march of events all around them that they even failed to realize that a new religious idea, monotheism, was taking hold of their Arab neighbours and masters - why should we expect such men to be so wide awake and so well informed as positively to know of a Muslim book of which, at the best, but a few copies were in existence and those few carefully guarded from "Unbelievers"? even if we suppose that some of them did know what was going on, their interests were largely limited to their congregations and to Christian heresy that the chances are as good, particularly in early Islamic times, for their not mentioning the Qur'ân as for their mentioning it; therefore their failure to mention the Qur'ân in their writings must be in general viewed as inconclusive, circumstantial evidence.^[31]

Even the most elementary study of this period of history will attest to the powerful veracity behind this fact.

Conclusions

In this study we have dealt with the issues surrounding al-Hajjâj and Christian polemics. It has been demonstrated that the letter of the Christian Emperor Leo III are, in all likelihood, latter day forgeries by Christian zealots. As far as al-Kindî's writings are concerned, one can safely say that they lack factual evidence and follow the Christian missionary tradition of attacking the Qur'ân.

The Islamic sources, on the other hand, are pretty clear about the role of al-Hajjâj. He was responsible for eleven changes in the copy of ^cUthmân and introducing diacritical marks in the Qur'ân. Finally, let it be understood that modifying the written script is not the same as modifying the oral recitation, which is the true form of the Qur'ân. This does not amount to a tampering of the Qur'ân, to the dismay of Christian missionaries.

And Allah knows the best!

Related Articles

Al-Hajjâj, Kitâb al-Masâhif & Missionaries

References

[1] Arthur Jeffery, "Ghevond's Text Of The Correspondence Between ^cUmar II and Leo III", 1944, Harvard Theological Review, p. 292.

[2] Ibid., p. 298.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., pp. 330-331.

[7] P Crone & M Cook, Hagarism: The Making Of The Islamic World, 1977, Cambridge University Press, p. 18.

[8] John Wansbrough, "Review of Hagarism: The Making Of The Islamic World, P Crone & M Cook", Bulletin Of The School Of Oriental And African Studies, 1978, Volume 41, p. 156.

[9] Neal Robinson, Discovering The Qur'ân: A Contemporary Approach To a Veiled Text, 1996, SCM Press Ltd, p. 56.

[10] Arthur Jeffery, The Qur'ân As Scripture, 1952, Russell F Moore Company Inc., New York, p. 99.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Bayard Dodge (Editor and Translator), The Fihrist of al-Nadim, 1970, Columbia University Press, pp. 87-88.

[13] Ahmad von Denffer, ^cUlûm al-Qur'ân, 1994, The Islamic Foundation, p. 58.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Nabia Abbott, The Rise of The North Arabic Script & Its Kur'ânic Development, 1939, Nabia Abbott, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, p. 39.

[16] A F L Beeston, T M Johnstone, R B Serjeant and G R Smith (Ed.), Arabic Literature To The End Of The Ummayad Period, 1983, Cambridge University Press, p. 243.

[17] Ibid.

[18] A. Jones, "The Dotting Of A Script And The Dating Of An Era: The Strange Neglect Of PERF 558", Islamic Culture, 1998, Volume LXXII, No. 4, p. 100.

[19] Ahmad von Denffer, ^cUlûm al-Qur'ân, Op. Cit., p. 56.

[20] A F L Beeston, T M Johnstone, R B Serjeant and G R Smith (Ed.), Arabic Literature To The End Of The Ummayad Period, Op. Cit., p. 243.

[21] See R A Nicholson's, Literary History Of The Arabs, 1930, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, and H A R Gibb's Arabic Literature, 1963, Oxford At Clarendon Press.

[22] Michael Zwettler, The Oral Tradition Of Classical Arabic Poetry: Its Character & Implications, 1978, Ohio State University Press (Columbus), p. 14.

[23] Andrew Rippin (Ed.), Approaches Of The History Of Interpretation Of The Qur'ân, 1988, Clarendon Press, Oxford, p. 44.

[24] John Burton, The Collection Of The Qur'ân, 1979, Cambridge University Press, pp. 239-240.

[25] W Muir, The Life Of Mohammad, 1912, Edinburgh, John Grant, pp. xxii-xxiii.

[26] W M Watt & R Bell, Introduction To The Qur'ân, 1994, Edinburgh at University Press, p. 51.

[27] Ahmad von Denffer, ^cUlûm al-Qur'ân, Op. Cit., p. 56.

[28] Alphonse Mingana, "The Transmission Of The Qur'ân", 1916, Journal of The Manchester Egyptian and Oriental Society, p. 45.

[29] Ibid., p. 46.

[30] Nabia Abbott, The Rise of The North Arabic Script & Its Kur'ânic Development, 1939, Nabia Abbott, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, p. 48.

[31] Ibid.

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Hajjaj/hajjaj.html 4/1/03 10:29:24 AM

ISLAMIC AWARENESS

Versions Of The Qur'an?

M S M Saifullah

Last Updated: 15th January 2002

Assalamu-alaikum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu:

Jochen Katz wrote:

> } 1) How many 'versions' of the holy Quran is there today?
>
> At least two, probably more (I am pretty sure about the third
> one, but can't prove it yet, so I am not going to say where and
> what just yet), but it is common knowledge that the Hafs text
> and the Warsh text (mainly used in Northwest Africa) are
> different not only in the vowels but also in some consonants.
> The differences are small, but they are there. And both of them
> are for sale and in use today. Hafs is the much more common one.
> The third version I have heard about has by far more substantial
> differences in comparison to the other two. For the Warsh and
> Hafs differences see a few examples at:
>
> http://answering-Islam.org/Quran/Text/warsh.html

It has become a standard method of deception by Christian missionaries like Jochen Katz to superficially project issues that have been exhaustively addressed by both Muslims and Orientialsts, as we will see soon, inshallah. These missionaries are well aware of the difference between a transmission and a text (to be discussed in detail below). Yet, they intentionally replace one with the other in order to give the false impression to lay readers that the Qur'an exists in different texts. Thus, in order to address the questions of Hafs and Warsh, we will first offer a short introduction to the key concepts involved herein and then proceed to the heart of the matter, inshallah. However, before we begin this article, we would like to sincerely thank brother Moustafa Mounir Elqabbany from Canada and brother Muhammad Ghoniem from France, for providing valuable references. May Allah reward them profusely for their kind help. The contents of this document are divided as follows:

Revelation Of The Qur'an In Seven Ahrûf

It is a well-known fact that there are seven different ahrûf in which the Qur'an was revealed. In the Islamic tradition, this basis can be traced back to a number of hadîths concerning the revelation of the Qur'an in seven ahrûf (singular harf). Some of the examples of these hadîths are as follows:

From Abû Hurairah:

The Messenger of God^(P) said: "The Qur'an was sent down in seven ahruf. Disputation concerning the Qur'an is unbelief" - he said this three times - "and you should put into practice what you know of it, and leave what you do not know of it to someone who does."^[1]

From Abû Hurairah:

The Messenger of God^(P) said: "An All-knowing, Wise, Forgiving, Merciful sent down the Qur'an in seven ahruf."^[2]

From ^cAbdullâh Ibn Mas^cud:

The Messenger of God^(P) said: "The Qur'an was sent down in seven ahruf. Each of these ahruf has an outward aspect (zahr) and an inward aspect (batn); each of the ahruf has a border, and each border has a lookout."^[3]

The meaning of this hadîth is explained as:

As for the Prophet's^(P) words concerning the Qur'an, each of the ahruf has a border, it means that each of the seven aspects has a border which God has marked off and which no one may overstep. And as for his words Each of the ahruf has an outward aspect (zahr) and an inward aspect (batn), its outward aspect is the ostensive meaning of the recitation, and its inward aspect is its interpretation, which is concealed. And by his words each border ...... has a lookout he means that for each of the borders which God marked off in the Qur'an - of the lawful and unlawful, and its other legal injunctions - there is a measure of God's reward and punishment which surveys it in the Hereafter, and inspects it ...... at the Resurrection ......^[4]

And in another hadîth ^cAbdullâh Ibn Mas^cud said:

The Messenger of God^(P) said: "The first Book came down from one gate according to one harf, but the Qur'an came down from seven gates according to seven ahruf: prohibiting and commanding, lawful and unlawful, clear and ambiguous, and parables. So, allow what it makes lawful, proscribe what it makes unlawful, do what it commands you to do, forbid what it prohibits, be warned by its parables, act on its clear passages, trust in its ambiguous passages." And they said: "We believe in it; it is all from our Lord."^[5]

And Abû Qilaba narrated:

It has reached me that the Prophet^(P) said: "The Qur'an was sent down according to seven ahruf: command and prohibition, encouragement of good and discouragement of evil, dialectic, narrative, and parable."^[6]

These above hadîths serve as evidence that the Qur'an was revealed in seven ahruf. The defination of the term ahruf has been the subject of much scholarly discussion and is included in the general works of the Qur'an. The forms matched the dialects of following seven tribes: Quraysh, Hudhayl, Thaqîf, Hawâzin, Kinânah, Tamîm and Yemen. The revelation of the Qur'an in seven different ahruf made its recitation and memorization much easier for the various tribes. At the same time the Qur'an challenged them to produce a surah like it in their own dialect so that they would not complain about the incomprehensibility.

For example, the phrase 'alayhim (on them) was read by some 'alayhumoo and the word siraat (path, bridge) was read as ziraat and mu'min (believer) as moomin.^[7]

Difference Between Ahrûf & Qirâ'ât

It is important to realize the difference between ahruf and Qirâ'ât. Before going into that it is interesting to know why the seven ahruf were brought down to one during ^cUthmân's^(R) time.

The Qur'an continued to be read according to the seven ahruf until midway through Caliph 'Uthman's rule when some confusion arose in the outlying provinces concerning the Qur'an's recitation. Some Arab tribes had began to boast about the superiority of their ahruf and a rivalry began to develop. At the same time, some new Muslims also began mixing the various forms of recitation out of ignorance. Caliph 'Uthman decided to make official copies of the Qur'an according to the dialect of the Quraysh and send them along with the Qur'anic reciters to the major centres of Islam. This decision was approved by Sahaabah and all unofficial copies of the Qur'an were destroyed. Following the distribution of the official copies, all the other ahruf were dropped and the Qur'an began to be read in only one harf. Thus, the Qur'an which is available through out the world today is written and recited only according to the harf of Quraysh.^[8]

Now a few words on Qirâ'ât:

A Qirâ'ât is for the most part a method of pronunciation used in the recitations of the Qur'an. These methods are different from the seven forms or modes (ahruf) in which the Qur'an was revealed. The seven modes were reduced to one, that of the Quraysh, during the era of Caliph 'Uthman, and all of the methods of recitation are based on this mode. The various methods have all been traced back to the Prophet^(P) through a number of Sahaabah who were most noted for their Qur'anic recitations. That is, these Sahaabah recited the Qur'an to the Prophet^(P) or in his presence and received his approval. Among them were the following: Ubayy Ibn K'ab, 'Alee Ibn Abi Taalib, Zayd Ibn Thaabit, 'Abdullah Ibn Mas'ud, Abu ad-Dardaa and Abu Musaa al-Ash'aree. Many of the other Sahaabah learned from these masters. For example, Ibn 'Abbaas, the master commentator of the Qur'an among the Sahaabah, learned from both Ubayy and Zayd.^[9]

The transmission of the Qur'an is a mutawâtir transmission, that is, there are a large number of narrators on each level of the chain. Dr. Bilaal Philips gives a brief account of the history of recitation in his book:

Among the next generation of Muslims referred to as Taabe'oon, there arose many scholars who learned the various methods of recitation from the Sahaabah and taught them to others. Centres of Qur'anic recitation developed in al-Madeenah, Makkah, Kufa, Basrah and Syria, leading to the evolution of Qur'anic recitation into an independent science. By mid-eighth century CE, there existed a large number of outstanding scholars all of whom were considered specialists in the field of recitation. Most of their methods of recitations were authenticated by chains of reliable narrators ending with the Prophet^(P). Those methods which were supported by a large number of reliable narrators on each level of their chain were called Mutawaatir and were considered to be the most accurate. Those methods in which the number of narrators were few or only one on any level of the chain were refered to as shaadhdh. Some of the scholars of the following period began the practice of designating a set number of individual scholars from the pervious period as being the most noteworthy and accurate. By the middle of the tenth century, the number seven became popular since it coincided with the number of dialects in which the Qur'an was revealed.^[10]

The author went on to say:

The first to limit the number of authentic reciters to seven was the Iraqi scholar, Abu Bakr Ibn Mujâhid (d. 936CE), and those who wrote the books on Qirâ'ah after him followed suit. This limitation is not an accurate reprensentation of the classical scholars of Qur'anic recitation. There were many others who were as good as the seven and the number who were greater than them.^[11]

Concerning the seven sets of readings, Montgomery Watt and Richard Bell observe:

The seven sets of readings accepted by Ibn-Mujâhid represent the systems prevailing in different districts. There was one each from Medina, Mecca, Damascus and Basra, and three from Kufa. For each set of readings (Qirâ'a), there were two slightly different version (sing. Riwaya). The whole may be set out in tabular form:^[12]


District	Reader	First Rawi	Second Rawi
Medina	Nafî^c	Warsh	Qâlûn
Mecca	Ibn Kathîr	al-Bazzî	Qunbul
Damascus	Ibn Amir	Hisham	Ibn Dhakwân
Basra	Abu ^cAmr	ad-Dûrî	al-Sûsî
Kûfa	^cAsim	Hafs	Sh^cuba
Kûfa	Hamza	Khalaf	Khallad
Kûfa	al-Kisâ'i	ad-Dûrî	Abul-Harîth

Other schools of Qirâ'ât are of:

Abû Ja^cfar Yazîd Ibn Qa^cqâ^c of Madinah (130/747)
Ya^cqûb Ibn Ishâq al-Hadramî of Basrah (205/820)
Khalaf Ibn Hishâm of Baghdad (229/848)
Hasan al-Basrî of Basrah (110/728)
Ibn Muhaisin of Makkah (123/740)
Yahyâ al-Yazîdî of Basrah (202/817)

Conditions For The Validity Of Different Qirâ'ât

Conditions were formulated by the scholars of the Qur'anic recitation to facilitate critical analysis of the above mentioned recitations. For any given recitation to be accepted as authentic (Sahih), it had to fulfill three conditions and if any of the conditions were missing such a recitation was classified as Shâdhdh (unusual).

The first condition was that the recitation have an authentic chain of narration in which the chain of narrators was continuous, the narrators were all known to be righteous and they were all knwon to possess good memories. It was also required that the recitation be conveyed by a large number of narrators on each level of the chain of narration below the level of Sahaabah (the condition of Tawaatur). Narrations which had authentic chains but lacked the condition of Tawaatur were accepted as explanations (Tafseer) of the Sahaabah but were not considered as methods of reciting the Qur'an. As for the narrations which did not even have an authentic chain of narration, they were classified as Baatil (false) and rejected totally.
The seond condition was that the variations in recitations match known Arabic grammatical constructions. Unusual constructions could be verified by their existence in passages of pre-Islamic prose or poetry.
The third condition required the recitation to coincide with the script of one of the copies of the Qur'an distributed during the era of Caliph ^cUthmân. Hence differences which result from dot placement (i.e., ta'lamoon and ya'lamoon) are considered acceptable provided the other conditions are met. A recitation of a construction for which no evidence could be found would be classified Shaadhdh. This classification did not mean that all aspects of the recitation was considered Shaadhdh. it only meant that the unverified constructions were considered Shaadhdh.^[13]

The Chain Of Narration Of Different Qirâ'ât

In this section, the chain of narration or isnad of each Qirâ'ât will be presented. It is worth noting that the chains of narration here are mutawâtir.

Qirâ'a from Madinah: The reading of Madinah known as the reading of Nâfi^c Ibn Abî Na^cîm (more precisely Abû ^cAbd ar-Rahmân Nâfi^c Ibn ^cAbd ar-Rahmân).

Nâfi^c died in the year 169 H. He reported from Yazîd Ibn al-Qa^cqâ^c and ^cAbd ar-Rahmân Ibn Hurmuz al-'Araj and Muslim Ibn Jundub al-Hudhalî and Yazîd Ibn Român and Shaybah Ibn Nisâ'. All of them reported from Abû Hurayrah and Ibn ^cAbbâs and ^cAbdallâh Ibn 'Ayyâsh Ibn Abî Rabî'ah al-Makhzûmî and the last three reported from Ubayy Ibn Ka^cb from the Prophet^(P).^[14]

From Nâfi^c, two major readings came to us : Warsh and Qâlûn.

Qirâ'a from Makkah: The reading of Ibn Kathîr (^cAbdullâh Ibn Kathîr ad-Dârî):

Ibn Kathîr died in the year 120 H. He reported from ^cAbdillâh Ibn Assa'ib al-Makhzûmî who reported from Ubayy Ibn Ka^cb (The companion of the Prophet^(P)).

Ibn Kathîr has also reported from Mujâhid Ibn Jabr who reported from his teacher Ibn ^cAbbâs who reported from Ubayy Ibn Ka^cb and Zayd Ibn Thâbit and both reported from the Prophet^(P).^[15]

Qirâ'a from Damascus: From ash-Shâm (Damascus), the reading is called after ^cAbdullâh Ibn ^cAamir.

He died in 118 H. He reported from Abû ad-Dardâ' and al-Mughîrah Ibn Abî Shihâb al-Makhzûmî from ^cUthmân.^[16]

Qirâ'a from Basrah: The reading of Abû ^cAmr from Basrah:

(According to al-Sab^cah, the book of Ibn Mujâhid page 79, Abû ^cAmr is called Zayyan Abû ^cAmr Ibn al-^cAlâ'. He was born in Makkah in the year 68 and grew up at Kûfah.) He died at 154 H. He reported from Mujâhid and Sa^cîd Ibn Jubayr and 'Ikrimah Ibn Khâlid al-Makhzûmî and 'Atâ' Ibn Abî Rabâh and Muhammad Ibn ^cAbd ar-Rahmân Ibn al-Muhaysin and Humayd Ibn Qays al-^cA'raj and all are from Makkah.

He also reported from Yazîd Ibn al-Qa^cqâ^c and Yazîd Ibn Rumân and Shaybah Ibn Nisâ' and all are from Madinah.

He also reported from al-'Assan and Yahyâ Ibn Ya^cmur and others from Basrah.

All these people took from the companions of the Prophet^(P).^[17]

From him came two readings called as-Sûsi and ad-Dûrî.

Qirâ'a from Basrah: From Basrah, the reading known as

Ya^cqûb Ibn Ishâq al-Hadramî the companion of Shu^cbah (again). He reported from Abû ^cAmr and others.^[18]

Qirâ'a from Kûfah:The reading of ^cAasim Ibn Abî an-Najûd (^cAasim Ibn Bahdalah Ibn Abî an-Najûd):

He died in the year 127 or 128 H. He reported from Abû ^cAbd ar-Rahmân as-Solammî and Zirr Ibn Hubaysh.

Abû ^cAbd ar-Rahmân reported from ^cUthmân and ^cAlî Ibn Abî Tâlib and 'Ubayy (Ibn Ka^cb) and Zayd (Ibn Thâbit).

And Zirr reported from Ibn Mas^cud.^[19]

Two readings were repoted from ^cAasim: The famous one is Hafs, the other one is Shu^cbah.

Qirâ'a from Kûfah: The reading of Hamzah Ibn Habîb (from Kûfah as well)

Hamzah was born in the year 80 H and died in the year 156 H. He reported from Muhammad Ibn ^cAbd ar-Rahmân Ibn Abî Laylâ (who reads the reading of ^cAlî Ibn Abî Tâlib (RA), according to the book of Ibn Mujâhid called al-Sab^cah - The Seven - page 74) and Humrân Ibn A'yan and Abî Ishâq as-Sabî'y and Mansur Ibn al-Mu'tamir and al-Mughîrah Ibn Miqsam and Ja^cfar Ibn Muhammad Ibn ^cAlî Ibn Abî Tâlib from the Prophet^(P).^[20]

Qirâ'a from Kûfah: The reading of al-'Amash from Kûfah as well:

He reported from Yahyâ Ibn Waththâb from 'Alqamah and al-'Aswad and 'Ubayd Ibn Nadlah al-Khuzâ'y and Abû ^cAbd ar-Rahmân as-Sulamî and Zirr ibn Hubaysh and all reported from Ibn Mas^cud.^[21]

Qirâ'a from Kûfah: The reading of ^cAli Ibn Hamzah al-Kisâ'i known as al-Kisâ'i from Kûfah.

He died in the year 189 H. He reported from Hamzah (the previous one) and ^cIesâ Ibn ^cUmar and Muhammad Ibn ^cAbd ar-Rahmân Ibn Abî Laylâ and others.^[22]

Now our discussion will be on Hafs and Warsh Qirâ'ât.

Hafs & Warsh Qirâ'ât: Are They Different Versions Of The Qur'an?

The Christian missionary Jochen Katz had claimed that Hafs and Warsh Qirâ'ât are different 'versions' of the Qur'an. A concise and interesting article that the missionary had used to reach such a conclusion can be found in the book Approaches of The History of Interpretation of The Qur'an. Ironically, it contained an article by Adrian Brockett, titled "The Value of Hafs And Warsh Transmissions For The Textual History Of The Qur'an", which sheds some light on various aspects of differences between the two recitations. It is also worth noting that, in contrast to Mr. Katz, Brockett used the word transmission rather than text for these two modes of recitations. Some highlights from the article are reproduced below.

Brockett states:

In cases where there are no variations within each transmission itself, certain differences between the two transmissions, at least in the copies consulted, occur consistently throughout. None of them has any effect in the meaning.^[23]

The author demarcates the transmissions of Hafs and Warsh into differences of vocal form and the differences of graphic form. According Brockett:

Such a division is clearly made from a written standpoint, and on its own is unbalanced. It would be a mistake to infer from it, for instance, that because "hamza" was at first mostly outside the graphic form, it was therefore at first also outside oral form. The division is therefore mainly just for ease of classification and reference.^[24]

Regarding the graphic form of this transmission, he further states:

On the graphic side, the correspondences between the two transmissions are overwhelmingly more numerous than differences, often even with oddities like ayna ma and aynama being consistently preserved in both transmissions, and la'nat allahi spelt both with ta tawila and ta marbuta in the same places in both transmissions as well, not one of the graphic differences caused the Muslims any doubts about the faultlessly faithful transmission of the Qur'an.^[25]

And on the vocal side of the transmission the author's opinion is:

On the vocal side, correspondences between the two transmissions again far and away outnumber the differences between them, even with the fine points such as long vowels before hamzat at-qat having a madda. Also, not one of the differences substantially affects the meaning beyond its own context... All this point to a remarkably unitary transmission in both its graphic form and its oral form.^[26]

He also discusses the Muslims' and orientalists' attitude towards the graphic transmission:

Many orientalists who see the Qur'an as only a written document might think that in the graphic differences can be found significant clues about the early history of the Qur'an text - if ^cUthmân issued a definitive written text, how can such graphic differences be explained, they might ask. For Muslims, who see the Qur'an as an oral as well as a written text, however, these differences are simply readings, certainly important, but no more so than readings involving, for instances, fine differences in assimilation or in vigour of pronouncing the hamza.^[27]

Brockett goes so far as to provide examples with which the interested reader can carry out an extended analysis. Thus, he states:

The definitive limit of permissible graphic variation was, firstly, consonantal disturbance that was not too major, then unalterability in meaning, and finally reliable authority.

In the section titled, "The Extent To Which The Differences Affect The Sense", the author repeats the same point:

The simple fact is that none of the differences, whether vocal or graphic, between the transmission of Hafs and the transmission of Warsh has any great effect on the meaning. Many are the differences which do not change the meaning at all, and the rest are differences with an effect on the meaning in the immediate context of the text itself, but without any significant wider influence on Muslim thought.^[28]

The above is supported by the following:

Such then is the limit of the variation between these two transmissions of the Qur'an, a limit well within the boundaries of substantial exegetical effect. This means that the readings found in these transmissions are most likely not of exegetical origin, or at least did not arise out of crucial exegetigal dispute. They are therefore of the utmost value for the textual history of the Qur'an.^[29]

And interestingly enough the author went on to say:

The limits of their variation clearly establish that they are a single text.^[30]

Furthermore, we read:

Thus, if the Qur'an had been transmitted only orally for the first century, sizeable variations between texts such as are seen in the hadîth and pre-Islamic poetry would be found, and if it had been transmitted only in writing, sizeable variations such as in the different transmissions of the original document of the constitution of Medina would be found. But neither is the case with the Qur'an. There must have been a parallel written transmission limiting variation in the oral transmission to the graphic form, side by side with a parallel oral transmission preserving the written transmission from corruption.^[31]

The investigation led to another conviction:

The transmission of the Qur'an after the death of Muhammad was essentially static, rather than organic. There was a single text, and nothing significant, not even allegedly abrogated material, could be taken out nor could anything be put in.^[32]

Finally, we would like to establish Adrian Brockett's conclusion on this matter:

There can be no denying that some of the formal characteristics of the Qur'an point to the oral side and others to the written side, but neither was as a whole, primary. There is therefore no need to make different categories for vocal and graphic differences between transmissions. Muslims have not. The letter is not a dead skeleton to be refleshed, but is a manifestation of the spirit alive from beginning. The transmission of the Qur'an has always been oral, just as it has been written.^[33]

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Christian missionaries like Jochen Katz find themselves "refleshing" a dead skeleton in order to comply with their missionary program of outright deception. Of course, regular participants in the newsgroups have time and again witnessed Jochen's tiring displays of dialectical acrobatics - the misquoting of references and the juggling of facts. Surprisingly enough, missionary Katz cannot even support his point of view using the reference [23], which undermines his missionary agenda of twisting the facts. The reference [23] has firmly established that:

There is only one Qur'an,
The differences in recitation are divinely revealed, not invented by humans
The indisputable conclusion that the Qur'an was not tampered with.

Recitation Of The Qur'an in Hafs, Warsh & Other Qirâ'ât

A few centuries ago, the Qurra, or reciters of the Qur'an, used to take pride in reciting all seven Qirâ'ât. In light of this fact, we decided to make an informal inquiry into some the Qurra who recite in different Qirâ'ât. Two brothers confirmed the following:

Date: 18 Sep 1997 13:44:37 -0700
From: Moustafa Mounir Elqabbany
Newsgroups: soc.religion.islam

I can confirm that al-Husarî did in fact record the entire Qur'an in Warsh, as I have the recording in my possession. A Somali brother also indicated to me that he has a copy of the Qur'an recited in Al-Doori ('an Abî ^cAmr) recited, again, by al-Husarî. The Qur'an is very widely read and recorded in Qawloon in Libya and Tunisia, so it shouldn't be difficult to acquire those Qirâ'ât either.

And another brother corroborated the following in a private e-mail:

Date: Mon, 27 Oct 1997 21:59:24 +0100
From: Mohamed Ghoniem
To: Metallica
Subject: Re: readings

Well, before al-Husary, Abdel Bassit Abdus Samad has recorded the entire Qur'an in Warsh and many cassettes and CDs are on sale everywhere in the Egypt and in France as well. I personally have in Cairo many recordings of other readers such as Sayyed Mutawally and Sayyed Sa'eed exclusively in Warsh. I have seen several cassettes in the reading of Hamzah (from Khalaf's way) on sale in Egypt and I have bought a couple of them during this summer. They were recorded by Sheikh 'Antar Mosallam.

Presently, I have got two CDs recorded by Sheikh Abdel Bassit gathering three readings (Hafs, Warsh and Hamzah). These CDs belong to a series of six CDs on sale publicly in France in the fnac stores.

Printed Edition Of The Qur'an In Various Qirâ'ât

The different Qirâ'ât exist in the printed editions. This would be news for most missionaries, aside from the ones who bitterly conceal these facts. Most of the masâhif of the Qur'an carry either in the beginning or in the end the rules of pronunciation of that Qirâ'a as well as the isnad. This is to enable the readers to properly read the Qur'an.

A few examples of the printed edition of masâhif of the Qur'an in various Qirâ'ât are given below:

Books On Mutawâtir Readings

We have already shown above some of the printed edition of the masâhif of the Qur'an in different Qirâ'ât.

Below are the examples of the books which deals with ten mutawâtir readings.

This book al-Nashr fi-l-Qirâ'ât al-^cAshr by Ibn al-Jazrî who died in 833 AH. This is a standard book used by students of the science of Qirâ'ât. This is the edition from Dâr al-Kutub ^cIlmiyyah, Beirut, Lebanon. Not surprisingly, this book is also used by Adrian Brockett, in his article "The Value of Hafs And Warsh Transmissions For The Textual History Of The Qur'an".^[34]

The below one a very recent book.

The Ten Mutawâtir Readings
from the ways of ash-Shatbiyyah and ad-Durrah
In the Margin of

The Holy Qur'an

an idea from

^cAlawi Ibn Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Bilfaqih

carried out by

Shaykh Muhammad Karîm Râjih

The Chief Reader in the Syrian land

Dâr al-Muhâjir for Publications & Distribution

This book is a third print published in 1414AH/1994 CE. This book claims as a

...unique and first work of this kind in the field of Science of the ten Mutawâtir readings from the ways of ash-Shatbiyyah and ad-Durrah in the margin of the Holy Qur'an is now achieved, edited, and printed.^[35]

The 10 readers/transmitters of the mutawâtir readings are listed here. What is more interesting is that there are reciters even to this day who have memorised the Qur'an in all the 10 mutawâtir readings.

In the end, I address Shaykh Kurayyim Râjih the Head of the Readers in the Syrian lands with my gratitude for carrying out that work and supervising its course and supplementing it with valuable guidelines that hardly come from anyone except an expert like him.

May God reward his kind student and reader Muhammad Fahd Khârûf who masters the ten Mutawâtir readings from the ways of ash-Shatbiyyah and ad-Durrah and at-Tibah for participating to this noble task making it, with the divine help, a beneficial work for the holders of God's Almighty Book and his readers.^[36]

Conclusions

In light of the above discussion, it is clear that Hafs and Warsh Qirâ'ât are not the different 'versions' or 'texts' of the Qur'an as fantasized by missionary Katz. The mutawâtir follows directly to the Companions of the Prophet^(P) who took the Qur'an from the Prophet^(P) himself. Thus, the suggestion that a mutawâtir reading was a later invention by the Muslims is to be dismissed as complete fiction.

Related Articles

The Qirâ'ât Identified In Qur'anic Manuscripts

Reply To Samuel Green's "The Seven Readings Of The Qur'an"

References

[1] Abû Ja^cfar Muhammad bin Jarîr al-Tabarî (Translated & Abridged by J Cooper, W F Madelung and A Jones), Jami^c al-Bayân 'an Tâ'wil ay al-Qur'an, 1987, Volume 1, Oxford University Press & Hakim Investment Holdings (M.E.) Limited, p. 16.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., p. 31.

[5] Ibid., p. 29.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips, Tafseer Soorah Al-Hujuraat, 1990, Tawheed Publications, Riyadh, p. 27.

[8] Ibid., pp. 28-29.

[9] Ibid., pp. 29-30.

[10] Ibid., p. 30.

[11] Ibid.

[12] W M Watt & R Bell, Introduction To The Qur'an, 1994, Edinburgh at University Press, p. 49.

[13] Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips, Tafseer Soorah Al-Hujuraat, Op. Cit., p. 32.

[14] Abû Muhammad ^cAlî Ibn Ahmad Ibn Sa^cîd Ibn Hazm al-Andalûsî (384-456 H), Ar-Rasâ'il al-Khamsah (A Booklet In Magazine Al-Azhar), 1993, p. 7.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid., pp. 9-10.

[17] Ibid., p. 9.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid., pp. 7-8.

[20] Ibid., p. 8.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Ibid., pp. 8-9."

[23] Adrian Brockett, "The Value of Hafs And Warsh Transmissions For The Textual History Of The Qur'an" in Andrew Rippin's (Ed.), Approaches of The History of Interpretation of The Qur'an, 1988, Clarendon Press, Oxford, p. 33.

[24] Ibid., pp. 33-34.

[25] Ibid., p. 34.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Ibid., p. 35.

[28] Ibid., p. 37.

[29] Ibid., p. 43.

[30] Ibid.

[31] Ibid., p. 44.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Ibid., p. 45.

[34] Ibid., p. 35, see footnote 14.

[35] ^cAlawi Ibn Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Bilfaqih, Al-Qirâ'ât al-^cAshr al-Mutawâtir, 1994, Dâr al-Muhâjir, See the back of the cover page.

[36] ibid.

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Qiraat/hafs.html 4/1/03 10:33:14 AM

The Qur'ân, Jeffery & Missionaries:

What Does Jeffery Actually Say?

M S M Saifullah, Mansûr Ahmad, Muhammad Ghoniem & Khalid al-Khazarajî

Last Updated: 11th November 1999

Introduction

Before we begin it is a nice idea to introduce Arthur Jeffery. He was an Australian-American Orientalist who conducted research on various aspects of the Qur'ân. Among his works the most celebrated is his Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Qur'ân: The Old Codices.

Along with his important work on Biblical studies, he pursued his research on the Qur'ân while serving in Cairo, Egypt, as the director of the American Research Centre, as a Professor of Semitic languages at Columbia University, and as an adjunct Professor at the Union Theological Seminary. Besides his studies on variant readings, he wrote on topics such as foreign vocabulary in the Qur'ân (The Foreign Vocabulary Of The Qur'ân: 1938, Arthur Jeffery, Oriental Institute, Baroda). He also translated selected surahs of the Qur'ân and devised a new arrangement to establish 'development in Muhammad's thought' (The Koran - Selected Suras: 1958, Arthur Jeffery, Heritage Press, New York). Professor Jeffery belongs to that section of Orientalists who, in post-colonial times, shifted from textual and philological studies and, unlike their predecessors, had no chance to act as advisor to the colonial masters of Muslim Asia and Africa.

Arthur Jeffery also holds the dubious distinction of calling Muhammad^(P) a robber chief, second only to Professor David Margoliouth.^[1] Jeffery says:

At Medina, he was what might justly call a robber chief, just as David, King of Israel, was in his early days.^[2]

All this was done to compare and contrast Muhammad^(P) with the "life of our Lord."^[3] Hallmark of a true Christian indeed! If he has so much hatred for the Prophet^(P) of Islam, how is that one can expect him to be objective in his criticism of what was revealed to him?

This chapter will deal with Professor Arthur Jeffery's work on the Qur'ân and would also discuss what Gilchrist would not like the readers of his book to know, i.e., how Arthur Jeffery reaches the conclusion about the rival Codices and variants in his book as well as other issues on the collection of variant readings.

Jeffery published the book Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Qur'ân: The Old Codices in 1937 which contains an impressive body of material dealing with the variant readings of the Qur'ân in the Companion codices. A part of the work was taken from Kitâb al-Masâhif of Ibn Abî Dâwûd. The most striking feature of this book is the regularity with which the reader encounters expression of Jeffery's scepticism concerning the reports of the variant readings. This is due to the fact that sufficient material

... has not survived to enable us to get a real picture of the text of any of the pre-^cUthmânic codices. ^[4]

Jeffery On The First Collection Of Abû Bakr: The Art Of Juggling Words

Orientalism and juggling of words are synonymous. Jeffery is no exception to this. The evidence that we have concerning the first collection of the Qur'ân by Abû Bakr is authentic and strongly supported by the Islamic history. In spite of this evidence, the image of the Christian ecclesiastical history, with which the Christian missionaries are much more familiar, seems to have obsessed Jeffery to such a degree that he has, in his book, transposed it almost entirely to the Islamic terrain. In fact, he has tried to show that in the Qur'ânic text there is a certain evolution resembling in many ways the evolution in the text of the Gospels.

The first one to start off with is denying the official character of the first collection of the Qur'ân by Abû Bakr:

That Abû Bakr was one of those who collected the revelation material was doubtless true. He may possibly have inherited material that the Prophet had stored away in preparation of the Kitâb. That he ever made an official recension as the orthodox theory demands is exceedingly doubtful. His collection would have been a purely private affair, just as quite a few number of Companions of the Prophet had made personal collections as private affairs.^[5]

A simple reminder here would be that Abû Bakr was a Caliph at the time he ordered the first collection after the loss of reciters on the day of Yamamah. As was the case with his predecessor Richard Bell, Jeffery failed to camouflage his prejudiced against Qur'ân when dealing with its compilation. Like Bell, he declares that the recension of Abû Bakr was his own purely private affair. ^[6]

It is interesting to note that he accepts all the variants indicated in Kitâb al-Masâhif as valid but ignores (without explaining why!) these same sources assertion about Abû Bakr's official collection of the Qur'ân!

The second one is more absurd than the first. Jeffery repeated says:

...it is quite clear that the text which ^cUthmân canonized was only one out of many rival texts, and we need to investigate what went before the canonical text.^[7]

There can be no doubt that the text canonized by ^cUthmân was only one among several types of texts in existence at the time.^[8]

It is a well known fact that Abû Bakr's first collection was the basis of the second one by ^cUthmân. ^cUthmân did not do any special collection of the Qur'ân except faithfully reproducing the copy which was with Hafsah. Needless to add: Zaid Ibn Thabit was involved with the collection during Abû Bakr's time as well as ^cUthmân's time.

So, in depicting the ^cUthmân's collection as a new one, Jeffery conveniently introduced the concept of rival Codices to the ^cUthmânic Codex. Now, it is interesting to know that Ibn Abî Dâwûd nowhere uses the word rival Codex (to ^cUthmânic Codex) in his work Kitâb al-Masâhif. Hence it is purely an invention of Arthur Jeffery to push his hypothesis.

Jeffery & The Seven Ahruf

It is not very surprising that after the introduction of the concept of rival Codices and to push this hypothesis, Jeffery went on to negate the the evidence that the Qur'ân was revealed in seven ahruf as the hadiths given below state:

From Abû Hurairah:

The Messenger of God^(P) said: "An All-knowing, Wise, Forgiving, Merciful sent down the Qur'ân in seven ahruf." ^[9]

From ^cAbdullâh Ibn Mas^cud:

The Messenger of God^(P) said: "The Qur'ân was sent down in seven ahruf. Each of these ahruf has an outward aspect (zahr) and an inward aspect (batn); each of the ahruf has a border, and each border has a lookout." ^[10]

Jeffery shows his dubious scholarship by making a cheap excuse that:

This number Seven was connected with the well known tradition about the Qur'ân having being revealed according to the seven ahruf, a tradition which itself had obviously been invented to explain the variant readings of the text known to exist.^[11]

Jeffery does not know that he is contradicting his own stance. On one hand, he is willing to believe whatever Ibn Mas^cud has to say concerning the variant readings. On the other hand he is rejecting Ibn Mas^cud's own testimony that the Qur'ân was revealed in seven ahruf! It is also interesting to see the traditional sources which Jeffery uses to gather the variant readings and they themselves say that the Qur'ân was revealed in seven ahruf (for the full bibliography of the sources which Jeffery uses, please see the next section).

In other words, the use of evidence by him is extremely selective, i.e., negate the evidence which does not suit the hypothesis.

Jeffery & The Sources Of Variant Readings

Concerning Kitâb al-Masâhif of Ibn Abi Dâwûd Jeffery says:

The number of actual variants given in this text is very small and obviously represents only those happened to be found in his particular collection of traditions.^[12]

Jeffery's primary source of collecting the variant readings was Kitâb al-Masâhif of Ibn Abi Dâwûd. He also collected variant readings from the books dealing with commentary (Tafsîr), linguistics (Lugah), literature (Adab) and reading styles (Qirâ'ât). According to Jeffery ^[13]:

The material which follows is taken from the writer's collections made with a view to a critical text of the Qur'ân..... The main sources from which the variants have been drawn are:

Abû Hayyân, al-Bahar al-Muhit, 8 Volumes, Cairo 1328.

Alusî, Ruh al-Ma^cani Fi Tafsîr al-Qur'ân Wa Sab' al-Mathani, 30 Volumes, Cairo, n.d.

Baghawî, Ma^calim at-Tanzil, 7 Volumes, Cairo 1332.

Baidawî, Anwâr at-Tanzil Wa Asrar at-Tawil, 5 Prints, Cairo, 1330.

Balawi, Kitâb Alîf Ba', 2 Volumes, Cairo, 1287.

Banna, Ithaf Fudala al-Bashar Ai'l-Qirâ'ât al-Arba'ata 'Ashar, Cairo, 1317.

Fakhr ad-Dîn ar-Râzî, Mafatih al-Ghaib, 8 Volumes, Cairo, 1327.

Farra', Kitâb Ma^cani al-Qur'ân, Ms. Stambul, Nuru Osmaniya 459.

Ibn al-Anbarî, Kitâb al-Insaf, Ed. Gotthold Weil, Leiden, 1913.

Ibn Hisham, Mughni al-Labîb, 2 Prints, Cairo, 1347.

Ibn Hisham, Tahdhib at-Tawadih, 2 Prints, Cairo, 1329.

Ibn Jinnî, Nichtkanonische Koranlesarten im Muhtasab des Ibn Ginni, von G Bergstrasser, Munchen, 1933.

Ibn Khalawaih, Ibn Halawaihs Sammlung nichtkanonischer Koranlesarten, Herausgegeben von G Bergstrasser, Stambul, 1934.

Ibn Manzur, Lisân al-^cArab, 20 Volumes, Cairo, 1307.

Ibn Ya'ish, Commentary To The Mufassal, Ed., Jahn, 2 Volumes, Liepzig, 1882.

Khafaji, 'Inayat al-Qadi wa Kifayat ar-Radi, 8 Volumes, Cairo, 1283.

Marandî, Qurrat 'Ain al-Qurra, Ms. Escorial, 1337.

Muttaqî al-Hindî, Kanz al-'Ummal, Volume 2, Hyderabad, 1312.

Nasafi, Madarik at-Tanzil wa Haqa'iq at-Ta'wil, 4 Volumes, Cairo, 1333.

Nisaburî, Ghara'ib al-Qur'ân (On The Margin Of Tafsir at-Tabari).

Qunawî, Hashia ^calâ l-Baidawi, 7 Volumes, Stambul, 1285.

Qurtubî, al-Jâmi^c li Ahkam al-Qur'ân, 2 Volumes (All So Far Published), Cairo, 1935.

Shawkanî, Fath al-Qadir, 5 Volumes, Cairo, 1349.

Sibawaih, Le Livre de Sibawaih, Ed. Derenbourg, 2 Volumes, Paris, 1889.

Suyûtî, al-Itqan fî ^cUlûm al-Qur'ân, Ed. Sprenger, Calcutta, 1857.

Suyûtî, ad-Durr al-Manthur fî 't-Tafsîr al-Ma'thur, 6 Volumes, Cairo, 1314.

Suyûtî, al-Muzhir, 2 Volumes, Cairo, 1282.

Tabarî, al-Jâmi^c al-Bayân fî Tafsîr al-Qur'ân, 30 Volumes, Cairo, 1330.

Tabarasi, Majma' al-Bayân fî-^cUlûm al-Qur'ân, 2 Volumes, Tehran, 1304.

'Ukbarî, Imla' fi 'l-I'rab wa 'l-Qirâ'ât fi Jâmi^c al-Qur'ân, 2 Parts, Cairo, 1321.

'Ukbarî, I^crab al-Qirâ'ât ash-Shadhdha, MS Mingana Islamic Arabic, 1649.

Zamakhsharî, al-Kashshâf, Ed. Nassau Lees, Calcutta, 1861.

It is to be noted that Jeffery's list of variant readings are surprisingly devoid of proper isnâd or chain of transmission. So, it is very difficult task to determine from where the variant readings were taken.

Jeffery On Isnâd Of Variant Readings

There are numerous problems which Jeffery mentions and overlooks. For example, the problem of isnâd of the readings attributed to various Companions of the Prophet^(P). Concerning the book Kitâb al-Masâhif of Ibn Abi Dâwûd, Jeffery admits that:

The greatest difficulty has been with the isnâds quoted by the author, and although all available controls were applied to them, there may still be some that will not stand the scrutiny of isnâd critics. The assistance of Muslim savants in this matter was not helpful for we could not overcome the principle that every isnâd that led to a statement at variance with orthodoxy was ipso facto condemned.^[14]

Much of the material given by Ibn Abî Dâwûd regarding the history of the text of the Qur'ân, though extremely unorthodox, yet agrees so closely with the conclusions one had reached from quite other directions that one feels confident in making use of it, however weak orthodoxy may consider its isnâds to be. ^[15]

Two points are to be made here. The first one which Jeffery's claim "that every isnâd that led to a statement at variance with orthodoxy was ipso facto condemned" is a lie. And he contradicts himself further by saying that:

Modern Muslim savants almost invariably set aside the variants recorded from the Old Codices on the grounds that they are Tafsîr, or as we would say, explanatory glosses on the ^cUthmânic text, and they roundly condemn such ancient scholars as Ibn Khalawaih and Ibn Jinnî for not knowning the difference between Qirâ'ât and Tafsîr. It is clear, however that only such Qirâ'ât as were of the kind that could be used for tafsîr had any likelihood of being preserved.^[16]

The orthodoxy took into consideration various factors for accepting a recitation authentic. It had to fulfill three conditions and if any of the conditions were missing such a recitation was classified as Shâdhdh (unusual).

The first condition was that the recitation have an authentic chain of narration in which the chain of narrators was continuous, the narrators were all known to be righteous and they were all knwon to possess good memories. It was also required that the recitation be conveyed by a large number of narrators on each level of the chain of narration below the level of Sahaabah (the condition of Tawaatur). Narrations which had authentic chains but lacked the condition of Tawaatur were accepted as explanations (Tafseer) of the Sahaabah but were not considered as methods of reciting the Qur'ân. As for the narrations which did not even have an authentic chain of narration, they were classified as Baatil (false) and rejected totally.
The seond condition was that the variations in recitations match known Arabic grammatical constructions. Unusual constructions could be verified by their existence in passages of pre-Islamic prose or poetry.
The third condition required the recitation to coincide with the script of one of the copies of the Qur'ân distributed during the era of Caliph 'Uthman. Hence differences which result from dot placement (i.e., ta'lamoon and ya'lamoon)are considered acceptable provided the other conditions are met. A recitation of a construction for which no evidence could be found would be classified Shaadhdh. This classification did not mean that all aspects of the recitation was considered Shaadhdh. It only meant that the unverified constructions were considered Shaadhdh.^[17]

Where does the orthodoxy condemn any statement of variance? What the orthodoxy rejects is the false chain of narrations not the lack of tawâtur.

It is not clear from anything that Jeffery has said in his specialist work on the Qur'ân why anyone should feel this degree of confidence. According to Jeffery, Islamic scholars have considered that isnâd of reports in Kitâb al-Masâhif weak, yet he wants to push it because it is 'extremely unorthodox'. Neither he has bothered to check the isnâd of the hadîths nor has he commented on any of the hadîth probably assuming that the hadîths were forgeries.

Later while talking about the authenticity of the readings ascribed to the Old Codices, Jeffery says:

The question arises, of course, as to the authenticity of the readings ascribed to these Old Codices. In some cases it must be confessed there is a suspicion of readings later invented by grammarians and theologians being fathered on these early authorities in order to gain prestige of their name. This suspicion is strongest in the case of distinctively Shi'a readings that are attributed to Ibn Mas^cud, and in readings attributed to the wives of the Prophet. It is felt also in regard to the readings attributed to Ibn ^cAbbâs, who as Ubermensch des Tafsir, tended to get his authority quoted for any and every matter connected with Qur'ânic studies. On the whole, one may feel confident that the majority of readings quoted from any Reader really goes back to early authority. ^[18]

And again it is still unclear from where does his confidence comes from? Some of the hadîths are reported to be weak and now Jeffery says that it is unclear whether some of the readings are genuine!! So what we essentially have is a big problem in dealing with the book Kitâb al-Masâhif. Jeffery again comments on the hadîths:

The more difficult question is that of defective transmission. Occasionally in reading the Commentaries one finds a reading that is commonly known as coming from a certain early Reader attributed to quite another source. Where authorities can be weighed it is generally possible to decide which attribution is correct, but in cases where a variant is quoted by only one source which is otherwise known for the carelessness of its citation of authorities, one can never be sure that that particular variant is correctly attributed to the Reader given. ^[19]

and went on to say:

A similar problem of accurate transmission naturally attaches to variants themselves. Being uncanonical variants there was none of the meticulous care taken over their transmission such as we find for the canonical readings, and we not infrequently have various forms of the variants attributed to the same Reader in different sources. In such cases nothing can be done but to give them all hope that further information may enable us to decide between them.^[20]

Well, Jeffery would have been better off if he had checked the isnâd of the hadîth. It appears that some of the so called readings are linguistically impossible because of the defect in the transmission.

Some of the variants in the form in which they have survived to us seem linguistically impossible, and in certain cases this has been noted in the source which quote the variant. The defect is doubtless due to faulty transmission, and it is possible that some of the scholars may even now spot where the corruption lies and restore us to original reading. ^[21]

A feature that would strike any Muslim reader of Jeffery's book Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur'ân is that the variants listed there are supplied without the isnâd. Ahmad von Denffer in his book ^cUlûm al-Qur'ân comments about Jeffery's work:

...all the variants - or probably most of them - listed in the classical works from which Jeffery has drawn the information, must be supplied with an isnâd, showing how the information about the particular variant reading has been obtained and transmitted. Perhaps, Jeffery might have thought it is useless to study the isnâd - since the Orientalists usually assume that they are fabricated anyway. But if this is so, from where then does the confidence arise that his collection can be of any use for a critical text of the Qur'ân? ^[22]

And he went on to say:

However, in my view the isnâd needs to be scrutinised carefully in each and every case to see which of the reports on variant readings are indeed probable or improbable, and among the probable ones, which are sound and which are not. All this, it is true, can still be done, but Jeffery's collection is only of limited use for such a study.^[23]

Jeffery & Manuscript Evidence

Elsewhere Jeffery while mentioning various Codices, hints the lack of textual variations in the manuscripts that lead him to 'pursue' the information in rival Codices:

It is of course obvious that all the information we can gather regarding the text of these early Codices is of the utmost importance for the textual importance of the Qur'ân. This in the absence of any direct manuscript evidence gives us our sole witness to the types of the text which ^cUthmân's standard text superseded.^[24]

Talking about the Archive of Professor Bergstrasser, Jeffery says:

Meanwhile Dr. Pretzl, Bergstrasser's successor at Munich, has begun to organize the Archive for the Korankomission set up by the Bavarian Academy at Bergstrasser's initiation, and has already assembled a goodly collection of photographs of early Kufic Codices and early unpublished Qirâ'ât works.^[25]

Regarding the work of Bergstrasser, he admits:

Bergstrasser in his preliminary collection of the uncanonical readings of Ibn Mas^cud and Ubai made an attempt to estimate the value of these two texts as compared with the ^cUthmânic text. With the increase of material one feels less inclined to venture on such a judgement of value.^[26]

It is interesting to note that Jeffery concedes the lack of textual differences in the rival Codices attributed to Ibn Mas^cud and Ubayy Ibn Ka'b when compared to ^cUthmânic 'text'. This basically means that the assumption of rival Codices itself was wrong to start with. Further he went on to 'explain' the variants found in the uncanonical Codices as being 'improvements' on the ^cUthmânic text. Jeffery further 'suggests' that these Companions may have suggested such variants out of piety.^[27]

We have also seen above the conclusions arising from Professor Bergstrasser's preliminary collection of the uncanonical readings that the textual differences in the Qur'ân are lacking. It is worthwhile mentioning the work of Nabia Abbott too.

In her book The Rise of The North Arabic Script & Its Kur'ânic Development, she presents some Qur'ân parchments and manuscripts dating from 1st, 2nd and 3rd century AH as well later ones.^[28] It is interesting to note that she did not mention any textual differences except for a scribal error in one of the manuscripts.^[29]

If Jeffery was selective in using his sources to formulate a nice hypothesis of rival Codices to ^cUthmânic recension, John Burton took a step ahead and assumed that the hadîths were forgeries only to reach a marvellous conclusion that:

What we have today in our hands is the mushaf of Muhammad.^[30]

Later on he retracted the view on the rejection of hadîths and said:

Some Western scholars, too, have expressed reservations about the hypotheses of Goldziher and Schacht. My own position is that the wholesale rejection of the hadîths as mere invention and fabrication misses the point that many of the hadîths can be shown to spring from an ancient source in the primitive exegeses.^[31]

Adrian Brockett in his article The Value of Hafs and Warsh Transmissions For The Textual History of The Qur'ân deals with various issues of the orally transmitted traditions and the seven Qirâ'ât in which the Qur'ân can be recited. His conclusions regarding the oral side of Qur'ân's transmission is:

The transmission of the Qur'ân after the death of Muhammad was essentially static, rather than organic. There was a single text, and nothing significant, not even allegedly abrogated material, could be taken out nor could anything be put in. This is applied even to the early Caliphs. The efforts of those scholars who attempt to reconstruct any other hypothetical original versions of the (written) text are therefore shown to be disregarding half the essence of Muslim scripture.^[32]

William Muir, echoed clearly that there is only one Qur'ân in the last century:

The recension of ^cUthmân has been handed down to us unaltered. so carefully, indeed, has it been preserved, that there are no variations of importance, - we might almost say no variations at all, - amongst the innumerable copies of the Koran scattered throughout the vast bounds of empire of Islam. Contending and embittered factions, taking their rise in the murder of ^cUthmân himself within a quarter of a century from the death of Muhammad have ever since rent the Muslim world. Yet but ONE KORAN has always been current amongst them.... There is probably in the world no other work which has remained twelve centuries with so pure a text.^[33]

So, the Oriental scholarship ranging from the likes of Muir and Jeffery to Burton and Brockett, adopting a different methodology, have come to a conclusion that the Qur'ân does not contain textual differences and what the Qur'ân that we have today is what the Prophet^(P) recited.

Summary

Summarizing the views on the book Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Qur'ân we can say that lack of verification of isnâd can result in the following problems which Arthur Jeffery has already mention:

Some of the isnâd of the hadîths in Kitâb al-Masâhif of Ibn Abi Dâwûd are considered to be weak. Jeffery himself admits that. It is therefore not advisable to take any material for quotation unless the isnâd is verified. The authenticity of the readings in the Old Codices are, therefore, questionable.
It is unclear what Jeffery means by variants. Does he mean the seven Qirâ'ât in which the Qur'ân can be read or ahruf in which the Qur'ân was revealed or variants which are not approved by the Prophet^(P) or his Companions?
The problem of falsification of readings of the Qur'ân can not be addressed unless the hadîths are meticuluously verified.
The question of defective transmission of the readings in Old Codices is very crucial. This has lead to linguistically impossible variants. This again takes us back to the problem of isnâd.
While creating doubts and making insinuations about the ^cUthmânic recension and despite his acceptance that the transmission of variants is through weak chains of transmission, Jeffery is nevertheless hesistant to admit the reality of the Muslim world consensus ('Ijma) on it.
Jeffery has utterly failed to produce any statement from Ibn Mas^cud (or Ubayy Ibn Ka'b) implying that what was in the ^cUthmânic recension was not from the Prophet^(P). After Ibn Mas^cud, Ubayy Ibn Ka'b is the second companion to whom a bulk of variant readings have been ascribed.
From the manuscript evidence shown by his collegue Bergstrasser, Jeffery concedes the lack of textual differences in the 'texts' attributed to Ibn Mas^cud and Ubayy Ibn Ka'ab when compared to ^cUthmânic 'text'.

What Is Gilchrist's Position?

Now, has John Gilchrist looked into all the above mentioned problems? The answer is , No. Gilchrist did not takes the views of the Jeffery seriously and tried to quote the contents of book Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur'ân blindly. This is especially true for the Christian missionaries, who have an axe to grind. Some of the examples of this sort are available at the missionary site.

Gilchrist extensively makes use of Kitâb al-Masâhif of Ibn Abi Dâwûd and we have seen some of the problems with the book already. Like Arthur Jeffery, Gilchrist did not bother to check the isnâd of the reports and quotes from this book without verification. Consider the following in the Chapter 3 of Gilchrist's book discussing about the codices of Ibn Mas^cud and Ubayy Ibn Ka'b:

When we come to the rest of the Qur'ân, however, we find that there were numerous differences of reading between the texts of Zaid and Ibn Mas'ud. As mentioned already the records in Ibn Abi Dawud's Kitâb al-Masâhif fill up no less than nineteen pages and, from all the sources available, one can trace no less than 101 variants in the Suratul-Baqarah alone. ^[34]

The extent of the variant readings between all the codices in existence at the time of 'Uthman before he singled out that of Zaid to be the preferred text at the expense of the others is so great - they fill up no less than three hundred and fifty pages of Jeffery's Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur'ân - that one can understand why the others were ordered to be destroyed. ^[35]

For a quick recapitulation, Jeffery said about the Old Codices:

Is this the only flaw in Gilchrist's book? Let us go further.....

Related Articles

Orientalism, Misinformation & Islam

References

[1] Arthur Jeffery, The Quest Of The Historical Mohammad, The Moslem World, 1926, Volume XVI, No. 4, p. 338.

[2] Ibid., pp. 328-329.

[3] Ibid., p. 327.

[4] Arthur Jeffery, Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Qur'ân: The Old Codices, 1937, Leiden, E J Brill, p. x.

[5] Arthur Jeffery, Op.Cit., p. 6-7

[6] W Montgomery Watt & Richard Bell, Introduction To The Qur'ân, 1994, Edinburgh at University Press, p. 41-42.

[7] Arthur Jeffery, Op.Cit., p. x.

[8] Arthur Jeffery, Op.Cit., p. 8.

[9] Abû Ja^cfar Muhammad bin Jarîr al-Tabarî (Translated & Abridged by J Cooper, W F Madelung and A Jones), Jâmi^c al-Bayân ^can ta'wil ay al-Qur'ân, 1987, Volume 1, Oxford University Press & Hakim Investment Holdings (M.E.) Limited, p. 16.

[10] al-Tabarî, Op.Cit., p. 16.

[11] Arthur Jeffery, The Study Of The Qur'ân Text, 1935, The Moslem World, Volume XXV, No. 1, p. 9.

[12] Arthur Jeffery, Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Qur'ân: The Old Codices, Op.Cit., p. 13.

[13] Arthur Jeffery, Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Qur'ân: The Old Codices, Op.Cit., p. 17-18

[14] Arthur Jeffery, Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Qur'ân: The Old Codices, Op.Cit., p. viii.

[15] Ibid., p. viii.

[16] Arthur Jeffery, Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Qur'ân: The Old Codices, Op.Cit., p. 10.

[17] Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips, Tafseer Soorah Al-Hujuraat, 1990, Tawheed Publications, Riyadh, p. 32.

[18] Arthur Jeffery, Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Qur'ân: The Old Codices, Op.Cit., p. 15.

[19] Ibid., p. 15.

[20] Arthur Jeffery, Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Qur'ân: The Old Codices, Op.Cit., pp. 15-16.

[21] Arthur Jeffery, Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Qur'ân: The Old Codices, Op.Cit., p. 16.

[22] Ahmad von Denffer, ^cUlûm al-Qur'ân, 1994, The Islamic Foundation, p. 160.

[23] Ibid., p. 160.

[24] Arthur Jeffery, Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Qur'ân: The Old Codices, Op.Cit., pp. 14-15.

[25] Arthur Jeffery, Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Qur'ân: The Old Codices, Op.Cit., p. vii.

[26] Arthur Jeffery, Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Qur'ân: The Old Codices, Op.Cit, p. 16.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Nabia Abbott, The Rise of The North Arabic Script & Its Kur'ânic Development, 1939, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, See pp. 59-91 for the discussion of the manuscripts at pp. VIII-XXXIII.

[29] Nabia Abbott, Op.Cit., p. 84.

[30] John Burton, The Collection Of The Qur'ân, 1979, Cambridge University Press, pp. 239-240.

[31] John Burton, An Introduction To The Hadîth, 1994, Edinburgh University Press, p. 181.

[32] Adrian Brockett, The Value of Hafs and Warsh Transmissions For The Textual History of The Qur'ân in Approaches Of The History Of Interpretation Of The Qur'ân, 1988, Edited by Andrew Rippin, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

[33] Sir W Muir, The Life Of Mohammad, 1912, Edinburgh, John Grant, pp. xxii-xxiii.

[34] John Gilchrist, Jam^c al-Qur'ân: The Codification Of The Qur'ân Text, 1989, MERCSA.

[35] Ibid.

[36] Arthur Jeffery, Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Qur'ân: The Old Codices, Op.Cit., p. 15.

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Gilchrist/GilJeffery.html 4/1/03 10:34:47 AM

Sûrah al-Walayah & Sûrah al-Nurayn:

Their Authenticity & Literary Style

M S M Saifullah

Last Updated: 7th August 2002

Assalamu-alaikum wa rahamtullahi wa barakatuhu:

It has been claimed by Christian missionaries at their website that some Shi'ite's have two more chapters in their Qur'an called Sûrah al-Nurayn and Sûrah al-Walayah. Regarding the Sûrah al-Walayah, they used to say [obviously deleted now!]:

Source: The Sura was taken from the book "ALThWRh AL'YARANYh FY MYzAN AL'sLAM" (The Iranian revolution in the balance of Islam), published in Egypt. This is a Sunni book attacking the Shia. The author claims he has taken it from the Shia Qur'an. Only problem is that the Sunni author didn't realize that he was digging his own grave with publishing this sura.

Such views are also echoed by Steven Masood, a well-known Christian writer. He says:

Among the writings of Shia scholarship, we find two Surahs al-Wilayah and an-Nurain which are believed by some to be the part of the Qur'an but which have been rejected by Sunni Ulema. The style and oration is similar to that of the Qur'an.^[1]

Our methodology is to check the Shi'ite sources and see what they say about the status of the Qur'an. After that check what the Western scholars say about the two Sûrahs allegedly from Shi'ite sources and their stylistic features.

1. The Shi'ite Sources

The figure Ja^cfar al-Sâdiq (d. 148/765) is described in the Shi'ite tradition as a charismatic character and quietest of the Imâms. The Shi'ites regard him as the founder of Shi'ite Law, which is based, to a great extent, upon decisions supposed to have been transmitted from him.

In the section "The Belief Concerning The Extent (Mablagh) Of The Qur'an" Ja^cfar al-Sâdiq says:

Says the Shaykh Abu Ja^cfar: Our belief is that the Qur'an, which Allah revealed to his Prophet Muhammad is (the same as) the one between the two boards (daffatayn). And it is that which is in the hands of the people, and is not greater extent than that. The number of suras as generally accepted is one hundred and fourteen.^[2]

And again:

And he who asserts that we say it is greater in extent than this (the present text) is a liar.^[3]

This would have been a proof good enough to stop here and dismiss what the missionaries are claiming about the "Qur'an" which Shi'ites have. But let us go further and expose the deceptive methodology. Another Shi'ite book talking about the two sûrahs as mentioned above says:

A small minority of Shi'is have attempted to get much larger passages (and even the whole suras) accepted as being missing portions of the Qur'an but without success.^[4]

Quoting the history of the Shi'ite belief regarding the Qur'an, Momen says:

With regards to the question of the text of the Qur'an, it has already been noted that the early Shi'is believed that the Qur'an has been altered and parts of it has been suppressed. The Nawbakhtis are said to have adhered to this view although it went against their usual position of agreeing with Mu'tazili thought. The compiler of the earliest, authoritative collection of Twelver Traditions, al-Kulyanî, seems to have given some substance to this view in several of the Traditions that he relates. Ibn Babuya, however, takes the position that the text of the Qur'an is complete and unaltered. Al-Mufid appears to have wavered somewhat on this point during his lifetime. He seems to have accepted the fact that parts of the Qur'an had been excised by the enemies of the Imams in some of his early writings, although he refused even then to state that anything had been added. In his later writings, however, al-Mufid had reinterpreted the concept of omissions from the text of the Qur'an to mean that the text of the Qur'an is complete (although he does allow that the order needs to be changed) but that what has been omitted is the authoritative interpretation of the text by ^cAlî. In this manner, al-Mufid and most subsequent Shi'i writers were able to fall into line with the rest of the Islamic world in accepting the text of the Qur'an as contained in the recension of ^cUthmân.^[5]

Now we have said enough about the Shi'ite sources. Let us now discuss the view of the orientalists.

2. Sûrah al-Walayah & al-Nurayn: Their History & Studies On Them

Between 1055 / 1645 and 1068 /1658, there appeared in India, during the time of Mughal rule, an anonymous book written in Persian called Dabistan-i Madhahib or "Schools of Religious Doctrines". In this book, two additional sûrahs and verses are mentioned that are not to be found in the official text of the Qur'an. The two sûrahs bear the names "Sûrah al-Walayah" and "Sûrah al-Nurayn". The Dabistan attracted considerable attention in the West. The Dabistan-i Madhahib had been published for the first time in 1809 in Calcutta, India.^[6] The book describes life under Mughal rule in India in existing religious communities. It consists of twelve chapters, each of them dedicated to a different group. Surprisingly, the author starts with the Parsis and continues with the accounts of Hindus, Tibetans, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Philosophers and Sufis. The account of the Parsis seems to be the most comphrehensive of the whole book.

In 1842, these two sûrahs from Dabistan-i Madhahib were for the first time fully translated into a European language by the French orientalist Garcin De Tassy.^[7] Only a year after Mirza Alexandre Kazem-Beg, wrote a commentary on this translation.^[8] Interesting in this regard is the publication and the translation of the manuscript which came into light in 1912 in the Indian city of Bankipore. Although it is said to contain the same sûrahs and other additions, no further information on the manuscript is provided. The translation of the sûrahs was published by St. Clare Tisdall in the journal The Moslem World in 1913. The manuscript is said to be some 200-300 years old, at least.

Sûrah al-Walayah from the Bankipore Manuscript of the Qur'an' [See Tisdall's work]

The Nature & Stylistic Features Of The Two Sûrahs

Sûrah al-Walayah and Sûrah al-Nurayn are considered forgeries and their stylistic features are poor imitation of the Qur'an riddled with grammatical errors. St. Clare Tisdall writes:

The reader (of the original Arabic especially) is irresistibly led to the conclusion that the whole of these additions, - with the possible exception of Sura al-Nurain, - are forgeries. The style is imitated from the Koran, but not always very successfully. There are some grammatical errors, unless these are due to the transcriber. Occasionally the meaning which the context shews to be that in which a word is used is later than the time to which the Koran belongs. The verses are largely, however, centos of Koranic passages taken from their context. The amount of repetition shews the writer's determination to prove what he wished to prove at all costs.^[9]

And talking about the nature of these two sûrahs, St. Clare Tisdall says:

We notice also that some, - or, perhaps, only one person, - among the Shi'ites decided to forge the passages which we are considering. Doubtless he thought the end justified the means. He certainly must have determined to insert these forgeries in the Koran and to get his own sect to adopt them. But, although it was so greatly to their apparent interest to accept these additional passages, yet the Shi'ites did not do so. The forger found it impossible to introduce a single such altered verse into the Koran. This, we may again say in passing , is highly to the credit of the Shi'ah community in general. Although they think that they are staking their eternal happiness on the truth of their contention that ^cAlî and his family are the true and Divinely commissioned inheritors of Mohammad's spiritual rights, so far as these could be handed down to others, yet they have never permitted a single one of these forgeries to become incorporated into their copies of the Koran.^[10]

He went on to say:

So, far as we know, the manuscript which we are now concerned with is the only one in existence which, together with the genuine sûrahs of the Koran, also contains these Alterations and Additions. To get them generally accepted, even by Shi'ites, proved impossible. The attempt to Sunnites to adopt them was probably never made, for its hopelessness must have been evident even to the forger himself.^[11]

Von Grunebaum says:

The only two Shi'ite sûrahs which have come to light are obvious forgeries; the other omissions that would have been dictated mostly by dogmatic considerations foreign to the 'Uthmanic period can not be substantiated, and the Shi'ites themselves have never been able to agree on the alleged distortion of the sacred text of their adversaries.^[12]

Therefore, Shi'ite and Western scholars are in agreement that these two sûrahs are forgeries. The Shi'ites also agree on the text of the Qur'an which is same as that used by Sunni Muslims. Mahmoud Ayoub says:

Hence Muslims. and especially Shi'i Muslims, have insisted that God revealed to Muhammad both the Qur'an and its exegesis. The sacred text of the Qur'an, or what is contained 'between the two covers', is what Muhammad taught the generality of faithful.^[13]

Author Of The Two Forged Sûrahs

The discovery of the Dabistan had been ascribed to a Shi'ite, however, without any specification of name of denomination as suggested by Tisdall and others.^[14] However, this view has been criticized by Joseph Eliash. Concerning the text from Bankipore and Dabistan-i-Madhahib, he says:

Concerning the Bankipore text, its only connection with the Imami Shi'a is the claim that the manuscript was brought from the Nawwab in Lucknow which was a centre of Imami learning in India. This alone does not constitute it into an authoritative Qur'an for the Imami Shi'a... As to the Dabistan-i-Madhahib, it is significant to note that the author does not identify himself with the Shi'a. He discusses twelve different religions practised in his time in India and devotes just a few pages to the Shi'a which he entitles "Statements about the second sect of Muslims who are known as Shi'a" and prefaces his remarks by phrases such as "the author of this book relates what he learned from Mulla Muhammad Ma'sum, Muhammad Mu'min and Mulla Ibrahîm, who in the year of 1053 (AD 1643) were in Lahore and from others" and the like. He precedes the 'Sûrah al-Nurayn" by the following statement: "Some of them (the Shi'a) say the ^cUthmân burnt the copies of the Qur'an and excluded (rejected) some of the sûrahs which were on the dignity of ^cAlî and his excellence, on of the sûrahs is this." The Dabistan-i-Madahib was critically edited and translated into english in the year 1843, the editors are not certain of the identity of the author. The give the date of the death of the supposed author, Muhsin Fani, as probably 1081/1670, and state that he was "of the philosophic sect of Sufis", "a native of Kachmir, a learned man and respectable poet, a scholar of Mulla Yakub, Sufi of Kachmir", but make no mention whatsoever that he was Shi'a authority. Hence Dabistan cannot be referred to as an Imami Shi'a source and nor can its author be called Imami-Shi'i.^[15]

This is in line with the recent research that has shown that the author of Dabistan was in fact not a Shi'ite at all, but rather a Parsi.^[16]

3. Do These Sûrahs Exist In The Early "Codices Of The Companions"?

This is a very interesting exercise. Even if one assumes what some Shi'ites says is true concerning ^cUthmân, its authenticity can easily be verified by the work of Arthur Jeffery on the "early companion Codices". Jeffery collected some 'variant' readings attributed to ^cAlî as well as Zaid bin ^cAlî. It is interesting to note that none of these Codices have either of these sûrahs. The Codex of ^cAlî can be found in Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Qur'an: The Old Codices^[17] and the Codex of Zaid bin ^cAlî can be found in "The Qur'an Readings Of Zaid bin ^cAlî".^[18]

4. Conclusions

Sûrah al-Walayah and Sûrah al-Nurayn are considered forgeries by both Shi'ite and Western scholars. This is confirmed by their absence in Jeffery's studies on "variants" attributed to ^cAlî as well as Zaid bin ^cAlî. The stylistic features of Sûrah al-Walayah and Sûrah al-Nurayn are a poor imitation of the Qur'an and riddled with grammatical errors. Contrary to the expectation that they are a Shi'ite forgery, modern research has shown that the composer of the two forged sûrahs is a Parsi.

And Allah knows best!

References:

[1] S. Masood, The Bible And The Qur'an: A Question Of Integrity, 2001, OM Publication: Carlisle, UK, pp. 191-192.

[2] Abû Ja^cfar Muhammad ibn ^cAlî ibn al-Husayn ibn Babwayh al-Qummî, I'tiqadatu'l Imamiyyah (The Beliefs of Imamiyyah), English translation: A Shi'ite Creed, 1982 (Revised) Asaf A. A. Fyzee, World Organization of Islamic Services, Tehran, Iran, p. 77.

[3] Ibid.

[4] M. Momen, An Introduction To Shi'i Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi'ism, 1985, George Ronald, Oxford, p. 173.

[5] Ibid., p. 81.

[6] "Dabestân-E-Madâheb", Encyclopaedia Iranica, 1993, Volume VI, Mazda Publishers: Costa Mesa (CA), p. 532. Also see "Dabistân al-Madâhib", Encyclopaedia Of Islam (New Edition), 1965, Volume II, E. J. Brill: Leiden and Luzac & Co.: London, p. 74.

[7] G. De Tassy, "Chapitre inconnu du Coran", Journal Asiatique, 1842, Volume XIII, pp. 431-439.

[8] M. Kazembeg, "Observations sur Chapitre inconnu du Coran", Journal Asiatique, 1843, Volume XIV, pp. 371-429.

[9] W. St. Clair Tisdall, "Shi'ah Additions To The Koran", The Moslem World, 1913, Volume III, p. 229.

[10] Ibid., pp. 229-230.

[11] Ibid., p. 230.

[12] G. E. von Grunebaum, Islam: Essays In The Nature And Growth Of A Cultural Tradition, 1961, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., London, p. 80. For a similar statement see also B. Todd Lawson, "Note For The Study Of A Shi'i Qur'an", Journal of Semitic Studies, 1991, p. 282.

[13] M. Ayoub, "The Speaking Qur'an and The Silent Qur'an: A Study of The Principles and Development of Imami Shi'i Tafsir", in Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qur'an, Andrew Rippin (Ed.), 1988, Clarendon Press, Oxford, p. 178.

[14] W. St. Clair Tisdall, "Shi'ah Additions To The Koran", The Moslem World, Op. Cit., pp. 229-230; "Dabistân al-Madâhib", Encyclopaedia Of Islam, Op. Cit., p. 74.

[15] J. Eliash, "The Shi'ite Qur'an: A Reconsideration Of Goldziher's Interpretation", Arabica, 1969, Volume XVI, p. 19.

[16] "Dabestân-E-Madâheb", Encyclopaedia Iranica, Op. Cit., pp. 533-534. Also in M. M. Marcinkowski, "Some Reflections On Alleged Twelver Shi^cite Attitude Towards The Integrity Of The Qur'an", The Muslim World, 2001, Volume 91, p. 142.

[17] A. Jeffery, Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Qur'an: The Old Codices, 1937, E J Brill, Leiden, pp. 182-192.

[18] A. Jeffery, "The Qur'an Readings Of Zaid bin ^cAlî", Rivista Degli Studi Orientali, 1936, Volume XVI, pp. 249-289.

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/forgery.html 4/1/03 10:36:18 AM

Responses To The Grammatical Errors In The Qur'ân

M S M Saifullah

Peace be upon those who follow the guidance:

Newton and his buddy M. Rafiqul-Haqq published a list of grammatical errors in the Qur'ân in 1996. Most of us are unaware that the famous orientalist of our times John Burton wrote a paper called the Linguistic Errors In The Qur'ân in the Journal Of Semitic Studies, Volume XXXIII/2, Autumn 1988. He dealt with the hadîth of A'isha^(R) where she has supposed to have said that the ayahs 4:162, 5:69 and 20:63 are grammatically incorrect. Burton also dealt with the ayah 2:177 to show its grammatical inconsistency. These four verses are also dealt by Newton et al. in their homepage.

In 1992, M A S Abdel Haleem, a Professor from School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, London (UK) published a paper called Grammatical Shift For The Rhetorical Purposes: Iltifât And Related Features In The Qur'ân, in the Bulletin of School of Oriental and African Studies, Volume LV, Part 3. In this paper, he not only dealt with the so-called-linguistic (grammatical) errors published by John Burton, but also showed that people need to be thorough in classical Arabic before saying anything about the Qur'ân and its grammatical structure. Most of the discussion on Iltifât below is taken from this paper.

To begin with: Iltifât means to 'turn/turn one's face to'. It is an important part of balâgha (Arabic rhetoric) where there is a sudden shift in the pronoun of the speaker or the person spoken about. Muslim literary critics over the centuries have greatly admired this technique. Iltifât has been called by rhetoricians shajâ'at al-'arabiyya as it shows, in their opinion, the daring nature of the Arabic language. If any 'daring' is to be attached to it, it should above all be the daring of the language of the Qur'ân since it employs this feature far more extensively and in more variations than does Arabic poetry. Most of the authors who talk about iltifât use the examples from the Qur'ân. No one seems to quote references in prose other than from the Qur'ân: and indeed a sampling of hadith material found not a single instance.

The types of iltifât and related features are of following types:

1. Changes in person, between 1st, 2nd and 3rd person, which is the most common and is usually divided into six kinds. The four important examples that are found in the Qur'ân are:

Transition from the 3rd to 1st person. This is the most common type. Over 140 instances can be found in the Qur'ân.
From 1st to 3rd person - nearly 100 such instances can be found in the Qur'ân.
From 3rd to 2nd person - nearly 60 instances.
From 2nd to 3rd person - under 30 instances.

2. Change in the number, between singular, dual and plural.

3. Change in the addressee.

4. Change in the tense of the verb.

5. Change in the case marker.

6. Using noun in the place of pronoun.

Examples from the Qur'ân of the above mentioned cases can be seen in M A S Abdel Haleem's paper. The so-called-grammatical errors in ayahs 4:162, 5:69, 20:63 and 2:177 are already dealt by him. Interested persons can read his paper which is online. The Investigating Islam website deals with iltifât and other grammatical constructions to refute Newton's material.

Muhammad Ghoneim from France had dealt with the issue of grammatical errors at Newton's website by quoting the Arabic grammarians. He has brought to our notice some very interesting points.

Apart from this, we also have the first refutation by Brother Wail Ibrahim which appeared on soc.religion.islam newsgroup that can be viewed here.

We are also tempted to add that Newton did not even mention that the hadîth of A'isha^(R) is considered to be weak by the hadîth specialists. One can only presuppose that in the spirit of deception, such arrogant and authoritative charges are made possible through the suppression of facts and selective argumentation.

And Allah knows best!

Articles Related To Arabic Grammar

Grammatical Shift For The Rhetorical Purposes: Iltifât And Related Features In The Qur'ân

Sudden Changes In Person & Number: Neal Robinson On Iltifât

Articles Refuting Newton's Deceptive Methodology

Pseudo-Callisthenes, Dhul-Qarnain & Alexander The Great

On Pre-Islamic Poetry & The Qur'ân

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Grammar/gramrefut.html 4/1/03 10:37:17 AM

Are There Scribal Errors In The Qur'ân?

Muhammad Ghoniem, M S M Saifullah, ^cAbd ar-Rahmân Robert Squires & ^cAbdus Samad

Assalamu-alaikum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu:

In the following article, we contemplate giving some clues in answer to the strange claims made by Mr. Newton on the scribal issues of the Qur'ân.

In short, the author of that page notices rightfully that the spelling of many words in the Holy Qur'ân does not match their spelling in modern literature. He wishes to prove that the Qur'ân is not miraculous and uses scribal pecularities to support his claims. He, of course, seems to be unaware of the way the Arabic script developed due to many reasons, the primary one being the correct pronunciation of the letters in the Qur'ân.

The Rise & Development Of The Qur'ânic Script

Let us first deal with the idea of introduction of vowel signs in the Qur'ân and the need for then. These signs are called tashkîl in Arabic and they help to determine the correct pronunciation of the word and to avoid mistakes. When the Islamic state expanded, more and more Muslims of non-Arab origin and also many ignorant Arabs studied the Qur'ân, thus faulty pronunciation and wrong readings began to increase. Abû 'Ubaydah narrated about Abû al-Aswad al-Du'alî::

It is interesting to note that the early manuscripts and parchments of the Qur'ân as well as the inscriptions are devoid of vowel signs.

On the issue of Qur'ânic manuscripts and parchments, Nabia Abbott writes:

When we come to consider the vowel signs, 1st century manuscripts are of no aid, since no such signs appear in any secular document of that date. However, Kur'ân manuscripts credited to the period show a consistent vowel system in which a single red dot above, below, or to the side of a letter stood for the vowels A, I, and U respectively, and two such dots indicated the tanwin. The text of early Kur'âns, however, is never completely voweled, the vowel sign for one or more of the letters of a given word being used only where it was essential for a correct reading. The Arabic traditions place the introduction of the system early in the Muslim era, in fact crediting ^cAlî with it. Whether ^cAlî deserves the credit or not makes little difference for the date in question, for the majority of the sources credit a contemporary of ^cAlî, Abû al-Aswad al-Du'alî, with the system. They tell how, having at first refused to introduce the system at the request of Ziyad Ibn Abihi, governor of Irak, he finally did so when he heard the Kur'ân being wrongly recited. The system could not have been widely spread or generally used, for we find Hajjâj facing the same problem in Irak and ordering Nasr Ibn ^cAsim to safeguard the pronunciation of the Kur'ân; Nasr, so the story goes, introduced the double dots for the tanwin. even this did not estabish the general use of the system, for again we find Yahya Ibn Ya^cmar given credit for it, which credit is likewise shared by Hasan al-Basri. Still these efforts and their results proved insufficient, for again Khalîl Ibn Ahmad is credited with introducing the hamzah and the shaddah, the raum and the ishmam, as he is also credited with the vowel signs that are still in use for A, I, and U. The last were originally miniatures of the letters alif, y and w, respectively.^[2]

The above quotes clearly mention that the reasons for the introduction of tashkîl and as well as tanwîn signs was, to facilitate the correct reading of the Qur'ân. A superfluous change in the script does not mean it is corrupted.

An excellent example which shows how the Arabic script progressed is the writing of the letter qâf on the Dome of the Rock. The letter qâf is marked by one stroke below it five times on the Dome of the Rock, whereas today, qâf is written with two dots on top. Examples of this kind can only be found in early copies of the Qur'âns. For details of inscriptions on the Dome of the Rock.^[3]

The cursive script of North Africa is called Maghribi script. Notice the dot position for qâf and fa in Maghribi script as well as the verse numbering system! This is from Surah al-Baqarah.

Another important example would be the Maghribi script which is used in North Africa. Before the practice of marking fa with one dot above and qâf with two dots above was established, both these letters were marked by one sign (dot or stroke) only. This usage still persists in Maghribi script, which has fa with a dot below and qâf with a dot above. In early times, however, the opposite way of marking, i.e., fa with a dot above and qâf with a dot below is also attested.

Sometimes, it is also advisable to stop and reflect...

The Alleged Scribal Errors

The script of any language (not only Arabic) is subject to many changes and amendments agreed upon by the users of that language throughout history. Writing being a communication tool, the script must be devoid of ambiguity so that the information carried gets from the sender to the recepient without ambiguity. Once in a while, linguists decide to change certain scribal rules in order to simplify the script. For instance, a recent amendment in Arabic script occurred in the middle of the 1980's. It concerned the rules of drawing the hamzah. Originally, in some cases, the hamzah was drawn on a wâw letter and was followed by a long vowel wâw, thus putting two consecutive wâws in the same word. In this regard, Arab linguists decided to eliminate the first wâw and draw the hamzah either on the line or on a hook (nabirah) followed by the second wâw. Here is the illustration of this recent rule:

The following is the spelling of the word/name ra'ûf before the mid-80's:

The following is the spelling of the same word after 1985:

The same applies to many other words like mas'ûliyyah (i.e., responsibility) or sho'ûn (i.e., concerns). So, what do we have here? If the argument of the critic was acceptable then the Arabic literature published before 1985 would be full of errors! Actually, the script being a matter of conventions, one cannot say that books older than 1985 are full of mispelled words while the ones published after that date are correct. In reality, both are correct given the scribal conventions prevailing in their time. It doesn't make sense to judge written material based on conventions other than the ones in which it was written.

It is noteworthy that the Qur'ân is written according to the ^cUthmânic scribal conventions (rasm) and not according to the modern conventions. After learning the conventions of the ^cUthmânic script (it is as easy as any alternative convention), any reader is able to read the Holy Qur'ân correctly. This means that the message of the Qur'ân is entirely transmitted from the hardcopy to the reader without ambiguity. It is also noteworthy that the modern script still bears many anomalies that could be amended later. For example, words like dhâlik or lâkin ought to be written with alif letters but, according to the modern scribal conventions, they are written without alif. This is to say that:

But even in the modern script those anomalies are not corrected. In the aforementioned elaboration, we have conclusively established that the position of the critic is both unreasonable and ill-founded. One question may remain: Why don't Muslims abandon the ^cUthmânic script and adopt the modern script? This question needs a separate exposition and may be too lenghty for the purpose of this article. We will discuss about it briefly, insha'allah.

The Qur'ânic Orthography

The discussion in this section is adapted from Qur'ânic Orthography: The Written Representation Of The Recited Text Of The Qur'ân by M A S Abdel Haleem, Islamic Quarterly, pp.171-192, 19xx.

In the ^cUthmânic copies, the Qur'ân was written in a particular rasm (orthography) which became known as al-rasm al-^cUthmâni (the ^cUthmânic way of writing the text of the Qur'ân) also referred to as rasm al-mushaf. As the copies made at his orders and distributed to various parts of the Muslim world were meant to be authoritative, it is no wonder that their rasm assumed authority as the correct way of writing the Qur'ân. Arabic orthography at the time was not yet developed in the way we have known for centuries, particularly in two important areas. There was no distinction between letters of the alphabet of similar shape and there were no vowel marks. This may now give the impression that such a system must have given rise to great confusion in reading. This was not actually the case because the morphological patterns of words in Arabic enable readers to read even very unfamiliar material without the short vowels being marked. More important, however, as far as the Qur'ân was concerned, was the fact that learning and reading relied above all on oral transmission. In the Islamic tradition, writing remained a secondary aid; nevertheless, to ensure correct reading of the written texts of the Qur'ân, particularly for those coming after the first generation of Muslims, steps were taken gradually to improve the orthography. This started with the two above mentioned areas by introducing dots to indicate different vowels and nûnâtion and these were put in different coloured ink from that of the text. There were also dots to distinguish between consonants of similar shape. This work was carried out chiefly by three men: Abû-l-Aswad al-Du'alî (d. 69 / 688), Nasr Ibn ^cAsim (d. 89 / 707) and Yahyâ Ibn Ya^cmur (d.129 /746). Understandably there was some opposition at first to adding anything to the way the Qur'ân was written. Ibn ^cUmar (73/692) disliked the dotting; others welcomed it, clearly because it was, in fact, doing no more than ensuring proper reading of the Qur'ân as received from the Prophet, and this view was accepted by the majority of Muslims throughout the different parts of the Muslims world, from the time of the tâbi^cûn. The people of Madinah were reported to have used red dots for vowels - tanwîn, tashdîd, takhfîf, sukûn, wasl and madd and yellow dots for the hamzas in particular. Naqt (placing dots on words in the mushaf), became a separate subject of study with many books written on it.

Al-Khalîl Ibn Ahmad (d.170/786) introduced the traditional vowel signs into Arabic orthography instead of the dots, but tht dotting system continued in writing Qur'ânic material. Eventually the traditional vowel signs were adopted for the Qur'ân.

Alongside the development of studies in Arabic grammar, Arabic orthography also developed for linguistic and literary material, and although the ^cUthmânic rasm was one of the sources of ordinary orthography the latter began to differ from the ^cUthmânic rasm of the Qur'ân. The question was asked whether it was admissible to write the Qur'ân itself in the new orthography. Mâlik (179/795) was asked and said: No, the Qur'ân should be written only in the way of the first writing. He was also asked whether the additional wâw and alif (as in the word ) should be deleted since they were not pronounced and said no. Similarly Ibn Hanbal (244/858) said it was unlawful to deviate in writing the mushâf in wâw, yâ, alif or any other way. In line with such views, it will be seen that adherence to the Qur'ânic rasm has persisted up to the present.

Conclusions

In principle, the ^cUthmânic script bears more significance than what we may imagine. In fact, not only is it the script in which the first copies of the Holy Qur'ân were written but it bears many references to the Science of Qirâ'ât (Science of Readings) as well. Shifting to the modern script would make the Qirâ'ât aspect a specialist's affair and would deprive "normal" Muslims from even noticing it. The next step would be that the Muslims who are not familiar with Qirâ'ât will become easy prey for anti-Islamic propaganda, the kind of groundless criticism we are rebutting right now. For a short introduction about Qirâ'ât, the readers may insha'allah, refer here.

In short, the claim of so-called scribal errors in the Qur'ân is not only ridiculous but also a fanciful imagination of an extremely ignorant person.

And Allah knows best!

Articles Refuting Newton's Works

Pseudo-Callisthenes, Dhul-Qarnain & Alexander The Great

On Pre-Islamic Poetry & The Qur'ân

Responses To The Grammatical Errors In The Qur'ân

References

[1] Bayard Dodge (Editor and Translator), The Fihrist of al-Nadim, 1970, Columbia University Press, pp. 87-88.

[2] Nabia Abbott, The Rise of The North Arabic Script & Its Kur'ânic Development, 1939, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, p. 39.

[3] Christel Kessler, ^cAbd al-Mâlik's Inscription In The Dome Of The Rock: A Reconsideration, 1970, The Journal Of The Royal Asiatic Society, pp. 2-14.

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Scribal/scribal.html 4/1/03 10:41:32 AM

Qur'ânic Orthography: The Written Representation Of The Recited Text Of The Qur'ân

M A S Abdel Haleem

Islamic Quarterly, 19??, pp. 171-192

"Quick! Help the Muslims before they differ about the text of the Qur'ân as the Christians and Jews differed about their scriptures".

Thus demanded Hudhayfa bin al-Yamân of ^cUthmân, the third Caliph, on returning from battles in Azerbaijan (25/645). Hudhayfa had become perturbed when he saw Muslim soldiers from different parts of Syria and Iraq meeting together and differing in their readings of the Qur'ân^[1], each considering his reading to be the correct one. Up to then the only full official written copy which was made under Abû Bakr (d.13/634) had remained unpublished, kept first with Abû Bakr, then with ^cUmar, and after his death with his daughter Hafsa, a widow of the Prophet^[2]. Responding to the urgent demand for help, ^cUthmân sent word to Hafsa, asking for the copy in her possession to be sent to him so that a number of copies could be made of it, to be publicised and followed as the only authorised Qur'ân in the different parts of the Muslim world. This prevented the possibility of different versions evolving in time, as Hudhayfa had feared, when he urged ^cUthmân to guard against it.

In the ^cUthmânic copies, the Qur'ân was written in a particular rasm (orthography) which became known as al-rasm al-^cUthmânî (the ^cUthmânic way of writing the text of the Qur'ân) also referred to as rasm al-mushaf. As the copies made at his orders and distributed to various parts of the Muslim world were meant to be authoritative, it is no wonder that their rasm assumed authority as the correct way of writing the Qur'ân. Arabic orthography at the time was not yet developed in the way we have known for centuries, particularly in two important areas. There was no distinction between letters of the alphabet of similar shape and there were no vowel marks. This may now give the impression that such a system must have given rise to great confusion in reading. This was not actually the case because the morphological patterns of words in Arabic enable readers to read even very unfamiliar material without the short vowels being marked. More important, however, as far as the Qur'ân was concerned, was the fact that learning and reading relied above all on oral transmission. In the Islamic tradition, writing remained a secondary aid; nevertheless, to ensure correct reading of the written texts of the Qur'ân, particularly for those coming after the first generation of Muslims, steps were taken gradually to improve the orthography. This started with the two above mentioned areas by introducing dots to indicate different vowels and nûnâtion and these were put in different coloured ink from that of the text. There were also dots to distinguish between consonants of similar shape. This work was carried out chiefly by three men: Abû-l-Aswad al-Du'alî (d. 69 / 688), Nasr Ibn ^cAsim (d. 89 / 707) and Yahyâ Ibn Ya^cmur (d.129 /746). Understandably there was some opposition at first to adding anything to the way the Qur'ân was written. Ibn ^cUmar (73/692) disliked the dotting; others welcomed it, clearly because it was, in fact, doing no more than ensuring proper reading of the Qur'ân as received from the Prophet, and this view was accepted by the majority of Muslims throughout the different parts of the Muslims world, from the time of the tâbi^cûn. The people of Madinah were reported to have used red dots for vowels - tanwîn, tashdîd, takhfîf, sukûn, wasl and madd and yellow dots for the hamzas in particular. Naqt^[3] (placing dots on words in the mushaf), became a separate subject of study with many books written on it.^[4]

Al-Khalîl Ibn Ahmad (d.170/786) introduced the traditional vowel signs into Arabic orthography instead of the dots, but tht dotting system continued in writing Qur'ânic material. Eventually the traditional vowel signs were adopted for the Qur'ân.^[5]

It was thus in order to serve the Qur'ân that Arabic orthography was developed. After all, the Qur'ân, as collected under Abû Bakr, became the first book in the Arabic language. It was in order to serve the Qur'ân that more and more people began to learn reading and writing; that the art of calligraphy was developed, which became one of the chief arts of Islam. The Qur'ân, which unified the Arabic literary language and spread it into areas far beyond Arabia, was in fact the starting point of all Islamic and Arabic subjects of study^[6], One of these subjects in particular has important bearing on Qur'ânic orthography: that is, Arabic phonetics, which was developed in ^cilm tajwîd al-Qur'ân, the science of the proper articulation and reading of the Qur'ân. Among other things, this has minutely described and definitively prescribed for posterity the articulation of consonants and vowels singly and consecutively: the way of reciting the Qur'ân as received from the Prophet. This requires a degree of exactitude unmatched in reading any other material in Arabic. Qur'ânic orthographic signs had to be used with the Qur'ânic rasm and developed to a higher standard of representation than is known or needed in ordinary Arabic orthography.

Alongside the development of studies in Arabic grammar, Arabic orthography also developed for linguistic and literary material, and although the ^cUthmânic rasm was one of the sources of ordinary orthography^[7] the latter began to differ from the ^cUthmânic rasm of the Qur'ân. The question was asked whether it was admissible to write the Qur'ân itself in the new orthography. Mâlik (179/795) was asked and said: No, the Qur'ân should be written only in the way of the first writing. He was also asked whether the additional wâw and alif (as in the word ) should be deleted since they were not pronounced and said no. Similarly Ibn Hanbal (244/858) said it was unlawful to deviate in writing the mushaf in wâw, yâ, alif or any other way.^[8] In line with such views, it will be seen that adherence to the Qur'ânic rasm has persisted up to the present.

Along with numerous other aspects of the Qur'ân, its orthography was singled out as a separate branch of study known as ^cilm al-rasm.^[9] Abû ^cAmr Al-Dânî (444/1052) examined in detail the characteristics of this rasm. His book al-Muqni^c^[10] remained an important authority - Suyûtî (909/1503) reduced the rules of Qur'ânic rasm to 6 as follows: *

1. The rule of deletion, hadhf
2. The rule of addition, ziyâdah
3. The rule of substitution, badal
4. The rule of the hamza,
5. The rule of joining and separating, al-wasl wa-l-fasl
6. The rule of cases where there are two canonical readings but the text is written according to one of them, ma fîhi qirâ'âtan fa-kutiba ^calâ ihdâhumâ.

I. Deletion (hadhf)

This involves deletion of an alif or yâ' or wâw or lâm.

Alif

is deleted after vocative yâ' as in

after na of the plural as in

in demonstrative pronouns as in etc.

in names of God as

after lâm as

between two lâms as in

in proper names of more than three letters -

in dual of a noun or verb if it is not at the end of the letter, as in

in sound masculine and feminine plural as

unless it is followed by hamza as in

or shadda as in

in plurals on the pattern, as in

or a similar pattern as in

in adjectives like

in the number

in nouns with two or more alifs as in

in and in the imperative of as in

It should be noted here that normal orthography has retained the Qur'ânic rasm in many of these cases as in the demonstratives, and that Qur'ânic rasm, in some cases, caters for more than one qirâ'a as in which could be read as khilâfa or khalfa.

yâ'

yâ' is deleted if it is a first person pronoun at the end of a vocative noun as in instead of

at the end of a word as a preceding kasra is deemed a sufficient indication of it, as in instead of

where it is following another yâ' in the same word as , instead of

in Sura 2 where it is written which suggests a special reading; at the end of every noun with a weak third radical in the nominative or genitive case as in and this is also deleted in normal orthography.

wâw

is deleted when preceded by another wâw (to avoid repetition) as in instead of and instead of

In the last example it is also deleted in ordinary vocabulary;

wâw is also deleted as the chair of the hamza with words of and as in instead of and instead of

It is deleted as the third radical in certain verbs (four) in the indicative mood as in instead of

lâm

is deleted when preceded by another lâm in instead of

nûn

is deleted when repeated in instead of and instead of

Avoiding repetition of the same shape is clearly an important factor in the rule of deletion.

II. Addition (ziyâdah)

This applies to three letters, alif, wâw and yâ' where the letter is written but not pronounced.

Alif

is added at the end of a word after the wâw of the plural as in

This is also added in normal orthography to distinguish the plural from the singular;

after the wâw in instead of ;

after a final hamza written as a wâw as in

Some Kufan scholars used to add this in normal orthography^[11].

in instead of (18: 23)

in (9:47) (27:21) instead of

between the jîm and yâ' in in (39:69; 89:23) instead of

in the word instead of , in (12:87), (13:31) instead of

It should be noted that apart from the first 3 words here, in the examples given for the addition of alif, a hamza is adjacent to the alif which suggests that the addition has to do with the pronunciation of hamza. Al-Dânî suggests that alif is added to hamza to strengthen it^[12].

wâw

is added after the hamza as in ; (7:145) instead of in

This is also added in normal orthography. Again, a hamza and damma are adjacent. A variant pronunciation and a desire to avoid confusion of some words of similar shapes account for the addition^[13].

yâ'

This is added in nine places^[14] in the Qur'ân, as in instead of and again in all the nine places it is adjacent to a hamza which suggests that the hamza, and the various ways it is pronounced in Arabic, accounts for the addition.

It has been observed that alif, wâw and yâ are involved in the rules of addition and deletion and will also be involved with the rule of hamza. This should not be surprising in view of the fact that in grammar the way they behave is responsible for such classes of verb as the hollow, the weak lâm and the hamzated.

III. The Hamza

Hamza is peculiar in Arabic in many respects. A glottal stop as it is, it is deemed more difficult to pronounce than other consonants. Accordingly it takes one of four forms: distinctly pronounced, tahqîq;^[15] lightened, talyîn; changed, ibdâl; or deleted altogether, hadhf. These different ways are observed in qirâ'ât and the various Arab dialects. Hamzated verbs are also treated in a separate section in grammar. It is no wonder that it affects the pronunciation and orthography of adjacent letters in the various sections dealt with so far. In the writing of the hamza itself, Qur'ânic and normal orthographies are similar in many ways. In some aspects, however, Qur'ânic rasm differs as in the following cases:

A medial hamza preceded by a sukûn is written without a chair instead of in normal orthography.

It should also be noted that a middle hamza with kasra is written under a chair of yâ' as in instead of .

A hamza is not written with an alif if preceded or followed by alif as in instead of . Avoiding repetition of shape is the factor involved here; in normal orthography this is achieved by writing a madda, i.e. (~), but the madda sign is reserved in Qur'ânic orthography for further extending a long vowel as will be seen later.
It is not written a yâ' when preceded or followed by yâ' as in instead of ; nor is it written as a wâw when preceded or followed by a wâw as in instead of . Again, avoiding repetition of shape is involved here and in general appears to carry more weight in Qur'ânic than in ordinary orthography.^[16]

IV. Changing

This affects changing alif into wâw or yâ' ; changing nûn into alif, and changing the final feminine ha (tâ' marbûta) into an ordinary open tâ':

In this connection it should be remembered that changing is an important feature of Arabic morpholgy dealt with under the title al-'i^clal wa-l-'ibdâl).

alif:

the alif is written wâw for velarisation (tafkhîm) in some qirâ'ât in (without idafa) instead of and of instead of

It is written yâ' if it has been changed from an original yâ' as in instead of .

The energetic lighter nûn of tawkîd is written alif in ( 12: 13). (47:8) and (96:15). The nun of is written alif and pronounced alif in pausing. as in 17:73. This is in line with Basran grammarians; the Kufans write it as nûn.^[17]

The feminine ha' at the end of a noun is written tâ' marbûta except for the following words: instead of instead of instead of instead of instead of (in four cases it is actually the tâ the plural in some qirâ'ât)^[18]; instead of instead of all in a certain number of cases, and in isolated cases instead of but this could also as the ordinary tâ' of the plural in some qirâ'ât; in instead of .^[19] According to Al-Dânî, in the above cases the tâ' is written in regard to the fact that this is its origin ^calâ-l-asl. ^[20]

V. Joining And Separating

This involves a number of short particles when preceded or followed by another short particle. In this respect, joined words resemble inseparable pronouns and prepositions like bi and li. It includes such words as:

There are exceptions with some of these words fully suveyed in the Qur'ân and detailed in books and chapters on rasm; but some important factors have to be borne in mind in this connection. It should first be observed that even in normal orthography there are, in some cases, more than one opinion.^[21] It is also observed that in the words there is a nûn with sukûn; when added to many of the above words this incurs assimilation which strengthens the case for joining. The normal practice of joining, however, is sometimes set aside for such considerations as similarity to a case of separation in the same verse showing contrast in meaning. Thus the joining of is set aside in (24:43). is replaced by in four places in the Qur'ân as in (41:40).

Moreover in the examples cited for discussion, we find that various grammatical functions of words similar in sounds, entails different shapes. Thus we find in (18:110) but (6:l34) is kâffa in the former and a relative pronoun in the latter; (43:83) and (40:16). The first means their day and the second the day when. Without taking such principles into account, hasty conclusions in regard to consistency can be reached about Qur'ânic orthography in the area under discussion.

VI. Variant Canonical Readings

^cUthmanic orthography made it possible from the beginning for some words to be read in more than one way, and the copies of the Qur'ân written and distributed according to the order of ^cUthmân are reported to have contained all the seven canonical readings of the Qur'ân In numerous cases, a word was written in such a way as to be suitable to more than one reading. Thus in Sura 1 could be read as malik or mâlik; (2:51); wa^cadnâ or wâ^cadnâ; (34:37) is al-ghurfati or al-ghurufâti; (52:19) is fakahîn or fâkihîn.^[22]

In some other cases the variant readings could not he contained in a single shape of a word and accordingly different fonns were distributed in the ^cUthmânic copies. Thus, (2:132) is written wassa according to Hafs reading and awasa according to Warsh; (26:217) wa-tawakkal was written fa-tawakkal in the copies sent to Madina and Syria.^[23]

These are the six rules of Qur'ânic rasm. Rule VI of Variant Readings is exclusive to Qur'ân in Arabic because of the canonical qirâ'ât which were accommodated in the rasm. The five other rules of addition, deletion, hamza, change and joining and separating are not in fact exclusive to the writing of the Qur'ân; they constitute normal chapters of books on imla' in Arabic.^[24] The difference lies in the fact that the features are much more limited in ordinary orthography: the Qur'ânic rasm, as we said, was one of the sources for ordinary orthography.

In addition to the abovementioned traditional six rules of rasm I would add one more feature which has for long become a rule of writing the Qur'ân, that is:

VII. Full Vocalisation

This is done to an extent unknown in the writing of any other material in Arabic. As Al-Dânî stated: Every letter should be given its due signs of vowel, sukûn, shadda and other signs.^[25] This becomes immediately obvious to anyone who opens the pages of the mushâf and will be treated later under istilahât al-dabt (conventional signs determining the proper pronunciation of Qur'ânic material).

The Qur'ân is unique in Arabic and is treated as such in various respects. It is prescribed for anyone, when touching the text of the Qur'ân, to be in a state of ritual ablution. The way of reciting the Qur'ân is different from reciting any other text, including that age-old and most cherished art of the Arabs - poetry. When the Qur'ân is read, Muslims are enjoined to listen to it and keep silent so that they may obtain mercy (7:204). The Qur'ân is also written in a unique, fully-vowelled, calligraphic naskh, different from writing even hadîth material. Each chapter begins from the first verse and the material follows to the last without any paragraphing or blank spaces to exclude the possibility of adding any non-Qur'ânic material. The traditional division into thirty parts (for the benefit of those who wish to follow the tradition of reciting the entire text within a month) half, quarters and eighths of each are marked without interrupting the flow of the material.^[26]

* * *

A Fine Example

The application of the above rules of rasm, is best exemplified in an edition of the Qur'ân which maintains the tradition more than any other and now has more widespread circulation than any other edition. This is the Egyptian edition, printed originally in 1337/ 1918. Far more than any other editions, it has been adopted in the most important centres of publishing the Qur'ân in the Middle East: Egypt, Saudi Arabia (especially the King Fahd Complex for printing the Qur'ân in Madina^[27]), Beirut and Turkey. This particular edition is, moreover, the one normally used as a base for translation of the Qur'ân into English^[28] and is the one whose orthography I will discuss below.

Unlike other editions, the Egyptian states its credentials for the reproduction of the text of the Qur'ân. It was produced in 1337/1918 not by an individual, but by a committee of four, which appears more authoritative, headed, as it was, by the principal of the Egyptian Qur'ân reading Institution Shaykh al-maqâri al-misriyya. In 1342/ 1923 it was adopted by a committee set up by King Fu'ad I under the supervision of the Azhar authority, and was printed at the Official Bûlâq Press. lt became known as the amîrî mushaf and became the model to be followed in Egypt and outside. It contained an appendix, ta^crif bi-hâdha mushâf al-sharîf, an explanatory statement on this noble mushâf, which falls in three sections ending with the names and positions of members of the committee who checked it (in later editions given as lajnat murâja^cat al-masâhif - the committee for checking copies of the Qur'ân) under the supervision of the Supreme Council of Islamic Research and Culture in Al-Azhar.

The first section of the Appendix cites in detail the authorities relied upon in the writing of the mushaf. It was written, we are told at the beginning, according to the reading of Hafs as taken from ^cAsim, as from Ibn Habîb, as from the Companions ^cUthmân, ^cAlî, Zayd ibn Thâbit and Ubayy as received from the Prophet.

The Spelling was reproduced in accordance with what ^culama' al-rasm (scholars of Qur'ânic orthography) determined to be the system used in the personal copy of ^cUthmân and the copies he sent to different Muslim cities, all as reported by the eminent authorities - Abû ^cAmr Al-Dâni (444 / 1052) and Sulaymân ibn Najâh (496/1103), giving the traditional authorities for this.

The specific way of vocalisation - tarîqat al-dabt in writing the mushâf was the same as specified by scholars of dabt citing the traditional authoritative texts.

Places to pause in reading the verses of the Qur'ân are an important aspect of recitation. Commenting on Q. 73:4 (And recite the Qur'ân in slow, measured tones) the Caliph ^cAlî is reported to have defined tartîl as proper pronunciation of letters and knowing the places of pausing.^[29]

Traditional authorities are given in the ta^crîf for determining places to pause as well as for the conventional signs for the different types of pause. Related to this is a statement on places of ritual prostration sajda on reading certain verses of the Qur'ân. The system of numbering the verses in the Qur'ân is given as the Kufan system taken ultimately from ^cAlî ibn Abî Tâlib, according to which the total number is 6236 verses, and traditional authorities are cited.

Determination of the beginning of each of the 30 sections juz' of the Qur'ân, their halves (ahzâb) and quarters (arbâ^c), is a traditional aspect of the writing of the Qur'ân which is observed in the edition. So is a statement at the head of each sura as to its title, whether it was wholly or partly revealed at Makkah or Madinah, and number of verses. Traditional authorities for this are given.

The second section of the Appendix is dedicated mainly to a detailed specification and explanation of the conventional signs of vocalisation to ensure proper articulation istilahât al-dabt. This is in fact a most important aspect of Qur'ânic orthography. Here we see the basic rasm which was sufficient to those early Muslims whow knew the Qur'ân by heart anyway, augmented to become a highly developed written system of representation, more exact than anything known in Arabic.

The section on istilahât al-dabt in the Appendix includes 18 items, 14 of which are diacritical signs that affect the way words are pronounced.^[30] We have seen earlier that the rules of rasm included addition, deletion and substitution of letters for certain reasons; signs in the present section ensure, nonetheless, the correct pronunciation in those cases.

1. placing a small circle (°) above a weak letter - harf^cilla - indicates that such a letter is additional and should not be pronounced either in connection or pause position, e.g. qâlû; ulâ'ik; naba'i-l-mursalîn. It should be noted that in ordinary orthography, additional letters are retained with nothing to indicate that they should not be pronounced; thus here the Qur'ânic orthography is seen to be more consistent and more precise.

2. placing on oval sign (°) above an alif followed by a vowelled letter, indicates that it is additional in consecutive reading but should be pronounced in a pause. e.g. pronounced ana and anâ respectively; pronounced lâkina and lakinnâ.

3-5. placing above any letter indicates that it is unvowelled and should be given a full, distinct pronunciation, e.g. ; whereas writing the letter without the sign and placing a shadda on the following letter indicated that the two are fully assimilated e.g. yalhadhdhalik. i.e., th has become dh. On the other hand, if is removed from the first letter and then the shadda is removed from the second, this indicates masking - ikhfâ' - or nasalisation, of the first letter so that it is neither distinct nor fully assimilated into the second, e.g. mih thamaratin - or is partially assimilated into the second, e.g. mihwâlin.

6. placing a small mîm instead of the second vowel of tanwîn or instead of a sukûn above a nûn without a shadda on a following ba' indicates changing the tanwîn or nûn in to a mîm: e.g. - ^calimûn becomes ^calimum; mîn becomes mîm.

7-9. placing the two vowel signs of a tanwîn one on top of the other indicates that it should be distinctly pronounced: sami^cun; sharâban; qawmin. Placing the two signs in succession with a shadda on the following letter indicates assimilation of a tanwîn e.g., in khushubumusannadah - n became m. On the other hand, placing them in succession without a shadda on the following letter indicates nasalising/masking or partial assimilation; thus: bunth becomes buhth, and the same with tanwîn with fatha and kasra. It should be indicated that in normal orthography the tanwîn signs, like all short vowels, are dropped, and if at all written they will be in the first shape only and the fine distinctions in sound quality reading in the Qur'ân are obliterated in reading other material.

10. The small letters respectively indicate those omitted in the ^cUthmânic copies of the Qur'ân and should be pronounced, thus dhâlika, dâwûd and waliyyi. Before the printing era these small letters used to be written in normal size but in red; smaller size now replaces the red colour. It should be noted that in normal orthography, the first two words are written in the abbreviated forms but without any sign to indicate the omitted letter. Qur'ânic orthography is thus more consistent and precise. If the omitted letter has a replacement in the word in the normal size it is still the added small letter that should be pronounced, thus: is pronounced as-salâh and as az-zakâh.

11. placing this sign above a long vowel indicates that it should be lengthened more than its normal length. This is done before a hamza and an unvowelled letter as in qurû': qurûu', sî'a bihim: sîi'a; mâ'unzila': mâ'auhzila.

The Signs 6- 11 are particularly significant because they relate to two important features of Qur'ânic recitation: nasalisation and vowel length. Some manuals of tajwîd deal exclusively with al-nûn wa-l-tanwîn wa-l-mudûd. The Qur'ân has a high frequency of nûn and tanwîn and they have, when adjacent to other letters, different degrees of assimilation and nasality. In Sûra 19 (chosen at random), the frequency of assimilation in nûn and tanwîn is about 6 times as great as without assimilation. This is important because assimilation increases the nasality which has an emotional effect. The signs add extra length to vowels as required in certain situations. Prolongation is achieved not only by adding a madda to a long vowel before hamza or sukûn, as mentioned earlier, but third person masculine pronouns, with a damma or kasra, are followed by a small wâw or yâ' respectively, which gives them a length peculiar to the recitation of the Qur'ân. For example, Q. 86:8: . The two features of assimilation and prolongation are characteristic of the Qur'ân and are not heard, to any similar extent, in recitation of Arabic poetry. The nûn, tanwîn and mudûd, together with the higher relative frequency of occurrance of the letters alif, lâm, mîm, wâw and yâ' in the Qur'ân^[31] all have a slowing effect on the reading, more likely to make the reader and listener absorb the material, and they contribute a high degree of sonority to the recitation of the Qur'ân.

12. placing a small circle under in indicates that the fatha should be inclined to a kasra and the alif to a yâ' . Thus instead of majraha it becomes majraiha (as in 'rays' in English). This is known as imâla and normal Arabic orthography has no sign to represent it even though this sound is common in some Arab countries; Qur'ânic orthography is thus more developed in this respect.

13. placing the same sign at the end of m in indicates ishmâm - giving the consonant a trace of the pronunciation of damma according to Hafs qirâ'a.

14. placing a dot above the second alif in indicates that the second hamza should be pronounced lighter - tashîl . Thus instead of a 'a'a^cjamiyyun it becomes almost like 'â^cjamiyyun . These last three features are important in some qirâ'ât which explains an important function of Qur'ânic orthography.

15. The ornamental circle indicates the end of the verse which is different from a sentence in Arabic and affects the stress patterns in reading. Inside the circle is written the number of the verse always at the end (i.e., the full completion) and not at the beginning as in normal Arabic (and English) material.

16. * indicates the beginning of rub^c al-hizb (an eighth of a juz').

17-18. placing a line above a word indicates that a ritual prostration is required by the reader/listener on reaching the end of the verse which is further marked by an ornamental sign after the verse number and a further sign in the margin. e.g. 96:19

N.B. This edition uses one further sign, which is not listed here, that is, placing a above the end of a word to indicate saktah (hiatus or slight interruption of reading), to separate two words, such as "and has not made in it [the Qur'ân] any crookedness straight, to give warning...' ( 18:1-2). Without the hiatus, the meaning would be distorted.

The third section of the Appendix deals with the various signs for pauses ^calâmât al-waqf. This is another area in which the writing of the Qur'ân is distinguished from the writing of any other Arabic material. Modern punctuation marks became known in Arabic only last century, and up to now they are not universally adopted in a systematic way. In any case, none of these marks appear in the writing of the Qur'ân. Six pausal signs, ^calâmât al-waqf - are used in the mushaâf, placed higher than all other signs as follows:

sign for a mandatory pause al-waqf al-lâzim. e.g.,

"... only those can accept 'who hear'. As for the dead, Allah will raise them up." (6:36).

The mandatory pause comes after who hear in Arabic. This is followed by wa, a conjunction which generally means and; it retains the same form even in contexts where it means as for. Without the mandatory stop, a reader may read the statement as: ... only those can accept who hear and the dead... which would corrupt the sense.

sign for prohibited pause - al-waqf al-mamnu^c. e.g.

"Those whose souls the angels take while they are goodly, to them they say: 'Peace be on you! Enter the Garden"' ( 16:32)

It is prohibited to pause at 'goodly' which would leave the sentence unfinished and impair the sense.

sign of optional pause - waqf jâ'iz jawâzan mustawiya'-l-tarafayn. e.g.

"We shall narrate to thee their story with truth. They were young men who believed in their Lord" ( 18: 131).

The optional pause comes after truth.

sign of preferred non-pause al-waqf jâ'iz ma^ca kawn al-wasl' awlâ. e.g.,

"If Allah touches thee with affliction none can remove it but He; and if He touches thee with Good, He is powerful over everything (6:17).

This kind of pause comes after but He, but in order to give a fuller meaning it is preferable, in Arabic, to pause at the end of the verse.

sign of preferred pause - al-waqf jâ'iz wa awlâ. e.g.

"None knows them [the seven sleepers of the cave] save a few. So contend not concerning them except ..." (18:22).

It is preferable to pause after a few.

**

Sign of selective pause - ta^cânuq al-waqf. If you pause at either of the two places you may not pause at the other. e.g.,

can be read, pausing to make the meaning either as:

"This is the Book - no doubt. In it there is guidance for those who ..."

"This is the Book wherein is no doubt, a guidance to those who.." (2:2)

If you pause at both places, the material following the first pause will read in it, which would disrupt the sense.

The underlying principle in all these is whether the sense has reached final completion or is not complete; has reached an acceptable stage of completion; or would be more fully expressed if carried into a further stage.

* * *

Tradition or Change

It was understandable that the ^cUthmânic rasm should be given such a high status through the ages. Indeed some people took an extreme view that there were esoteric reasons for everything in it which could be grasped only by the very few endowed with esoteric knowledge. In the same way as there is i'jâz (inimitability) in the linguistic structure of the Qur'ân, they argued, there is also i'jâz in its rasm. Thus mystic explanations have been given, represented by such people as Abû-l-^cAbbâs al-Marâkishî (721/1321)^[32] . It is clearly such views that led Ibn Khaldûn (808/1405) to castigate those holding them:

Do not pay attention to what some stupid people think that the companions of the Prophet were masters of the craft of writing and what we find in their writing different from systematic orthography is not actually as we imagine but there is an explanation and wisdom behind it. Thus they argue that the additional alif in (27:21) is there to indicate that Solomon did not slaughter the hoopoe, and the additional yâ' in (51:47) indicates how complete divine power is in building the sky.

Such people were led to this view in Ibn Khaldûn's opinion by a desire to put the Companions above lack of knowledge in writing when in fact this was a craft, the knowledge of which is relative and not necessarily indicative of innate perfection or otherwise. The Arabs at the time of writing the mushâf were still closer to the Bedouin state which did not perfect crafts, and this, in Ibn Khaldûn's opinion, appeared in their writing of the mushâf which was written by a number of people whose knowledge of writing was not excellent and they followed various orthographies.^[33] It is understandable that Ibn Khaldûn should have been so incensed by the imaginary and far-fetched explanation of al-Marâkishî; what he said about the early stage of writing may also have some justification but, on the other hand, he clearly did not pay regard to considerations of phonetics and qirâ'ât, and how they affect various aspects of rasm . For instance in the very examples he quotes (and we have seen many other instances earlier), he overlooks the fact that additional letters come only after a hamza; the real explanation here has to be sought there, and in the desire of orthographers to ensure specific pronunciation as explained above, not for esoteric reasons as argued by al-Marâkishî nor simply on the ground of inconsistency and lack of mastry of craftsmanship on the part of early scribes, as argued by Ibn Khaldûn. His own views came to be dismissed out of hand by a modern authority on Qur'ânic rasm on the ground that he was a loner and not a mujtahid in the field. ^[34]

In the past and present^[35] some people (the non-traditionalists) have argued that there is nothing sacred about that particular Qur'ânic rasm. There is nothing in the Qur'ân or hadîth to make it obligatory or recommended. The Muslims could use any specific system for writing the Qur'ân. The objective of writing the Qur'ân is surely to enable people to read it correctly and learn it correctly. Indeed, some argued that there was no reason that it should be written in an orthography that is not used for writing any other book of the time.^[36] Desire to facilitate the reading and learning of the Qur'ân to each generation according to their contemporary orthography is an argument non-traditionalists have always repeated. They regard traditional orthography as inadequate in this respect, citing especially the seeming inconsistency in the way some words are written in the ^cUthmânic rasm.

They were obviously unsuccessful, however, in citing such examples as and (always cited and highlighted in criticism of the rasm) linking they were two isolated examples of this feature. Critics do not seem to have noticed that such examples consistently have a hamza in them and no one asked whether this factor had any effect on the rasm. They were also unsuccessful in citing written normally without an alif, but with an alif in Q. 56:74, 69:52, 96:1, because in these three instances it is whereas in all others (115 places) it is ; abbreviation (by omitting the alif) was clearly intended with the one most frequently used and with the name of Allah. Nor should critics have an argument in the numerous examples where various qirâ'ât are involved or in examples where there is an intention of pointing out a contrast as explained earlier; this is a valid consideration in normal orthography.^[37] However, they had a better argument in examples where there does not seem to be an obvious consideration of phonetics or qirâ'ât for variations. For instance, is written normally without an alif but in 17:93 it is written with an alif ; similarly, is written with one lâm but with two.

In such examples the explanation might legitimately be sought, not in mystical considerations nor necessarily in simple inconsistency but in the fact that Arabic orthography even after the period of ^cUthmân - as can be witnessed in older books on imlâ' - knew more than one way of writing some letters within words. There were Kufan and Basran opinions and there was the question of jawâz - optional ways - in many cases.^[38] Just as there were options in grammar, there were also options in orthography, but what was optional at an early stage of rasm became fixed because of the special status of things Qur'ânic.

Understandably the traditionalists have always had strong arguments for maintaining the status quo. After all the early rasm was set by the Companions of the Prophet and sanctioned by no less figures than Abû Bakr, ^cUmar, ^cUthmân, ^cAlî and others, it was adopted by their followers in what amounts to an ijmâ^c, so that Mâlik, Ahmad and other imams^[39] held that it should not be altered in any way. Great care were also taken to keep the Qur'ân as it originally was in pronunciation of the words and writing at that time. If the gate were to be opened, the traditionalists argue, to what was deemed desirable in rasm it might in time become open to pronunciation. Thus the juristic principle of sadd al-dhara'i^c (blocking the way for unlawful or undesired things) was invoked. If changes in rasm are conceded, it is not unlikely that some might consider it desirable to write the Qur'ân in the Latin alphabet or write abridgements of it, or write it in Arab dialects which the non-traditionalists could argue would make it more accessible or such hocus-pocus and absurdities.^[40]Abandoning the rasm might also lead to abandoning many of ^culûm al-adâ' (sciences of recitation). There are, moreover, many benefits in the ^cUthmânic rasm which should not be sacrificed:

(a) It indicates the origin of certain letters, as in written with wâw;

(b) It indicates some fusha versions of Arabic such as that of Tayyi in writing the feminine ha as an ordinary open ta'; the deletion of the final yâ' of the indicative verb in (11:105);

(c) It indicates a different meaning of a word in a certain context: thus is written as two words in (4:109) to indicate that here is in the sense of (rather) unlike in 67:22;

(d) It indicates various qirâ'ât of the same word - many examples can be cited here,^[41] to quote but two: (2.4) is written without alif and there are two qirâ'as of it - yakhda^cdna and yukhâdi^cûna; (6:115) is written with a tâ' marbûta and there are two qirâ'as of it - kalimât and kalimat.

Traditionalist further argue that rules of ordinary orthography are themselves open to differences and changes and Qur'ânic rasm should not be made to follow them. Besides, it is not necessary in ordinary orthography that the writing of words should coincide with the pronunciation, thus we have words like to give but a few examples of 'irregular' writing, where the orthography does not reflect the pronunciation and this is perfectly accepted by the non-traditionalists. Nor is this peculiar to Arabic: it is far more extensive and accepted in English and French for instance. And, whereas the pronunciation of such irregular words is not indicated by any signs in modern Arabic, all cases of additions, deletions or substitution of letters in the Qur'ânic rasm are indicated by signs of istilahât al-dabt to guide the reader to their correct pronunciation. It should also be remembered that the ^cUthmânic rasm was one source of ordinary orthography^[42] and came to differ from it only in certain aspects, all of which have been identified in detail, including every single exception from the rules, in a way not surprising from scholars of the Qur'ân who counted even the occurrence of every single letter of the alphabet in the entire text.^[43] They also supplied signs to guide the reader to pronounce every word, making the rasm a uniquely precise system of representation. This has always been supported by a tradition and an educational system, that considers reception by word of mouth is - as it was at the time of the Prophet - the primary way of teaching and learning the Qur'ân. In any case, in addition to istilahât al-dabt and the guide printed in the Appendix of the mushaf, some mushafs are now printed with a further guide at the foot margin of every page containing the Qur'ânic and the modern orthographic ways of writing words where the two systems differ; but Muslims have evidently insisted that the text of the Qur'ân itself should remain written in the ^cUthmânic rasm. They apparently consider that this rasm has been an important way of ensuring that successive generations of Muslims have been faithful to the original writing and reading of the Qur'ân, ever since Hudhayfa Ibn al-Yamân urged ^cUthmân: Quick! Help the Muslims before they differ about the text of the Qur'ân as the Christians and Jews differed about their scriptures.

Footnotes

[1] Bukhâri: Sahîh, fada'il al-Qur'ân, 3.

[2] Al-Dânî, Abû ^cAmr, Al-Muqni^c fimarsûm wa-masâhif ahl al-amsâr ma^c kitâb al-Naqt, Damascus, 1983, pp. 124-5.

[3] Al-Dânî, op. cit., p. 125-6.

[4] Such as those by Abû Hâtim al-Sijistânî (248/826) and Al-Dânî (444/1502)

[5] Suyûtî, Itqân, I, Beirut, 199?, p. 484.

[6] Suyûtî, Itqân, II, p. 348-56.

[7] Wâlî, H., Kitâb al-Imlâ', Beirut, 1985, p. 41.

[8] Suyûtî, Itqân, II, Beirut, 1987, p.470.

[9] Ibid., p. 169.

[10] Dâr al-Fikr, Damascus, 1983.

[11] Wâlî, H., ibid, p. 101.

* Irqam, 11, pp. 471-82

[12] op. cit., p. 140.

[13] Ibid.,p. 108-9.

[14] Suyûtî, Itqân, n p. 475.

[15] Wâlî, op. cit., p. 47.

[16] But it does somtimes carry weight in normal orthography. See Wâlî, op. cit., p. 78.

[17] Wâlî, op. cit., p. 92.

[18] Al-Dânî, op. cit., p. 79.

[19] For details see Suyûtî, Itqân, II, p. 477.

[20] Note that in modern Arabic tâ' marbûtâ is pronounced and writen an ordinary ta' in names like: ; in languages like Turkish and Urdu, they say salat and zakat.

[21] Wâlî, op. cit., p. 143-151 .

[22] For further examples see Al-Dânî, op. cit., pp. 83-92.

[23] See Al-Dânî, op. cit., p. 106 and Suyûtî, II, p. 497.

[24] See H. Wâlî, op. cit., p. 173-5.

[25] op. cit., p. 1 30.

[26] In some earlier and current editions, a mark is added, showing the end of ten verses to be read in prayers.

[27] See Appendix pp. p- of copies printed - 1405/1984. The mushaf printed in the King Fahd Complex is called Mushaf al-Madîna al-nabawiyya.

[28] Arberry's translation is an exception.

[29] H. S. ^cUthmân, Haqq al-Tilâwa, Jordan, 1901/1971, p. l4.

[30] See istilahât al-dabt, Egyptian Mushâf, Appendix and Al-Dânî, op. cit., pp. 123-143.

[31] See ^cAbd al-Rahmân Ibn al-Jawzî, Funûn al-afnân fî ^cUlûm al-Qur'ân, Baghdad, 1988, pp. 104-106.

[32] He still has followers now. See S. al-Sâlih, Mabâhith fî ^cUlûm al-Qur'ân, Beirut, 19??, pp. 276-7.

[33] The Muqaddima, Dâr al-Sha^cb, Cairo, n.d.; pp. 377-8.

[34] Hifni Nâsifî: Al-Muqtataf, vol. 83, Cairo, 1933, p. 206.

[35] See S. al-Sâlih, Ibid., pp. 287-9; L. al-Sa^cîd, Al-Jam^c al-sauti li'l-Qur'ân al-Karîm, Cairo, 196?, pp. 291-2.

[36] al-Sa^cîd,, ibid., p.292.

[37] Wâlî, op. cit., p.94.

[38] See Wâlî, op. cit. pp. 147, 157-8 and passim.

[39] See L. al-Sa^cîd, ibid, pp. 297-300.

[40] H. Nâsifî,op. cit.,p.206.

[41] al-Sa^cîd, ibid, pp. 304-6.

[42] Wâlî, op. cit., p.44.

[43] See ^cAbd al-Rahmân Ibn al-Jawzî, op. cit., pp. 104-6.

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Scribal/haleem.html 4/1/03 10:44:47 AM

Who Is Afraid Of Textual Criticism?

M S M Saifullah, ^cAbd ar-Rahmân Robert Squires & Muhammad Ghoniem

Last Updated: 31st August 1999

Assalamu-alaikum wa rahamtullahi wa barakatuhu:

Who is afraid of the textual criticism? According to the Christian missionaries, Muslims are scared of textual criticism not the Christians. The aim of this page is to investigate as well as highlight the myriad of dishonest statements made by the Christian missionaries concerning the textual criticism of the Qur'an and the Bible. And it will also be shown that who precisely is and should be scared of textual criticism. The Christian critic at says:

Many Muslims try to capitalize in their debates on the fact that there are variant readings of Biblical text in the many manuscripts we have of it. This is natural for handcopied texts and nothing else can be expected. Just try yourself to copy down by hand twenty pages of any book, then let a friend proofread it and see how many mistakes he finds.

Well, it appears that the Christian missionary has no clue of how the variants crept into the Bible. His claim is that handcopied texts have variant readings which are unintentional. But then do the Bible scholars say the same thing? Bruce Metzger, one of the leading Bible scholar, has quite a lot to talk about the variant readings or more precisely the errors in the New Testament. He categorizes them as Unintentional Errors and Intentional Changes.^[1]

1. Unintentional errors

a. Errors arising from faulty eyesight

b. Errors arising from faulty hearing

c. Errors of the mind

d. Errors of judgement

2. Intentional changes

a. Changes involving spelling and grammar

b. Harmonistic corruptions

c. Addition of natural complements and similar adjuncts

d. Clearing up historical and geographical difficulties

e. Conflation of readings

f. Alterations made because of doctrinal considerations

g. Addition of miscellaneous details

Certainly, this goes beyond the simple copying of the text and introducing errors while doing so! Jerome complained of the copyists who

write down not what they find but what they think is the meaning; and while they attempt to rectify the errors of others, they merely expose their own.^[2]

So, it is quite clear that the copyists also made intentional errors involving change of spelling and grammar to doctrinal considerations.

We have divided this document into the following sections.

Variant Readings In The Qur'an & In The Bible

· The Qur'an, Its Variant Readings & Islamic Scholarship

· The New Testament, Its Problems & The Critical Texts

Textual Criticism & The Reaction Of The Church

· J Mill

· R Bentley

· J J Wettstein

· B F Westcott & J A Hort

The first section deals with the issue of variant readings in the Qur'an and in the Bible. It also discusses the results of the textual criticism of each of them. The second section deals with the attitude of the Church towards textual criticism. This would make one aware of the fact how strongly the Church reacted to the collossal number of variant readings of the New Testament that shook the foundations of its inerrancy.

1. Variant Readings In The Qur'an & In The Bible

This section is sub-divided into two for discussing the individual texts, i.e., the Qur'an and the Bible. We will first start with the Qur'an and then go to the Bible, inshallah.

The Qur'an, Its Variant Readings & Islamic Scholarship

Further, it is claimed that:

It is humanly nearly impossible to copy by hand without any error. In a certain sense Muslims have the "advantage" that Christians have carefully documented these variants in scholarly journals and monographs. Christian and secular scholars are openly discussing these problems in the discipline of textual criticism.

It seems the Christian writer wants to say that Muslims are hiding their variant readings whereas the Christians are open about it by publishing and discussing them in scholarly journals. Certainly he has no clue about how the Muslims have treated their Qirâ'at readings (which is sometimes wrongly called as 'variant readings'). But before that it is worthwhile pointing out that the book of Arthur Jeffery Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Qur'an: The Old Codices used by Christian missionaries to show that the Qur'an is "corrupted" gets all the variant readings from the classical sources of Qur'anic exegesis and some of them more than 1000 years old! According to Jeffery ^[3]:

The material which follows is taken from the writer's collections made with a view to a critical text of the Qur'an..... The main sources from which the variants have been drawn are:

Abû Hayyân, al-Bahar al-Muhit, 8 Volumes, Cairo 1328.

Alusî, Ruh al-Ma^cani Fi Tafsîr al-Qur'an Wa Sab' al-Mathani, 30 Volumes, Cairo, n.d.

Baghawî, Ma^calim at-Tanzil, 7 Volumes, Cairo 1332.

Baidawî, Anwâr at-Tanzil Wa Asrar at-Tawil, 5 Prints, Cairo, 1330.

Balawi, Kitâb Alîf Ba', 2 Volumes, Cairo, 1287.

Banna, Ithaf Fudala al-Bashar Ai'l-Qirâ'ât al-Arba'ata 'Ashar, Cairo, 1317.

Fakhr ad-Dîn ar-Râzî, Mafatih al-Ghaib, 8 Volumes, Cairo, 1327.

Farra', Kitâb Ma^cani al-Qur'an, Ms. Stambul, Nuru Osmaniya 459.

Ibn al-Anbarî, Kitâb al-Insaf, Ed. Gotthold Weil, Leiden, 1913.

Ibn Hisham, Mughni al-Labîb, 2 Prints, Cairo, 1347.

Ibn Hisham, Tahdhib at-Tawadih, 2 Prints, Cairo, 1329.

Ibn Jinnî, Nichtkanonische Koranlesarten im Muhtasab des Ibn Ginni, von G Bergstrasser, Munchen, 1933.

Ibn Khalawaih, Ibn Halawaihs Sammlung nichtkanonischer Koranlesarten, Herausgegeben von G Bergstrasser, Stambul, 1934.

Ibn Manzur, Lisân al-^cArab, 20 Volumes, Cairo, 1307.

Ibn Ya'ish, Commentary To The Mufassal, Ed., Jahn, 2 Volumes, Liepzig, 1882.

Khafaji, 'Inayat al-Qadi wa Kifayat ar-Radi, 8 Volumes, Cairo, 1283.

Marandî, Qurrat 'Ain al-Qurra, Ms. Escorial, 1337.

Muttaqî al-Hindî, Kanz al-'Ummal, Volume 2, Hyderabad, 1312.

Nasafi, Madarik at-Tanzil wa Haqa'iq at-Ta'wil, 4 Volumes, Cairo, 1333.

Nisaburî, Ghara'ib al-Qur'an (On The Margin Of Tafsir at-Tabari).

Qunawî, Hashia ^calâ l-Baidawi, 7 Volumes, Stambul, 1285.

Qurtubî, Al-Jâmi^c li Ahkam al-Qur'an, 2 Volumes (All So Far Published), Cairo, 1935.

Shawkanî, Fath al-Qadir, 5 Volumes, Cairo, 1349.

Sibawaih, Le Livre de Sibawaih, Ed. Derenbourg, 2 Volumes, Paris, 1889.

Suyûtî, Al-Itqan fî ^cUlûm al-Qur'an, Ed. Sprenger, Calcutta, 1857.

Suyûtî, Al-Durr al-Manthur fî 't-Tafsîr al-Ma'thur, 6 Volumes, Cairo, 1314.

Suyûtî, Al-Muzhir, 2 Volumes, Cairo, 1282.

Tabarî, Al-Jâmi^c al-Bayân fî Tafsîr al-Qur'an, 30 Volumes, Cairo, 1330.

Tabarasi, Majma' al-Bayân fî-^cUlûm al-Qur'an, 2 Volumes, Tehran, 1304.

'Ukbarî, Imla' fi 'l-I'rab wa 'l-Qirâ'ât fi Jâmi^c al-Qur'an, 2 Parts, Cairo, 1321.

'Ukbarî, I^crab al-Qirâ'ât ash-Shadhdha, MS Mingana Islamic Arabic, 1649.

Zamakhsharî, Al-Kashshâf, Ed. Nassau Lees, Calcutta, 1861.

In these classical sources, the variant readings are well documented and they were discussed extensively from the point of view of grammar and their origin. Hence more than 1000 years ago, even before the Biblical criticism was conceived, Muslims knew what the variant readings of the Qur'an were and from where they originated. And it is the Christian missionaries who really had the "advantage" and have used the Qirâ'at dishonestly to assert that the Qur'an is corrupted.

It is clear from the sources quoted above that Muslims were neither scared nor uncomfortable with dealing with the variant readings. They were rather professional in their approach towards dealing with the variant readings and also developed an elaborate science called "^cUlûm al-Qirâ'at". Bernard Lewis in his book Islam in History writes:

From an early date Muslim scholars recognized the danger of false testimony and hence false doctrine, and developed an elaborate science for criticizing tradition. "Traditional science", as it was called, differed in many respects from modern historical source criticism, and modern scholarship has always disagreed with evaluations of traditional scientists about the authenticity and accuracy of ancient narratives. But their careful scrutiny of the chains of transmission and their meticulous collection and preservation of variants in the transmitted narratives give to medieval Arabic historiography a professionalism and sophistication without precedent in antiquity and without parallel in the contemporary medieval West. By comparison, the historiography of Latin Christendom seems poor and meagre, and even the more advanced and complex historiography of Greek Christendom still falls short of the historical literature of Islam in volume, variety and analytical depth.^[4]

So, long before the textual criticism of the Bible originated, Muslims already went through the process of textual criticism. The Qirâ'at were well-known among the Muslims. It is also worthwhile to point out that even to this day Muslims recite the Qur'an in various Qirâ'at. Moreover, these are also available in printed editions.

Adrian Brockett after studying the Hafs and Warsh Qirâ'at says ( See his article "The Value of Hafs And Warsh Transmissions For The Textual History Of The Qur'an"):

In conclusion it can be said that the Muslims had the 'critical text' right from the time of the Prophet^(P).

The Christian critic adds:

In particular, let us ask why some of the oldest manuscripts are not photographically reproduced and made available to the public and the scholars. Why not start with the Topkapi manuscript in Istambul, the Taschkent manuscript, and the two old manuscripts in Cairo and Damascus. They are not Uthmanic manuscripts as some believe, but they are quite old.

The oldest Qur'anic manuscripts dating from 1st century of hijra are available here.

Firstly, when we have a Qur'an text right from the time of the Prophet^(P) and know the variant readings associated with it beforehand, why do they need the superfluous work of going through the manuscripts to check out variant readings?

Secondly, it is a well known fact that all the Qur'ans, in manuscript or in printing are written in what is called al-Rasm al-^cUthmâni, the ^cUthmanic way of writing of the text of the Qur'an. It is also referred to as Rasm al-mushaf. As the copies of the Qur'an made by the order of ^cUthmân were meant to be authoritative, it is no wonder that their rasm assumed authority as the correct way of writing the Qur'an.

Alongside the development of studies in Arabic grammar, Arabic orthography also developed for linguistic and literary material, and although the ^cUthmânic rasm was one of the sources of ordinary orthography the latter began to differ from the ^cUthmânic rasm of the Qur'an. The question was asked whether it was admissible to write the Qur'an itself in the new orthography. Mâlik (179/795) was asked and said: No, the Qur'an should be written only in the way of the first writing. He was also asked whether the additional waaw and alif (as in the word ) should be deleted since they were not pronounced and said no. Similarly Ibn Hanbal (244/858) said it was unlawful to deviate in writing the mushaf in wâw, yâ, alif or any other way. In line with such views, it will be seen that adherence to the Qur'anic rasm has persisted up to the present.

Along with numerous other aspects of the Qur'an, its orthography was singled out as a separate branch of study known as ^cIlm al-Rasm. Abû ^cAmr Al-Dânî (444/1052) examined in detail the characteristics of this rasm. His book al-Muqni^c remained an important authority - Suyûtî (909/1503) reduced the rules of Qur'anic rasm to 6 as follows:

1. The rule of deletion, hadhf
2. The rule of addition, ziyâdah
3. The rule of substitution, badal
4. The rule of the hamza,
5. The rule of joining and separating, al-wasl wa-l-fasl
6. The rule of cases where there are two canonical readings but the text is written according to one of them, ma fihi Qirâ'atan fa-kutiba ^calâ ihdâhumâ.^[6]

It is quite clear that the al-Rasm al-^cUthmânî, the ^cUthmânic way of writing of the text of the Qur'an, has persisted up to the present and hence Muslims knew for sure how to write the Qur'an in the past. It is worthwhile to mention the work of Nabia Abbott. In her book The Rise of The North Arabic Script & Its Kur'ânic Development, she presents some Qur'an parchments and manuscripts dating from 1st, 2nd and 3rd century AH as well as later ones.^[7] It is interesting to note that she did not mention any textual differences except for a scribal error in one of the manuscripts.^[8]

Thirdly, the diacritical marks were introduced very early to make sure that the Qur'an was read correctly.

Arabic orthography at the time was not yet developed in the way we have known for centuries, particularly in two important areas. There was no distinction between letters of the alphabet of similar shape and there were no vowel marks. This may now give the impression that such a system must have given rise to great confusion in reading. This was not actually the case because the morphological patterns of words in Arabic enable readers to read even very unfamiliar material without the short vowels being marked. More important, however, as far as the Qur'an was concerned, was the fact that learning and reading relied above all on oral transmission. In the Islamic tradition, writing remained a secondary aid; nevertheless, to ensure correct reading of the written texts of the Qur'an, particularly for those coming after the first generation of Muslims, steps were taken gradually to improve the orthography. This started with the two above mentioned areas by introducing dots to indicate different vowels and nunation and these were put in different coloured ink from that of the text. There were also dots to distinguish between consonants of similar shape. This work was carried out chiefly by three men: Abu-l-Aswad al-Du'ali (d. 69 / 688), Nasr Ibn ^cAsim (d. 89 / 707) and Yahyâ Ibn Ya^cmur (d.129 /746). Understandably there was some opposition at first to adding anything to the way the Qur'an was written. Ibn ^cUmar (73/692) disliked the dotting; others welcomed it, clearly because it was, in fact, doing no more than ensuring proper reading of the Qur'an as received from the Prophet, and this view was accepted by the majority of Muslims throughout the different parts of the Muslims world, from the time of the tâbi^cûn. The people of Madinah were reported to have used red dots for vowels - tanwîn, tashdîd, takhfîf, sukûn, wasl and madd and yellow dots for the hamzas in particular. Naqt (placing dots on words in the mushaf), became a separate subject of study with many books written on it.

Al-Khalîl Ibn Ahmad (d.170/786) introduced the traditional vowel signs into Arabic orthography instead of the dots, but tht dotting system continued in writing Qur'anic material. Eventually the traditional vowel signs were adopted for the Qur'an.^[9]

Summarizing the work of Muslim orthodoxy it is pretty clear that it took great steps to preserve the Qur'an by adding taskeel marks for proper recitation as well as writing the Qur'an in the way it was written in the al-Rasm al-^cUthmâni. So, both the oral as well as written Qur'an was secured well before the first century AH.

And let us now compare the Qur'an with the New Testament. We clearly know that the guiding principles of making a Qur'anic manuscript was (and is!) al-Rasm al-^cUthmâni, i.e., the ^cUthmânic way of writing the text of the Qur'an. So, we know well that anything which deviates from this way of writing is in error. So, the Qur'an textual criticism is not subjected to mercy of the manuscripts. On the other hand, the New Testament is which had no guidelines to write as well as no guidelines how to recite; for more than 150 years or so, it was not considered as a scripture!. Therefore, it ran into the problems of living the life of a 'living text'. And hence the modern day scholars are trying to figure out what the 'original reading' is from the mass of divergent manuscript evidence that we have. The Nestle-Aland critical text is in its 27th edition. Since most of the Bible translations are based on this text, a wait of couple of decades would make the 'Word' of God running into 28th or 29th edition, inshallah. Of course, remembering the fact that Nestle-Aland's text is a working text and as more manuscript evidence gets in, revision will take place. And the text New Testament would be a slave of the New Testament manuscript evidence. More about this in the next section, inshallah.

Let us now deal with the issue of manuscripts of the Qur'an. Let us again reproduce what the Christian critic had to say:

In particular, let us ask why some of the oldest manuscripts are not photographically reproduced and made available to the public and the scholars.

Where is the proof that there is not access to Qur'anic manuscripts? There are many old manuscripts kept in Western countries. We've all heard of the huge collection of manuscripts that was kept in Germany, but destroyed during the Second World War.^[10] According to Muhammad Hamidullah, in a lecture given in Islamic University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan, in his conversation with Pretzl in Paris the total number of Qur'anic manuscripts in were 42,000.^[11] Where did Nabia Abbott got the Qur'anic manuscripts present in the Oriental Institute in University of Chicago that are mentioned in her book The Rise of The North Arabic Script & Its Kur'ânic Development? Most of the manuscripts which she mentions date from 1st, 2nd and 3rd century AH and some of them are later ones too. Further one also wonders where did François Déroche got the manuscripts dating between 8th to 10th centuries CE in his book The Abbasid Tradition: Qur'ans Of The 8th To The 10th Centuries AD? It is worthwhile to point that Oxford University Press has published the manuscripts of the Qur'an dating from 8th to 19th centuries. These manuscripts are present in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, a private collection based in London, UK. Following are their publications that deal with the Qur'anic manuscripts.

The Abbasid Tradition: Qur'ans Of The 8th To The 10th Centuries AD, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art Vol. I, 1992, François Déroche, Oxford University Press, 192 pp.

The Master Scribes: Qur'ans of the 10th to 14th Centuries, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art Vol. II, 1992, David James, Oxford University Press, 240 pp.

After Timur: Qur'ans of the 15th and 16th Centuries, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art Vol. III, 1992, David James, Oxford University Press, 256 pp.

The Decorated Word: Qur'ans of the 17th to 19th Centuries, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art Vol. IV, 1999, Manijeh Bayani, Anna Contadini & Tim Stanley, Oxford University Press, 334 pp.

It is worthwhile to point that Oxford University Press has also published the following book.

Bills, Letters, and Deeds: Arabic Papyri of the 7th to 11th Centuries, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art Vol. VI, 1993, Geoffrey Khan, Oxford University Press, 292 pp.

This volume of the Khalili Collection catalogues approximately 250 Arabic documents written on papyrus. Each accompanied by a plate, the entries are catalogued according to the type of document, firstly accounts, secondly legal documents, and thirdly, letters. Most of the documents date from the eighth or ninth centuries A.D. A large number of the papyri came from Fustat, the old Arab capital of Egypt. Nearly all published Arabic papyri came from southern Egypt. The Khalili collection contains the first Arabic document that has been discovered to have been written in northern Iraq. The documents are an important primary source for socio-economic history, palaeography, and diplomatics.

Many of the early manuscripts shown in the book of François Déroche come from Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.^[12] Further Estelle Whelan also informs us that Déroche has catalogued 295 manuscripts of the Qur'an at Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.^[13] She also mentions the Qur'anic manuscripts present in following libraries:^[14]

Chester Beatty Library, Dublin.

Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.

Aya Sofia Library, Istanbul.

Topkapi Sarayi Library, Istanbul.

Royal Library, Copenhagen.

Gotha State Library.

Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin-Dahlem.

Freer Art Gallery, Washington DC.

Bodleian Library, Oxford.

Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel.

It is also worthwhile to add that A J Arberry mentions some of the Qur'anic manuscripts at Chester Beatty Library, Dublin in his book The Koran Illuminated: A Handlist Of The Korans In The Chester Beatty Library, 1967, Dublin.

Further the critic has said:

Why not start with the Topkapi manuscript in Istambul, the Taschkent manuscript, and the two old manuscripts in Cairo and Damascus.

It is well known that Tashkent manuscript has been photocopied, a copy of which is in Columbia University.^[15] Arthur Jeffery had commented on its orthography in detail.^[16] It seems that the Christian critic is unaware of these detailed studies. Concerning the Topkapi manuscript we are not aware of studies done it. But there is an interesting clause in the Treaty of Versailles Article 246:

Within six months from the coming into force of the present Treaty, Germany will restore to His Majesty King of Hedjaz, the original Koran of Caliph Othman, which was removed from Medina by the Turkish authorities and is stated to have been presented to the ex-Emperor William II.^[17]

Further the Christian critic adds:

They are not Uthmanic manuscripts as some believe, but they are quite old.

The most accurate statement would be to say that there is disagreement on whether these manuscripts are 'Uthmanic, since there are some scholars who say they are, while others say they are not. Sheikh Mohammed Shaibanee from the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society in Kuwait certainly considers Topkapi manuscript as 'Uthmanic. Others like Muhammad Hamidullah agree with some caution.

It seems that the Christian critic wants to apply the Biblical criticism to the text of the Qur'an. But he seems to forget that the Bible and the Qur'an are different books and hence each has to dealt with in its own right. In the end the critic says:

Until Muslim scholarship will become serious and honest about a critical investigation of the old Qur'anic manuscripts, we are mainly left with guessing, apart from a few documented facts some of which are collected here under the title Variant Readings of the Qur'an. But making access to the Qur'an manuscripts difficult is not inspiring much confidence in the claims of textual preservation of the Qur'an.

Surely, if the Christian critic has not seen the manuscripts catalogued in various books and journal, it then it does not mean that they do not exist.

We have already seen above that the transmission of the Qur'an orally and in the written form were subjected to conditions right before the end of first century. Therefore, any deviation from these conditions would be termed as aberrations. So, the idea of using the manuscripts of the Qur'an to document the variant readings is ridiculuous.

The New Testament, Its Problems & The Critical Texts

It is a well-known fact that the Christianity has nothing like a Bible in which all the books are agreed upon as 'inspired'. Each Church has its own set of books which it considers as 'inspired'. Depending upon the Church, the Bibles can be divided into:

Protestant Church
Roman Catholic Church
Anglican Church
Greek Orthodox Church
Coptic Church
Ethiopic Church
Syriac Church

The New Testament is now known, whole or in part, in nearly five thousand Greek manuscripts. Each one of these manuscripts differ from other. Hence The Interpreter's Dictionary Of The Bible is forced to say:

It is safe to say that there is not one sentence in the NT in which the MS tradition is wholly uniform.^[18]

The lack of uniformity in the manuscript tradition is further aggravated by the fact that the original copies of the New Testament books have perished long ago. Hence there is no way of verifiying what the 'original' reading is. The Interpreter's Dictionary Of The Bible again informs us that:

The original copies of the NT books have, of course, long since disappeared. This fact should not cause surprise. In the first place, they were written on papyrus, a very fragile and perishable material. In the second place, and probably of even more importance, the original copies of the NT books were not looked upon as scripture by those of the early Christian communities.^[19]

In addition to the lack of uniform manuscript tradition as well as the original manuscripts of the New Testament books, we also have the problem that the early Christian communities did not consider the New Testament books as scripture! Further information about this issue can be obtained by clicking on the links below.

Church Tradition & Apostolic Fathers

Clement Of Rome
Ignatius Of Antioch
The Didache
Papias Of Heirapolis
Barnabas
Polycarp Of Smyrna
Hermas Of Rome
The So-Called Second Epistle Of Clement

Tersely, after studying the writings of all the above Apostolic Fathers, Bruce Metzger concludes that:

For early Jewish Christians the Bible consisted of the Old Testament and some Jewish apocryphal literature. Along with this written authority went traditions, chiefly oral, of sayings attributed to Jesus. On the other hand, authors who belonged to the 'Hellenistic Wing' of the Church refer more frequently to writings that later came to be included in the New Testament. At the same time, however, they very rarely regarded such documents as 'Scripture'.

Furthermore, there was as yet no conception of the duty of exact quotation from books that were not yet in the full sense canonical. Consequently, it is sometimes exceedingly difficult to ascertain which New Testament books were known to early Christian writers; our evidence does not become clear until the end of second century.^[20]

Hence the books of the New Testament that we see today has its origins as the 'inspired' scripture from the end of second century.

Coming back to the text of the New Testament, we have seen above that in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament that there is not a single sentence in it that is uniform. We have also seen that the scribes of the New Testament made intentional as well as unintentional errors. This problem is further aggravated by the fact that we have no original manuscripts to know what the 'original reading' is. Since the 'original reading' of the New Testament books was unknown, the copyists went for what could be the 'true reading' and hence adding variants to the already existing variants unknown to them.The present day textual criticism of the New Testament involves knowing what could be the 'original' reading from the mass of imperfect, often widely divergent copies of the New Testament.

Since - like virtually all ancient literature - no autographs are extant for the NT, its most likely original text must be reconstructed from these imperfect, often widely divergent, later copies.^[21]

The New Testament text is described euphemistically as the 'living text', i.e., which developed freely. Kurt and Barbara Aland say:

Until the beginning of the fourth century the text of the New Testament developed freely. It was the "living text" in the Greek literary tradition, unlike the text of the Hebrew Old Testament, which was subject to strict controls because (in the oriental tradition) the consonantal text was holy. And the New Testament text continued to be a "living text" as long as it remained a manuscript tradition, even when the Byzantine church molded it to the procrustean bed of the standard and officially prescribed text. Even for later scribes, for example, the parallel passages of the Gospels were so familiar that they would adapt the text of one Gospel to that of another. They also felt themselves free to make corrections in the text, improving it by their own standard of correctness, whether grammatically, stylistically, or more substantively. This was all the more true of the early period, when the text had not been attained canonical status, especially in the earliest period when Christians considered themselves to be filled with the Spirit. As a consequence the text of the early period was many-faceted, and each manuscript had its own peculiar character.^[22]

Further they compare and contrast the New Testament with the Old Testament as well as the Qur'an. The 'living text' of the New Testament is

in contrast to the Hebrew Old Testament and other oriental traditions such as the Koran, where an almost letter-perfect transcription was the rule.^[23]

Hence it is clear that the situation of the New Testament and the situation of the Qur'an are completely different. In the case of the latter, we know how the Qur'an was recited by Muhammad^(P) as well as all the variant readings going back to him. In the case of the former, i.e., the New Testament, we have a mass of imperfect and often divergent manuscripts with no original to compare with. Hence there is a need to construct what could be the original reading without the guarantee that the original reading could be successfully obtained. Therefore, the New Testament requires the construction of the critical text. On the other hand, the Qur'an has already established its own text right from the beginning.

The textual criticism of the New Testament is a human endeavour. Novum Testamentum Graece, a critical text, is one such example. The human beings decide upon which reading could be the best candidate for the original. This does not mean that we have the 'original text' with us. New Testament scholars like David Parker from University of Birmingham add a word of caution and differentiate between what is desirable, i.e., to know the 'original' text and what can be extracted from the colossal mass of variant readings in the New Testament manuscripts.

We have, however, to distinguish at any rate between the desirable and attainable. Caution rightly prevails in the Introduction to the most common used edition of the Greek New Testament, the small blue volume known as Nestle-Aland:

Novum Testamentum Graece seeks to provide the reader with the critical appreciation of the whole textual tradition... It should naturally be understood that this text is a working text (in the sense of the century-long Nestle tradition); it is not to be considered as definitive, but as a stimulus to further efforts towards redefining and verifying the text of the New Testament.^[24]

Further, David Parker emphasizes the fact that the text in the Novum Testamentum Graece edited by Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland (27th edition, Stuttgart, 1993) was agreed upon by the committee as the 'best' reading and it has nothing to do with the 'original' text.

This text was agreed by a committee. When they disagreed on the best reading to print, they voted. Evidently, they agreed either by a majority or unanimously that their text was the best available. But it does not follow that they believed their text to be 'original'. On the whole, the textual critics have always been reluctant to claim so much. Other users of the Greek New Testament accord them too much honour in treating the text as definitive.^[25]

So, as far as the Novum Testamentum Graece (edited by Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland) is concerned, one can say that the committee itself does not make a claim that it restored the 'original' text of the Bible!

Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, inform us about the various problems with the committee text.

A "committee text" of this kind is occasionally regarded as problematical, and at times it may be so. In a number of instances it represents a compromise, for none of the editors can claim a perfect acceptance record of all recommendations offered.^[26]

In the footnotes, Aland and Aland mention one of the dissenting votes of the editorial committee:

This may be inferred (at least to a degree, because not all the committee members were equally quick to write) from the dissenting notes included in A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, a volume compiled by Metzger at the request of the editorial committee utilizing the minutes of the committee sessions (London and New York: 1971; 2nd ed., 1975). Of the total of thirty dissenting votes, seventeen represent Metzger alone; eight, Metzger and Wikgren; two, Wikgren alone; one, Metzger and Martini; one, Metzger and Kurt Aland; and one, Aland alone. While a certain tendency may be detected here in the distribution of majorities and minorities, the variety of combinations also witnesses to the lack of any consistent lines of division.^[27]

What is pretty clear from the above discussion is that Christian critic boasting about undertaking textual criticism and having the critical text backfired on him. The critical text Novum Testamentum Graece is not the inspired word of God. This also has nothing to do with the individual members of the 'committee' being inspired by God or their text is inspired by God, leave alone they restoring the Original Text! The translation of most of the modern day Bibles is based on Novum Testamentum Graece critical edition and hence it can be said that that the Bible that we have is not the 'inspired' word of God. If anyone believes it to be the 'Word' of God, it is currently running in its 27th edition!

Further, the Christian critic's says:

And then, publish them together in a format that makes it easy to compare them, or even beter, listing all the differences between the texts, like it is done for the critical editions of the Bible text.

This actually opens the Pandora's box for the New Testament. Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland in their book The Text Of The New Testament presents a table which compares the total number of variant free verses in Nestle-Aland edition with the other critical editions such as that of Tischendorf, Westcott-Hort, von Soden, Vogels, Merk, and Bover. This comparison does not take into account the orthographical differences in the variant free verses. The table below:

...gives the count of the verses in which there is complete agreement among the six editions of Tischendorf, Westcott-Hort, von Soden, Vogels, Merk, and Bover with the text of Nestle-Aland (apart from orthographical differences).^[28]

Book	Total Number Of Verses	Variant Free Verses-Total	Percentage
Matthew	1071	642	59.9
Mark	678	306	45.1
Luke	1151	658	57.2
John	869	450	51.8
Acts	1006	677	67.3
Romans	433	327	75.5
1 Corinthians	437	331	75.7
2 Corinthians	256	200	78.1
Galatians	149	114	76.5
Ephesians	155	118	76.1
Philippians	104	73	70.2
Colossians	95	69	72.6
1 Thessalonians	89	61	68.5
2 Thessalonians	47	34	72.3
1 Timothy	113	92	81.4
2 Timothy	83	66	79.5
Titus	46	33	71.7
Philemon	25	19	76.0
Hebrews	303	234	77.2
James	108	66	61.1
1 Peter	105	70	66.6
2 Peter	61	32	52.5
1 John	105	76	72.4
2 John	13	8	61.5
3 John	15	11	73.3
Jude	25	18	72.0
Revelation	405	214	52.8
Total	7947	4999	62.9

Table showing the total number of variant free verses in the books of the New Testament when Nestle-Aland edition is compared with the other critical editions such as that of Tischendorf, Westcott-Hort, von Soden, Vogels, Merk, and Bover. The above table is taken from The Text Of The New Testament by Kurt Aland & Barbara Aland (See references below).

So, it is seen that nearly two-thirds of New Testament text in the seven editions of the Greek New Testament reviewed by Aland and Aland is in agreement with no differences other than in orthographic details. Further, verses in which any one of the seven editions differs by a single word are not counted. ^[29]

The agreement in the verses of various books of the New Testament is defended by the evidence that the seven major editions from Tischendorf's to the 25th of Nestle-Aland agree in the wording of 62.9% of the verses of the New Testament. The proportion ranges from 45.1% in Mark to 81.4% in 2 Timothy. Let us take an example of the analysis of the four Gospels. The below table gives the agreement of the verses in the four Gospels taken from the above.

Book	Total Number Of Verses	Variant Free Verses-Total	Percentage
Matthew	1071	642	59.9
Mark	678	306	45.1
Luke	1151	658	57.2
John	869	450	51.8
Total	3769	2056	54.5

The percentage agreement of the verses when all the four Gospels are considered is 54.5%. This is very close to the probablity that a tail (or head) appears when a coin is tossed once (i.e., the probablity that a tail or head appears when a coin is tossed is 50%!). For the Christian critic, it would have been better not to talk about the critical editions. This actually show that the New Testament is in a real bad shape and inspires the confidence that the Bible is not preserved, leave alone it being the 'inerrant' and 'unchangeable' word of God.

Now that we know that our Christian critic, out of his ignorance, has put up a rather brave face concerning the textual criticism, is it not worthwhile to know the Christian Church's reaction to the textual criticism?

2. Textual Criticism & The Reaction Of The Church

We have already seen above that the textual criticism has destroyed the concept of 'textus receptus' and 'original text'. The New Testament text that we have in our hands today is the work of a committee which decided on the readings which it thought are 'original'.

The Church and textual criticism were antipodes. Therefore, any one who ventured into this field was condemned or ignored. The bravery of modern day Christians towards the textual criticism ("Who is afraid of textual criticism?") is similar to the roar of a paper tiger. Since they can't get away with the devil of textual criticism, they might as well try to befriend it. This is precisely what they did after the fall of 'textus receptus' during the time of Westcott and Hort.

In this section we will examine very briefly how the Christians condemned the textual criticism of the New Testament during its inception.

J Mill

John Mill (1645-1707), a fellow of Queen's College, University of Oxford, began his studies of New Testament textual criticism which were to come to fruition thirty years later in an epoch-making edition of the Greek text, published exactly two weeks before his death. He collected evidence from Greek manuscripts (about 100), early versions, and Fathers that lay within his power to procure and the total variant readings which came up were about 30,000. Naturally, the churchmen were alarmed by such a large number of variant readings. And hence the attacks on him started (posthumously!).

... Mill's monumental work came under fire from the controversial writer, Dr. Daniel Whitby, Rector of St. Edmund's, Salisbury. Alarmed by the great number of variant readings which Mill had collected - some 30,000 in all - Whitby argued that the authority of the holy Scriptures was in peril, and that the assembling of the critical evidence tantamount to tampering with the text.^[30]

Bruce Metzger quotes an interesting satire which was logically concluded from the existence of so many variant readings.

The English Deist, Anthony Collins (1676-1729), did, in fact, appeal to the existence of so many variant readings as an argument against the authority of the Scriptures (A Discourse of Freethinking, [London, 1713]). The extent to which such considerations might be pushed is disclosed in Dean Swift's satirical essay, An Argument against the Abolition of Christianity, in which he refers to a roué 'who had heard of a text brought for proof of Trinity, which in an ancient manuscript was differently read; he thereupon immediately took the hint, and by a sudden deduction of long sorites, most logically concluded: "Why, if it is as you say, I may safely whore and drink on, and, defy the parson"' (Jonathan Swift, Works, iii [Edinburgh, 1814], p. 199) ^[31]

R Bentley

"By taking two thousand errors out of the Pope's Vulgate [Bentley refers to Pope Clement's edition of 1592], and as many out of the Protestant Pope Stephen's [refering to Stephanus' Greek text of 1550], I can set out an edition of each in columns, without using any book under nine hundred years old, that shall so exactly agree, word for word, and order for order, that no two tallies, no two indentures, can agree better."^[32]

Thus said R Bentley, the Master of Trinity College and it was obvious that he had landed in trouble. He was one of the few person of his age and era to suggest the abandonment of the 'textus receptus'.

R Bentley (1662-1742) was bold enough to suggest that the 'textus receptus' to be abandoned altogether. In his famous proposals for printing a critical edition of the New Testament (1720) he outlined a plan of the work which needed to be done. he proposed to edit the text which was current in the fourth century using the earliest Greek and Latin manuscripts. It was essentially a matter of doing what Toinard had done but on a larger scale. He even gave the last chapter of Revelationas an example, departing in more than forty places from Estienne's text which he said had "unfortunately become the Protestants' Pope". There was a tremendous outcry and Bentley was fiercely attacked and suspended from teaching for a time. Not being a man to allow himself to be intimidated, he set about collecting together the materials for his work; but as he grew older, either for the sake of peace or because of the difficulties of the task, he finally gave up. His proposals, however, continued to exert a profound influence.^[33]

J J Wettstein

J J Wettstein (1693-1754), despite the fame which he achieved, made a much lesser contribution to textual criticism. He remained rather in the line of the great men of learning of the previous period, though he carried on the fight with more energy and more persistence. As early as 1713, he published a treatise on the variants of the New Testament and travelled throughout Europe for the purpose of collating the manuscripts. Suspected of heresy, he was driven out of Basle and forced to take the refuge in Amsterdam. It was there, in 1751-2, that he published his famous edition of the Greek New Testament (reprinted Graz, 1962). In the Prolegomena, which he had already published in 1730 without indicating the identity of the author, his main aim was to reply to the attacks of his adversaries. As for the text, it was none other than the Elzevir text but it was accompanied by quite a considerable critical apparatus which was fuller than it seemed, for an ingenious system of sigla enabled him to keep it compact.^[34]

B F Westcott & J A Hort

Westcott and Hort, who were responsible for smashing up the concept of 'textus receptus', understandly, had a very tough time.

In 1881, at the same time as Westcott and Hort's edition was brought out, two other volumes were published in Oxford which were to cause some stir: the Revised English version, intended to replace the 1611 Authorized Version, and the Greek text that was the basis of the Revised Version. On the whole, the editors kept close to the text of the Westcott and Hort, who had generously passed on to them the results obtained during the course of their work. For the New Testament alone, this 'revised' text differed in more than 5,000 places from the textus receptus.

An uproar was caused among Anglican churchmen. There were even scholars, such as F H Scriverner, J W Burgon and E Miller, who became involved in the voilent campaign against the Westcott-Hort text. Their arguments were summarized in Scriverner's main work, A plain introduction to the criticism of the New Testament (1894), volume III, pp. 274-312. In France, Abbé P Martin had the unhappy idea of joining in the fight for the defence of the 'textus receptus'. Reasons of a dogmatic nature were put forward first of all. It was not possible that Providence should have allowed the true text of the New Testament to have been lost for nearly fifteen centuries. People talked as if the 'textus receptus' were the traditional text throughout the whole Church. So-called critical motives were then put forward: the mass of manuscripts which bear witness to this text; its early age as established by the supposed testimony of ancient ecclesiastical writers; its character, certified as original despite conflated readings; and, besides all that, the tendency of the 'neutral' text, which was claimed to be semi-Arian, thus causing it to be excluded from public use and thereby protected from ravages of time.

To tell the truth, the partisans of the 'textus receptus' were generally at their strongest when they took the offensive. The argued that the Westcott-Hort text could not be taken as traditional either, for it represented only a limited region, namely Egypt; it had none of the older ecclesiastical authors among its witnesses; it bore clear marks of revision. But these attacks in no way established the primitive character of the 'Syrian' text, and it was this argument which quickly claim to settle the debate, against the 'textus receptus'. Subsequently, from time to time, there were some obscure pleas raised in its favour. Today, it seems that this notorious text is now dead, it is hoped for ever.^[35]

Bruce Metzger elaborates:

It was perhaps not surprising that Westcott and Hort's total rejection of the claims of the Textus Receptus to be the original text of the New Testament should have been viewed with alarm by many churchmen. During the closing decades of the nineteenth century the traditional text found a doughty defender in the person of John W. Burgon (1813 - 88), Dean of Chichester. He has been described as 'a High-churchman of the old school' who became notorious as 'a leading champion of lost causes and impossible beliefs; but the vehemence of his advocacy somewhat impaired its effect'. His conservatism can be gauged from a sermon he preached at Oxford in 1884 in which he denounced the higher education of 'young women as young men' as 'a thing inexpedient and immodest'; the occasion was the admission of women to university examinations!

The publication in 1881 of the Revised Version of the King James or Authorized Version of 1611 aroused Burgon's indignation not only on the score of its unidiomatic English, but even more because the Revisers had adopted an underlying Greek text substantially identical with that of Westcott and Hort. In a series of three learned articles in the London Quarterly Review, which were reprinted in a volume entitled The Revision Revised (London, 1883), Burgon used every rhetorical device at his disposal to attack both the English Revision and the Greek Testament of Westcott and Hort. Burgon's argument was basically theological and speculative. As an ardent high-churchman he could not imagine that, if the words of Scripture had been dictated by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, God would not have providentially prevented them from being seriously corrupted during the course of their transmission. Consequently it was inconceivable to Burgon that the Textus Receptus, which had been used by the Church for centuries, could be in need of the drastic revision which Westcott and Hort had administered to it.^[36]

Even to this day they are condemned as 'heretics'. See Heresies of Westcott & Hort.

It conclusion, it is quite clear that the Church did not like the idea of seeing the variant readings and abandonment of 'textus receptus' which was revered throughout the Christian world as the 'inerrant' word of God. The abandonment of 'textus receptus' overthrew the doctrine of inerrancy of the scriptures at hand. It was replaced by the inerrancy of the hypothetical 'original' manuscript.

Conclusions

We have discussed the response of Muslims and Christians to the textual criticism of the Qur'an and the Bible. Muslims have always been careful of how the Qur'an should be read and written. Detailed rules were formulated to achieve the transmission both orally and written.

The Christian Bible on the other hand did not have any such rules and had to live a life of 'living text' which was constantly changing at the whims and fancies of the scribes and the leaders of the Church. And naturally when textual criticism was applied, the Church was up in arms. Very soon it was realized that the beast of textual criticism is here to stay. And the modern day Christians missionaries boastfully say, "Who is afraid of textual criticism?"

And Allah knows best.

Other Articles Related To The Textual Reliability Of The Bible

Critical Text Of The New Testament: Methodology & Implications

Church Tradition & The Textual Integrity Of The Bible

Textual Reliability Of The New Testament

Extracts From The Book How We Got Our Bible

References

[1] Bruce M Metzger, The Text Of The New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption & Restoration, 1992, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 186-206.

[2] Op.Cit,. p. 195 (See footnotes).

[3] Arthur Jeffery, Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Qur'an: The Old Codices, 1937, Leiden, E J Brill, pp. 17-18.

[4] Bernard Lewis, Islam In History, 1993, Open Court Publishing, p. 104-105.

[5] Andrew Rippin (Editor), Approaches of The History of Interpretation of The Qur'an, 1988, Clarendon Press, Oxford, p. 44.

[6] M A S Abdel Haleem, "Qur'anic Orthography: The Written Representation Of The Recited Text Of The Qur'an", 19xx, Islamic Quarterly, p. 173.

[7] Nabia Abbott, The Rise of The North Arabic Script & Its Kur'ânic Development, 1939, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, See pp. 59-91 for the discussion of the manuscripts at pp. VIII-XXXIII.

[8] Nabia Abbott, Op.Cit, p. 84.

[9] M A S Abdel Haleem, Op.Cit, p. 172.

[10] Arthur Jeffery, The Qur'an As Scripture, 1952, Russell F Moore Company Inc., New York, p. 103.

[11] Muhammad Hamidullah, Khutubat-e-Bahawalpur, 1401AH, Islamic University, Bahawalpur, Pakistan, pp. 15-16.

[12] François Déroche, The Abbasid Tradition: Qur'ans Of The 8th To The 10th Centuries AD, 1992, Oxford University Press, See from p. 32-54.

[13] Estelle Whelan, "Writing The Word Of God: Some Early Qur'an Manuscripts & Their Milieux, Part I", 1990, Ars Orientalis, 20, p. 115.

[14] Estelle Whelan, Op.Cit, p. 117.

[15] I Mendelsohn, "The Columbia University Copy Of The Samarqand Kufic Qur'an", 1940, The Moslem World, p. 357-358.

[16] Arthur Jeffery & I Mendelsohn, "The Orthography Of The Samarqand Qur'an Codex", 1942, Journal Of The American Oriental Society, Volume 62, pp. 175-195.

[17] Ahmad von Denffer, ^cUlûm al-Qur'an, 1994, The Islamic Foundation, p. 62.

[18] George Arthur Buttrick (Ed.), The Interpreter's Dictionary Of The Bible, Volume 4, 1962 (1996 Print), Abingdon Press, Nashville, pp. 594-595 (Under "Text, NT").

[19] Op.Cit,, p. 599 (Under "Text, NT").

[20] Bruce M Metzger, The Canon Of The New Testament: Its Origin, Significance & Development, 1997, Clarendon Press, Oxford, pp. 72-73.

[21] David Noel Freedman (Ed.), The Anchor Bible Dictionary On CD-ROM, 1997, New York: Doubleday (CD-ROM Edition by Logos Research Systems), (Under "Textual Criticism, NT").

[22] Kurt Aland & Barbara Aland, The Text Of The New Testament, 1995, William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, p. 69.

[23] Op.Cit,, p. 93.

[24] D C Parker, The Living Text Of The Gospels, 1997, Cambridge University Press, p. 3.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Aland & Aland, The Text Of The New Testament,Op.Cit, p. 34.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Aland & Aland, The Text Of The New Testament,Op.Cit, p. 29.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Bruce M Metzger, The Text Of The New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption & Restoration, Op.Cit, p. 108.

[31] Ibid.

[32] Op.Cit,, p. 110.

[33] Leon Vaganay & Christian-Bérnard Amphoux, An Introduction To New Testament Textual Criticism, 1991, Cambridge University Press, p. 139.

[34] Op.Cit,, pp. 140-141.

[35] Op.Cit,, pp. 151-152.

[36] Bruce M Metzger, The Text Of The New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption & Restoration, Op.Cit, pp. 135-136.

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Bible/Text/textcriticism.html 4/1/03 10:46:38 AM

The New Testament Manuscript Tradition

Versus The Tradition Of The Old Testament & The Qur'an

A few words are required to compare and contrast the manuscript traditions of New Testament, Old Testament and the Qur'an. Since we have already seen that there is not a single sentence uniform in the New Testament manuscript tradition, the New Testament text is described euphemistically as the 'living text', i.e., which developed freely. Kurt and Barbara Aland say:

Further they compare and contrast the New Testament with the Old Testament as well as the Qur'an. The 'living text' of the New Testament is

in contrast to the Hebrew Old Testament and other oriental traditions such as the Koran, where an almost letter-perfect transcription was the rule.^[23]

It is to remembered that the Old Testament also suffers from the problems of textual reliability. A quick comparison between the readings of the Masoretic Text and the Dead Sea Scrolls show difference. This, of course, is a different topic of discussion.

Commenting on the transmission of the Qur'an, John Burton says:

The method of transmitting the Qur'an from one generation to the next by having the young memorise the oral recitation of their elders had mitigated somewhat from the beginning the worst perils of relying solely on written records . . .^[24]

What is quite clear is that the texts which relied primarily on the oral transmission such as the Hebrew Old Testament and the Qur'an fare far better than the Greek New Testament which relied on the written records for its transmission. Jerome complained of the copyists who

write down not what they find but what they think is the meaning; and while they attempt to rectify the errors of others, they merely expose their own.^[25]

Hence this is where the textual reliability of the New Testament goes down the drain. In the case of the Hebrew Old Testament and the Qur'an almost letter-perfect transmission was the rule whereas in the Greek New Testament had to satisfy itself with the euphemism of 'living text'and still calling it as unchanging and inerrant word of God!

And finally the conclusions!

Conclusions

It is pretty clear that the 'original' reading of the New Testament books is not restored; Well, we do not know what the 'original' reading is at the first place.
The absurd claim that the Bible's literal text is restored to 99.8% is false as a quick comparison of the critical editions have shown above. The comparative study of the critical editions show a mere 63% agreement of the variant free verses not taking into consideration the orthographical differences.
As far as the claim that the Bible being the word of God and its inerrancy is concerned, the less we talk about it, the better. This is because we do not have the 'original' text but myriad of imperfect, often divergent manuscripts from where the 'original' text has to extracted by a committee of humans! Even worse, the 'best' reading is decided by voting!!
It is safe to say that we neither have Original Text nor its faithful restoration. This hold true for Textus Receptus (i.e., the Received Text) of the New Testament.

Other Articles Related To The Textual Reliability Of The Bible

Critical Text Of The New Testament: Methodology & Implications

Church Tradition & The Textual Integrity Of The Bible

Who Is Afraid Of Textual Criticism?

The Multivalence Of The Term "Original Text" In New Testament Textual Criticism

Extracts From The Book How We Got Our Bible

References

[1] George Arthur Buttrick (Ed.), The Interpreter's Dictionary Of The Bible, Volume 4, 1962 (1996 Print), Abingdon Press, Nashville, pp. 594-595 (Under "Text, NT").

[2] Ibid, p. 599 (Under "Text, NT").

[3] Bruce M Metzger, The Canon Of The New Testament: Its Origin, Significance & Development, 1997, Clarendon Press, Oxford, pp. 72-73.

[4] David Noel Freedman (Ed.), The Anchor Bible Dictionary On CD-ROM, 1997, New York: Doubleday (CD-ROM Edition by Logos Research Systems), (Under "Textual Criticism, NT").

[5] George Arthur Buttrick (Ed.), The Interpreter's Dictionary Of The Bible, Volume 1, p. 595 (Under "Text, NT").

[6] Bruce M Metzger, The Text Of The New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption & Restoration, 1992, Oxford University Press, New York, p. 195 (See footnotes).

[7] David Noel Freedman (Ed.), The Anchor Bible Dictionary On CD-ROM, (Under "Textual Criticism, NT").

[8] Bruce M Metzger, The Text Of The New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption & Restoration, Op.Cit, p. 186-206.

[9] Kurt Aland & Barbara Aland, The Text Of The New Testament: An Introduction To The Critical Editions & To The Theory & Practice Of Modern Text Criticism, 1995, William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, p. 29.

[10] Ibid.

[11] D C Parker, The Living Text Of The Gospels, 1997, Cambridge University Press, p. 3.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Aland & Aland, The Text Of The New Testament,Op.Cit, p. 33.

[14] Ibid, p. 34

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid, pp. 34-35.

[17] Parker, The Living Text Of The Gospels,Op.Cit, p. 131.

[18] Ibid, p. 129.

[19] Aland & Aland, The Text Of The New Testament, p. 6.

[20] Ibid, p. 4. See footnotes also.

[21] Ibid, p. 19.

[22] Aland & Aland, The Text Of The New Testament, p. 69.

[23] Ibid, p. 93.

[24] John Burton, An Introduction To The Hadith, 1994, Edinburgh University Press, p. 27.

[25] Bruce M Metzger, The Text Of The New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption & Restoration, Op.Cit, p. 195 (See footnotes).

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Bible/Text/Bibaccuracy.html#5 4/1/03 10:49:08 AM

Burton, Wansbrough & The 'Logic' Of Christian Missionaries

M S M Saifullah, Jason W Hannan, & Elias Karîm

Last Updated: 8th June 1999

Assalamu-alaikum wa rahamtullahi wa barakatuhu:

The Christian missionaries have an objection to the statement of John Burton's startling conclusion at the end of his book that says:

What we have today in our hands is the Mushaf of Muhammad.^[1]

According to the Christian missionaries:

But there is a problem with using this statement. Every conclusion is only as good as the basic assumptions and presuppositions it is derived from. If my set of axioms are logically incompatible we might as well forget all conclusions derived from them. And that is the blunder many Muslims have committed when quoting Burton.

As long as you consider the Sahih Hadith collections as an authoritative source, you cannot possibly refer to Burton as evidence without losing intellectual integrity. Make sure your results are derived from a consistent presuppositional basis.

The Christian missionaries have fantasized that the Qur'ân we read today is not the same Qur'ân that Muhammad^(P) left, an obvious attempt to imitate the Muslim criticism of the Bible. Hence, diligently following the dictum: I will be in your dreams if you can be in mine. However, the question is whether or not these missionaries have taken the time to consider the repercussions of such actions. A simple reflection upon the logic and intentions of their ideas reveals a very sinister theme. For starters, the Muslim has a basis for the textual criticism applied to the Bible: the Muslim states that the Bible is mostly a collection of corrupted accounts of certain events of history. Had the accounts been accurate, the Muslim would accept them. However, modern New Testament scholarship has quite candidly emphasized its textual corruption, which only strengthens the Muslim's belief on this issue. There are no fabulous conspiracy theories from the Muslims. This is not the case with Christian missionaries and their baseless attacks on the Qur'ân. Despite the conclusions of the vast majority of orientalists, Christian missionaries still insist on the authority of a few isolated conspiracy theorists. Should the textual integrity of the Qur'ân be proven to them with out a shred of doubt, it would still not change their minds as to the truth of the Qur'ânic message. This is indisputably a perverse attempt at debunking a Muslim's faith rather than a genuine pursuit of the truth.

It is to be said that the Christian missionaries' quoting of the sources/references is based on a marriage of convenience. Any source which is anti-Islamic or that says the Qur'ân is 'corrupted' and 'borrowed' from the Judeo-Christian sources is good and 'logical'. A good example is the Christian missionary use of the book of (or rather 'Gospel' of) Tisdall^[2] which has lots to say about the 'sources' of the Qur'ân. The 'logic' of this book is that if a similarity is shown between the Qur'ân and an outside source, the former has borrowed from the latter. Logically, similarity does not imply borrowing. It could even mean that outside source, e.g., God is the source of the Qur'ân. This, of course, is unacceptable to the Christian missionary's 'logic'. The issue of 'logic' and 'intellectual integrity' comes only when anything that contradicts their pre-conceived ideas.

Tisdall's book does not make an effort to show the presence of such a source in Arabia or the people who taught Muhammad^(P). But the 'logic' still is that Muhammad^(P) borrowed even though they can't show the evidence for borrowing.

Regarding the issue of what Burton had said above concerning the Qur'ân, the 'logic' of the missionaries is that we should accept his premises that, i.e., rejection of the traditional sources concerning the origin of the Qur'ân as forgeries. The Muslims, therefore, can't use Burton's thesis without accepting the issue that the Islamic sources are forgeries.

The issue here is that the Islamic sources say that the Qur'ân as being read today is same as what Muhammad^(P) recited. This, of course, is unacceptable to the Christian missionaries. Now when Burton rejects the Islamic sources as forgeries and still declares that the Qur'ân that we have in our hands is same as that of Muhammad^(P), it is still unacceptable to the missionaries. The reason of non-acceptance in both these cases is not that of 'logic'. It has more to do with a pre-conceived notion of showing that the Qur'ân is not the same throughout the history even if it takes to surpass all the limits of logic.

The Christian missionaries have used the service of a Mr. Andreas Goerke. A point needs to be made on Christian missionaries and Goerke's logic: Goerke concludes his dissertation:

"[Burton's] assumptions seem to be rather arbitrary to me. I didn't find his argument convincing that all hadiths on this subject were forged and not a single hint survived of what really happened".

Brilliant conclusion, but to the missionaries' ill fate. Attempting to debunk the authenticity of the Qur'ân by handing the Muslims a double edged-sword, he didn't realize that he gave them the handle instead. If Burton has concluded that the textual integrity of the Qur'ân can be proven without any of the hadîths, and if Mr. Goerke rejects the notion that all of the hadîths were forged, then what is Goerke defending? Answer: Hadîths, the "premises", which support the Muslim belief in the first place. So, where does this leave the missionaries? Back in the cradle.

It must be said that the Christian missionaries have developed a very poor habit of adopting unknown individuals from the Internet and basing the most pretentious ideas on their fragile statements. They have invented their own academic convention of using Internet newsgroup postings, of all silly resources, as a scholastic basis upon which to parade their attacks on the Qur'ân. This bizarre attempt at vindicating their argument, by relying on some newsgroup posting, is only insulting to themselves and any unfortunate individuals who follow in their footsteps.

The missionaries have attempted to demonstrate for us their own exceptional skills in geometric reasoning,

Every conclusion is only as good as the basic assumptions and presuppositions it is derived from. If my set of axioms [is] logically incompatible, we might as well forget all conclusions derived from them.

Their mentor seems to have been Mr. Goerke,

Well, accepting Mr. Burton's conclusions implies accepting his premises.

A beautiful idea. Since the missionaries introduced the principles of syllogistic argumentation into this particular discussion, why don't they maintain rational integrity and apply such logic to all points in the discussion? Mr. Goerke began his argument,

if I remember correctly...

Is this how we begin a foundational argument? Can't the fellow at least provide us with a genuine list of quotations and references to verify? No discussion based on Goerke's memory of unreferenced statements should be open for entertainment. No one should be at liberty to even bother.

We will briefly mention here the Christian missionaries' fatal attraction to John Wansbrough, whose methodology is very similar to that of John Burton.

Wansbrough & Burton: A Tale Of Two Conspiracy-Mongers

Wansbrough suggested an alternate version to the traditional Islamic account of the collection and composition of the Qur'ân. John Burton, a former student of Wansbrough, was occupied with the same question at the same time and his very different conclusions appeared in the same year, i.e.,1977. Burton argued that the Qur'ân had been collected and composed in the life time of Muhammad^(P). Wansbrough, on the other hand, said that the Qur'ân did not get canonized until 800CE. Both reject the traditional accounts of the process in which the text was assembled, and both rely heavily on speculation as the basis of their opinions. The Christian missionaries, who love to talk about 'logic' and 'intellectual integrity', surprisingly enough, use Wansbrough's thesis without compunctions and have nothing to say about the his methodology. Thus, 'logic' and 'intellectual integrity' are conveniently forgotten when the conclusions suit their scheme.

The theories that emerge from John Wansbrough's analysis are, in his own words "conjectural"^[3], "provisional"^[4] and "tentative and emphatically provisional"^[5]. Nevertheless, the implications are enormous: neither the Qur'ân nor Islam are the products of Muhammad^(P) or even Arabia. During the early Arab expansion beyond Arabia, there is no evidence that the conquerors were Muslim. Almost 200 years later "early" Muslim literature began to be written by the Mesopotamian clerical elite. The implication may be that the hitherto secular polity discovered and adopted a new movement which, though a non-Jewish, non-Christian movement, was a product of Judeo-Christian milieu. This movement and its history were soon Arabicized. The Qur'ân however took somewhat longer to canonize - not until circa 800 CE. Most formidable is the conclusion, not stated explicitly but inescapable from Wansbrough's analysis, that the entire Muslim tradition about the early history of the text of the Qur'ân is a pious forgery.

Conclusions

Simply stated, Wansbrough's reconstruction of the early Islamic history is based on a massive conspiracy. So, if that is what Christian missionaries believe then they have no right to use the hadîth material. Using the Christian missionaries' own statement: There is a problem with using Wanbrough's methodology. Every conclusion is only as good as the basic assumptions and presuppositions it is derived from. If the set of axioms is logically incompatible we might as well forget all conclusions derived from them. And that is the blunder the Christian missionaries have committed when quoting Wansbrough.

Finally, it would be worthwhile to add what Wansbrough thinks about Burton's thesis, The Collection Of The Qur'ân:

This remarkable work is the fruit of many years' study, much discussion, and not a little tenacity. To my persistent efforts at demolition, or at least modification of his thesis, Dr. Burton has reacted by seeking even closer definition and more extensive documentation. Its final form is truly impressive.^[6]

One is also tempted to add the Christian missionaries use of Crone and Cook material to show the rise of Islam.^[7] Crone and Cook inform us that Christianity is an amalgamation of various different cultures, namely Judaism, Roman Imperialism and Hellenism, which clash together to form Christianity, but over time has lost its cohesion and has now fallen apart. The Christian missionaries should now accept this view of history, part and parcel with the one they are now propounding.

And Allah knows best!

Related Articles

Nevo & Negev Inscriptions: The Use & Abuse Of The Evidence

References

[1] John Burton, The Collection Of The Qur'ân, 1977, Cambridge University Press, pp. 239-240.

[2] Rev. W. St. Clair Tisdall, The Original Sources Of The Qur'ân, 1905, Society For The Promotion Of Christian Knowledge, London.

[3] John Wansbrough, Qur'ânic Studies: Sources & Methods Of Scriptural Interpretation, 1977, Oxford University Press, p. xi.

[4] Ibid., p. ix

[5] John Wansbrough, The Sectarian Milieu: Content & Composition Of Islamic Salvation History, 1978, Oxford University Press, p. x.

[6] John Wansbrough, Review of John Burton's The Collection Of The Qur'ân, Bulletin Of The School Of Oriental & African Studies, 1978, Volume 41, p. 370.

[7] P Crone & M Cook, Hagarism: The Making Of The Islamic World, 1977, Cambridge University Press.

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/burton.html 4/1/03 10:51:07 AM

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