The One and the Many: The Early History of the Qur'an 9780300262834

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The One and the Many

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The One and the Many The Early History of the Qur’an FRANÇOIS DÉROCHE Tr a n s l at e d f r o m t h e F r e n c h by Malcolm DeBevoise

New Haven and London

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This work received support from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States through their publishing assistance program and was also published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Philip Hamilton McMillan of the Class of 1894, Yale College. English translation copyright © 2021 by Yale University. Originally published in France as Le Coran, une histoire plurielle: Essai sur la formation du texte coranique, © Editions du Seuil, 2019. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in Minion type by Newgen North America. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2021932816 ISBN 978-0-300-25132-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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To Robert Canuel, in memoriam

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Contents

Preface ix Introduction 1 ONE. The Genesis of the Qur’anic Text and the Sources of Variation 21 T WO. The Qur’an and Orality in the First Decades of Islam 53 THREE. Muslim Tradition on the Early Stages of the Written Transmission of the Qur’an 99 FOUR. The Lesson of the Manuscripts 141 FIV E. Clausulae and the H.adīth of the Seven Ah.ruf 199 Conclusion 230 Glossary 241 Notes 249 Bibliography 283 Illustration Credits 295 Index 297

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Preface

According to the teaching of orthodox Islam, the Qur’an, as it has come down to us, faithfully reproduces the message proclaimed by Muhammad during his apostolate. What can historians say in this connection? What kinds of evidence can they draw upon? For a very long time Muslim tradition was the principal, and sometimes the only, source of information concerning the compilation of the Qur’an and its earliest phases of transmission. Over the last forty years, however, the study of Qur’anic manuscripts produced during the first decades of Islam has thrown new light on the history of the Qur’an’s transmission while at the same time adding to our knowledge of how the text itself was constituted. Aptly enough, then, this book itself grows out of four decades of research on the manuscripts of the Qur’an, fortuitously begun in 1979 at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Little by little, as the years went by and new discoveries accumulated, the scope of my work became enlarged; at the same time, both scholars and general readers became increasingly aware of the need to examine written evidence of the early state of the Qur’anic text more carefully. The fact that documents scarcely later than the death of Muhammad are

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available to us today is quite extraordinary. The testimony of the oldest extant manuscripts, which may be dated, thanks to various methods, to the third quarter of the seventh century, gives additional weight to the traditional view that the Qur’an was put into writing under the caliphate of ‘Uthmān ibn ‘Affān (644–656 CE), without, of course, ruling out the possibility that selective revisions might have been made later. At first my work seemed to hold little promise. When I started out, respected authorities tried to dissuade me from entering into what appeared to them to be a dead end. Certainly I do not apologize for my stubbornness in resisting their advice. I do, however, regret my ignorance, which made the formidable task of inventing a whole new methodology all the more daunting. Only gradually did I come to perceive the vastness and the complexity of a field of research whose exact contours, when I began my work, were for the most part unknown. It must be kept in mind that the study of Qur’anic manuscripts in the West has been plagued by misfortune. A considerable amount of the material that will occupy our attention in the following pages has been accessible in European collections since the mid-nineteenth century. But it was just then that the opinion of a scholar of exceptional talents, Theodor Nöldeke, discouraged anyone who might have made further progress from going forward. One of his students, Gotthelf Bergsträsser, came to understand some years later that a systematic study of ancient copies of the Qur’an was both feasible and desirable, and began to assemble a collection of microfilms of these manuscripts in the 1930s. Sadly, Bergsträsser’s premature death, and the disappearance for a time of the films themselves, soon put an end to this ambition. In the Muslim world, interest in the paleographic aspect and, more precisely, the history of Arab writing, which

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had also been the object of study by illustrious scholars in the West, seems to have been the only reason why research on ancient copies of the Qur’an was undertaken there at all. S.alah. al-dīn al-Munajjid was the most distinguished exponent of this approach. Among specialists in the Qur’anic text, by contrast, the position of the scholars at al-Azhar University in Cairo, who in the early twentieth century produced the edition that, following Régis Blachère, I call the “vulgate,” was perfectly clear: to establish the text, reference should be made exclusively to later treatises concerning various aspects of the Qur’an, and in no case to manuscripts from the earliest years of Islam. But this view has given way to a new attitude. Now that Muslim scholars have begun to publish facsimile editions of ancient copies, the use of these editions for purposes of textual analysis holds out the prospect of fresh advances. The specific characteristics of these manuscripts, which are only a bit later than ‘Uthmān’s time, invite us not only to reconsider what we think we know about the history of the text, but also to inquire into the way it was received and regarded by the earliest Muslim communities. For a long time, as I say, research on the genesis of the Qur’an, and Qur’anic studies more generally, relied almost exclusively on secondary material that Muslim scholars had collected from a very early date. This material, dense and often contradictory, had been profitably studied in the first place by Nöldeke, and then in greater detail by all those who went on to examine the original sources, a growing number of which have been made available to researchers over the past forty years. I gladly acknowledge my debt to the innovative works of scholars such as Viviane Comerro on how the Qur’an came to be written down, Yasin Dutton on the so-called h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, Shady Hekmat Nasser on readings, and Angelika Neuwirth on the composition of the Meccan suras.

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The accounts preserved by Muslim tradition, which not long ago were considered by some Western scholars to be of no value whatsoever to the historian, nonetheless constitute a rich and complex source of insight. Careful analysis of the narratives transmitted by these accounts, and of the chains of transmission that are supposed to guarantee their authenticity, makes it possible to determine their provenance and to judge their evidentiary value. One account in particular, the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, is of special interest in this regard. Recent scholarship has convincingly dealt with a number of questions, among them the date when this account in one of its various versions first came into circulation. Other questions remain to be answered, however. Given that my aim is to treat a large subject of considerable difficulty in a way that will appeal to a broad audience, it seemed to me desirable to concentrate on the results that have so far been obtained, without entering into an extremely technical discussion of the sort that close analysis of chains of transmission requires. The very content of the h.adīth argues forcefully in favor of the view that it must have appeared at an early date, at the latest in the last quarter of the seventh century, but probably before that, for reasons that I discuss in some detail. The chronology of the Qur’anic text—an endlessly disputed topic among specialists—is not a matter of crucial significance for a study such as mine, which is principally concerned with the moment when the nascent Muslim community took it upon itself to preserve and disseminate Muhammad’s message. It is quite true that the argument I make here, that there existed parallel oral and written versions of the Qur’an to which limited changes may have been made over a more or less long period following the initial announcement of its many verses, would require a painstaking refinement of the chronology proposed more than seventy-five years ago by

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Richard Bell in order to be firmly established. But that would form the subject of another book. For the purposes of this one, which is intended for a larger audience than academic experts, I therefore thought it best to retain the conventional distinction, introduced by medieval Muslim scholars and adopted with modifications by Western scholars such as Nöldeke, between Meccan and Medinan periods of revelation. The results of my earlier research were intended for specialists. In this book, which first appeared in a prestigious series edited for Seuil by Pierre Rosanvallon and aimed at a general readership, I have simplified certain aspects of common scholarly usage. Dates are given solely with reference to the Common Era, and not to the date assigned by the Hejiran calendar followed by its Western equivalent. The disadvantage of doing this—not, I trust, a disabling one—is that a Hejiran year generally straddles two years of the Common Era. Furthermore, because I make reference to Muslim tradition, and in particular to h.adīth, the accounts relating to the sayings and deeds of Muhammad that Muslim scholars from the eighth to the tenth centuries meticulously collected, the same information is often found in two or more sources, sometimes with significant differences. Except where such differences bear directly on the argument being developed, I have referred only to a single source. I have also had to make a selection from among the great many elements that make up this immense corpus, whose accounts of events, far from always being consistent with one another, are sometimes actually contradictory. Finally, the very nature of the subject nonetheless makes it necessary to include a rather elaborate scholarly apparatus and to address a certain number of technical questions. I beg the nonspecialist reader’s indulgence. I spoke earlier of the vulgate, one of the canonical versions of the Qur’an (along with between thirteen and twenty-seven

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others, depending on the position one adopts with regard to what constitutes an authorized text). It records the reading of H.afs. (d. 796), which transmitted the teaching of ‘Ās.im (d. 745) and went on to enjoy considerable success, without, however, causing the others to be forgotten. The success of H.afs.’s version, aided by the modern edition that I mentioned a moment ago, has only grown in the interval, to the point that by now it has largely eclipsed the others. It is this version, the vulgate, that I take as a point of reference in what follows, while acknowledging that some parts of the Muslim world nonetheless remain faithful to alternative readings that have been cultivated for centuries. My main concern throughout, in other words, is to examine the various ways in which Muhammad’s message was received in the early years of Islam, and to survey the field that was left open to variation in renderings of the sacred text as a consequence of this. Here the term “variation,” as I understand it, covers all of the divergences met with in the Qur’anic corpus, particularly in the manuscripts, and includes those variants that occur in the text of the Qur’an itself. The English version of this book is substantially the same as the original French edition, except for the addition of a small amount of material—chiefly here and in chapters 4 and 5, but in other places as well—for the sake of clarity. The glossary has been slightly expanded, as a courtesy to nonspecialists, and, for the benefit of scholars, the notes have been augmented and the bibliography correspondingly enlarged. I am greatly indebted to the many persons who, not once but twice, placed their confidence in my ability to carry out the task that I had set for myself. I would like to express my gratitude to the members of the faculty of the Collège de France, who approved my election to that body in 2014 and, before them, my former colleagues in the section of histori-

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cal and philological sciences in the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), who did me the same honor in 1990. All of them gave me the opportunity, free from other distractions, to explore this vast and fascinating domain, the study of which henceforth constitutes a new and very promising direction in research on the Qur’an. I thank also all those who have helped clear the way for me, my students above all, and particularly Hassan Chahdi, whose insights have been especially stimulating. Were it not for the guidance of Innocent Himbaza, Michael Langlois, and Matthieu Richelle, I would have been unable to venture a few comparisons with the Hebrew textual tradition of the Bible; naturally, any errors that may be found are mine, not theirs. I am grateful, too, to Hadiye Gurtmann for having permitted me to reproduce three of her reconstructions of the lower layer of the Sanaa Palimpsest—and hasten to express the hope that her work will soon be accessible to all. The support of the Agence Nationale de la Recherche, through the Franco-German Paléocoran project, has been invaluable in enabling me to consider in greater detail a certain number of points raised by the plural history of the Qur’an. The difficult task of translating this book into English has been carried out with great care by Malcolm DeBevoise, to whom I express my heartfelt gratitude. Last, but not least, I owe much to Nuria, who has accompanied me in this arduous journey every step of the way, with patience and affection. Paris, June 2020

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The One and the Many

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Introduction

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he recitation of the Qur’anic text, above all in a ritual setting, obeys strict rules that, according to orthodox teaching, go back to Muhammad himself and to his Companions. Shady Hekmat Nasser, an authority on this matter, recently reported an anecdote that shows how strongly deviations from this norm are resented: In the late 1990s, a rumor spread in one of the small sunnī neighborhoods in Beirut that the Sheikh of the mosque had become senile. The residents of that small neighborhood had to interrupt the Sheikh right before dawn’s prayers and force him to stop his recitation of the Qur’ān and leave the mosque. One of those residents told me that they could not tolerate the Sheikh’s mockery of God’s holy book; he was reading the Qur’ān in a bizarre manner as if he were imitating the dialect of the shī‘īs in south Lebanon.

As it turns out, the man relied in his recitation on a reading due to H.amza (d. 772), a rather unfamiliar reading today by comparison with the one that H.afs. received from his teacher

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‘Ās.im, whose very widespread acceptance has marginalized all others. I shall come back later to the question of what constitutes a reading (qirā’a). For the moment I will limit myself to pointing out that H.amza’s reading, declared canonical in the early tenth century by a scholar in Baghdad, Ibn Mujāhid (d. 936), has been used by Muslim communities for more than a millennium. Although the incident reported by Nasser is no doubt a consequence of the overwhelming success of H.afs.’s reading, the reaction of the faithful in Beirut cannot fail to recall a scene that, if we are to believe Muslim tradition, took place almost fifteen hundred years earlier. The future second caliph, ‘Umar b. al-Khattāb (d. 644), recounted the following in a h.adīth: I heard Hishām b. H.akīm recite the sura of the Furqān [sura 25] during the lifetime of the Messenger of God. I listened to his recitation and [noticed that] he was reciting according to many h.arfs in which the Messenger of God had never had me recite. I was about to grab hold of him in [the middle of his] prayer, but I waited till he had recited the final salutations. When he had finished, I seized him by his robe and said: “Who taught you to recite the sura which I have just heard you recite?” He said: “The Messenger of God taught me to recite it.” I said: “You are lying. By God, the Messenger of God himself taught me to recite this sura which I have just heard you recite.” So I hurriedly took him to the Messenger of God and said: “O Messenger of God, I have heard this man recite the sura of the Furqān in h.arfs in which you never taught me to recite it, and it was you yourself who taught me to recite the sura of the

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Furqān.” . . . The Messenger of God said: “Let him go, ‘Umar; and you, Hishām, recite.” So he recited for him the recitation I had heard him recite and the Messenger of God said: “It was sent down like that.” Then the Messenger of God said: “[Now] you recite, ‘Umar,” and I recited it as the Messenger of God had taught me. Then the Messenger of God said: “It was sent down like that.” Then the messenger of God said: “Indeed, this Qur’ān was sent down in seven h.arfs. You should recite whichever comes easily to you.” Putting aside the fact that in the one case it is a question of qirā’a and in the other of h.arf, the two accounts show that detection of a divergence in the recitation of the Qur’anic text has long given rise to suspicions of an attempt to undermine  the integrity of the divine word. As Muh.ammad Mus.tafā al-A‘z.amī points out, the position of Muslim dogma with regard to the Qur’an is unambiguous: “That the ‘Uthmani Mus.h.af contains the unadulterated Words of Allāh as sectionned into 114 surahs, is the firm belief of the Muslim umma; anyone eschewing this view is an outcast.” Whereas the two preceding accounts imply perceptible variations in oral performance, the definition given by alA‘z.amī refers to a scripture, the ‘Uthmānic mus.h.af. Mus.h.af (pl. mas.āh.if) is the Arabic word Muslims use exclusively to designate a copy of the Qur’an. The copy in question here is characterized as ‘Uthmānic with reference to the third caliph, ‘Uthmān b. ‘Affān (d. 656), who came to power in 644, twelve years after the death of Muhammad, and reigned for another twelve years, until rebels attacked his home in Medina and put him to death. He will figure prominently in what follows, because Muslim tradition attributes to him responsibility for the

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writing down of the Qur’an, which permitted the young community of believers, from a very early date, to have a standard text enjoying official approval. We have no way of knowing whether this crucial event actually occurred as a direct result of the caliph’s initiative; as we will see, prior undertakings to produce a written version are mentioned by Arab Muslim sources. What gave ‘Uthmān’s sponsorship its distinctive quality was a desire to promote the dissemination of a single authorized version of the Qur’an with respect to which the orthodox tradition of Islam guarantees two things: that it was this version, and none other, that was revealed to Muhammad; and that this version, and none other, is the one found in physical copies of the Qur’an (mas.āh.if) from the seventh century until the present day. ‘Uthmān is credited with having sent to the major military outposts of the empire copies of the text that had been made at his own direction, known as the mas.āh.if al-ams.ār (garrison-town Qur’ans), whose authority, according to Muslim tradition, determined the subsequent course of Qur’anic transmission. Nothing seems to have predestined ‘Uthmān, who was descended from an influential Meccan family belonging to the Umayyad clan, to play such a momentous role. We know that his embrace of Islam owed its importance to the fact that he was the first notable from Mecca to become a follower of Muhammad. But ‘Uthmān himself, though his piety cannot be doubted, has left the impression of someone who was remarkable mainly for a certain nonchalance bordering on what would later be called dandyism. His election to the caliphate, in succession to ‘Umar, an energetic leader who died at the hands of an assassin, seems to have been the result not so much of any general agreement about his own suitability as of the rejection of the other candidates, for one reason or another, by the Companions who made up the Council. Once in

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power, ‘Uthmān distinguished himself by his nepotism, perhaps because he sought to profit from an expanding network of provincial governors whose loyalty was assured by family ties. The decision that is attributed to him by Muslim tradition, of imposing a version of the Qur’an that he had ordered to be compiled, was at any rate only one of several grievances shared by those who rebelled against him. The fundamental purpose of the credo summarized by al-A‘z.amī, which refers to the ‘Uthmānic text, is to affirm an absolute authenticity that rests on the absence of variation in relation to the original revelation received from Allah by Muhammad. Quite obviously the question of authenticity is something that all religions must address. But the need is particularly acute for those religions in which scripture holds a central place—and Islam is one of them, notwithstanding the great value it places on orality. We are dealing here, then, with two things at once: the existence of an original document, and the obligation that falls upon believers of absolute fidelity in the transmission of its text. As Reuven Firestone points out, recalling an insight due to Rodney Stark, “in order for a new religion to succeed . . . it must among other things retain a cultural continuity with the religious systems of the societies in which it appears while at the same time maintaining a certain level of tension with its surrounding environment.” It must also demonstrate its authenticity by “incorporating recognizable realia of previous religions” and identifying itself “with authentic religion [while] at the same time attract[ing] followers by establishing its positive uniqueness.” The profound reverence that Muslims show for the text of the Qur’an is associated with the exalted status of the Qur’anic message—what al-A‘z. amī calls the “unadulterated words of Allāh.” The utter conviction of believers makes absolute fidelity to the primary text altogether essential: they accept that

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printed versions of the Qur’an approved by the religious authorities unerringly reproduce the words of an original heavenly document—a divine model or template, of which I shall have more to say later—except for slight variations, recognized by tradition, that in no way affect their authenticity. The dogma of the Qur’an’s uncreated character, elaborated in the first centuries of Islam and thereafter immune from further challenge, ruled out the possibility that the text might deviate from its model over the course of time. Variation or modification of any kind was therefore unimaginable. Variation and modification nonetheless constitute a theme that the Qur’anic text developed, with respect to both the revelation granted to Muhammad and prior revelations, in response to situations that arose at the time of Muhammad’s apostolate. In identifying Jews and Christians as “Peoples of the Book,” perhaps to the point of confusing the two, the Qur’an stands historically in a peculiar relation to the Old and New Testaments. This explains why the question of authenticity came to be posed by Islam in a new and specific way. The Qur’an makes abundant reference to the Torah and the Gospels, while at the same time accusing both Jews and Christians of having falsified the scriptures that were confided to them and, in this way, of having compromised their authenticity. Owing to their highly allusive character, the relevant Qur’anic passages suggest that Muhammad’s listeners had more than a passing acquaintance with Hebrew and Christian doctrine. This could readily be explained, of course, by the presence in Medina of three Jewish tribes from whom the Muslim faithful may be presumed to have learned of biblical teachings. And yet revelations granted prior to the flight—literally, exodus or emigration (hijra’, anglicized as “hegira” or “hejira”)—of Muhammad and his community from Mecca to Medina in 622 already contained a great many references to

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Judeo-Christian tradition. They are better understood today in the light of archaeological and epigraphic discoveries made in recent years. The penetration of the Jewish and Christian religions throughout the whole of the Arabian Peninsula on the eve of Islam is now firmly established, and accounts for the relative familiarity among peoples there, not only with accounts from both the Old and New Testament, but also with the Apocrypha. This penetration took place at a time when the effects of the rivalry between Byzantium and Persia were felt everywhere in the Near East—an echo of which is found in sura 30, al-Rūm (the Romans), according to one ancient exegesis. Muhammad’s preaching, which began around 610 in Mecca, nonetheless encountered opposition at first from a local pagan cult about which we still know very little. Accordingly, we are led also to inquire into the nature of the “age of ignorance” (jāhiliyya) that later sources associated with preIslamic Arabia. The community of believers, initially a small circle of Muhammad’s family members (his wife, Khadīja, and his cousin and son-in-law, ‘Alī [d. 660]), became enlarged with the allegiance of figures such as Abū Bakr (d. 634) and ‘Umar, who were to be the first two caliphs after his death. ‘Uthmān’s adherence to the new faith was a major landmark in the early history of Islam, as I have already said, but it did not prevent the rise of hostility toward Muhammad and his followers in Mecca, forcing them to take refuge in Medina, where they came into direct contact with Hebrew scripture. Relations with leaders of the local Jewish community worsened in the wake of their refusal to recognize that certain points of Muslim doctrine for which Muhammad claimed to find authority in the Old Testament are in fact discussed there. While Muhammad’s power grew in proportion to his successes, the situation of the Jewish tribes became ever more precarious:

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one was completely expelled from Medina; the men of another were put to death and the women and children enslaved. It is scarcely surprising that the Gospels and the Qur’an should differ in respect of their attitude toward the Hebrew Bible. Whereas the Gospels exhibit a kind of continuity with Judaism, calling attention to passages in the Old Testament that anticipate and legitimize Jesus’s message, the accusations brought by Islam against Jews and Christians are repeated and amplified in a group of Qur’anic verses from the Medinan period, at a moment when the disagreements between Muhammad and the Jewish tribes of Medina had become increasingly pronounced. The corpus of verses dealing with the question of the modification—and hence falsification—of the biblical text is extensive. A few representative passages will give some idea of the seriousness of the malfeasance with which the Jews were charged: But the wrongdoers substituted a different word from the one they had been given. So, because they persistently disobeyed, We sent a plague down from the heavens upon the wrongdoers. (Q. 2:59) So can you [believers] hope that such people will believe you, when some of them used to hear the words of God and then deliberately twist them, even when they understood them? When they meet the believers, they say, “We too believe.” But when they are alone with each other they say, “How could you tell them about God’s revelation [to us]? They will be able to use it to argue against you before your Lord! Have you no sense?” Do they not know that God is well aware of what they conceal and what they reveal? Some of them are uneducated, and know the Scripture only through wish-

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ful thinking. They rely on guesswork. So woe to those who write something down with their own hands and then claim, “This is from God,” in order to make some small gain. Woe to them for what their hands have written! Woe to them for all that they have earned. (Q. 2:75–79) Some Jews distort the meaning of [revealed] words: they say, “We hear and disobey,” and “Listen,” [adding the insult] “May you not hear,” and ‘Ra‘ina [Look at us], twisting it abusively with their tongues so as to disparage religion. (Q. 4:46) But they broke their pledge, so We distanced them [from Us] and hardened their hearts. They distort the meaning of [revealed] words and have forgotten some of what they were told to remember: you [Prophet] will always find treachery in all but a few of them. Overlook this and pardon them: God loves those who do good. (Q. 5.13) [The impious] have no grasp of God’s true measure when They say, “God has sent nothing down to a mere mortal.” Say, “Who was it who sent down the Scripture, which Moses brought as a light and a guide to people, which you made into separate sheets, showing some but hiding many? You were taught things that neither you nor your forefathers had known.” (Q. 6:91) In this last example, the portion of the text that I have emphasized by italics seems to correspond to an adaptation of the passage later than 622, the year Muhammad took up residence in Medina. The allusion to the rolls (sheets) of the Torah is one of a number of successively more precise references

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to the materiality of the Hebrew scriptures, a result, as I say, of direct contact with the Jewish community in Medina following the arrival of Muhammad and his followers there. The accusations made against Jews and Christians resolved a problem of authenticity that this acquaintance had made manifest, namely, how to explain the fact that neither the Torah nor the Gospels mentions Muhammad even though the Qur’an insists, to the contrary, that his coming as a prophet had been announced there. Thus, in a verse subsequent to the emigration from Mecca to Medina, the reward of everlasting life is promised to Jews “who believe in Our Revelations; who follow the Messenger—the unlettered prophet they find described in the Torah that is with them, and in the Gospel” (Q. 156–57). More generally, how are we to account for other points of disagreement between the Torah and the Gospels, on the one hand, and the Qur’an, on the other? The stress laid upon the dangers of modification and falsification was intended to forestall controversies of this type. But it also gave rise to a suspicion of inauthenticity that was liable at any moment to be turned back against the Qur’anic text itself—something that, in the event, came to pass more than once. I shall return to this topic in a moment. The theme of falsification, which, as we saw earlier, first emerged in Medina at a time of confrontation with an older faith, is a constant preoccupation of commentators still today. Al-A‘z.amī, whom I quoted in this connection at the outset, quite deliberately uses the word “unadulterated.” What distinguishes the Qur’an from the scriptures of the Peoples of the Book, in the minds of Muslim believers, is precisely this, that Jews and Christians perverted the message that had been confided to them, whereas the Qur’an alone remains the faithful image of a heavenly “preserved Tablet,” a notion that we will examine shortly. This claim renders Islam particularly sensi-

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tive to any suggestion that variants may have contaminated the revealed text. For the other religions, truthfulness of the divine message is in no way compromised by variations in its statement; in the case of Muslim dogma, in the formulation given it by al-A‘z.amī, for example, for whom variation is unthinkable beyond very strict limits, no such coexistence is possible. Thus the very idea that Ibn Mas‘ūd (d. 653/654), a Companion of Muhammad whose name will reappear more than once in what follows, might have had a version of the Qur’an in which  the order of the suras was different or, worse still, that three suras were deliberately omitted from it, is so repugnant to al-A‘z. amī that he does not hesitate simply to invent out of whole cloth a way of causing incongruities of this sort to disappear. The problem of authenticity is nonetheless not restricted in the Qur’an to the question of falsification. Already during the Meccan period, those who refused to credit the divine inspiration of Muhammad’s mission challenged the origins of his teaching, in particular, charging that it consisted of nothing more than “ancient fables” that had been dictated to him (Q. 25:5). Well before the theme of falsification had been developed in connection with the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, then, the message transmitted by Muhammad had seen its own authenticity called into question. The reference during this same Meccan period to a divine text, of which the Qur’an was a faithful copy, might be interpreted as constituting a reply to Islam’s earliest critics. The theme of divine inspiration nonetheless does not occupy as prominent a place in the Qur’anic text as the theme of falsification; nor are its contours nearly as well defined. Only later did commentators take it upon themselves to give it a clearer form by reconciling apparently discrepant verses that nonetheless seemed to them to imply the same thing. Their explication relied mainly on a verse at the

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Introduction

end of sura 85 that contains the most exact formulation of the idea of a heavenly archetype: Have you [not] heard the stories of the forces of Pharaoh and Thamud? Yet still the disbelievers persist in denial. God surrounds them all. This is truly a glorious preaching [Qur’ān] [written] on a preserved [mah.fūz.] Tablet [lawh.]. (Q. 85:17–22) I have emphasized in italics the last two verses (21–22), which are most immediately of concern to us. They are slightly at variance with the preceding ones of this sura, which seems to group together various ancient elements and which is attributed to the Meccan period. Furthermore, the text can be interpreted in two different ways depending on whether the adjective mah.fūz. is associated with the word Qur’ān or with the noun lawh.: in the one case, it is a question of a preserved Qur’ān on a Tablet; in the other, of a Qur’ān on a preserved Tablet. The French translation by Régis Blachère (“Pourtant ceci est une prédication sublime sur une table conservée”), by placing the adjective conservée at the end, retains the possibility of associating it with either the first or the second word. Muslim exegetes argued among themselves over which interpretation should be preferred, but al-T.abarī (d. 923) observed in his commentary on the Qur’an that the difference in meaning was really a matter of little importance, since in either case the Qur’anic text was protected against any alteration or change. This grammatical ambiguity was at all events a minor detail by comparison with the difficulty of interpreting the passage itself. Where was this well-kept document kept? What were its contents? Commentators held that the meaning of these two verses of sura 85 is explicated by the interplay of internal references. These references did not, however, involve

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other instances of the word lawh. (table or tablet), which appears only once in the singular in the Qur’an, in the very passage that concerns us here. In the plural it is encountered on four other occasions: three of them occur in sura 7 as part of a series of verses recalling the story of Moses and the episode of the Tablets of the Law; these therefore bear no relation to the Qur’anic well-kept tablet. The fourth occurrence, in sura 54, refers to Noah and leads us far from any context in which a tablet (or tablets) are associated with a written document. By contrast, an expression employed twice in the Qur’an, umm al-kitāb—literally, “mother of writing”—has been relied on to clarify the meaning of the two problematic verses of sura 85. It figures in the first instance in sura 13, which scholars believe may belong to the third Meccan period. Blachère translates umm less literally as “archetype,” rather than “mother”; M. A. S. Abdel Haleem translates it as “source”: God erases or confirms whatever he will, and the source of Scripture is with him. (Q. 13:39) The second instance occurs at the beginning of sura 43, attributed to the same period: By the Scripture that makes things clear, We have made it a Qur’an in Arabic so that you [people] may understand. It is truly exalted in the Source of Scripture kept with Us, and full of wisdom. (Q. 43:2–4) Finally, in sura 56, which seems to bring together passages composed at different times, there is a series of three brief verses that completes this set of references to a divine original text: [T]his is truly a noble Qur’an, in a protected Record that only the purified can touch . . . (Q. 56:77–79)

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The connections established by medieval exegetes among these various passages are not exempt from difficulties of interpretation themselves. Is it to be understood that the heavenly archetype protects only the Qur’an, or that, as some commentators have argued, it also comprehends the other scriptures revealed prior to the Qur’an? These passages nonetheless call attention to the very close relation that obtains between God and scripture, an association whose evolution during Muhammad’s apostolate has been carefully studied and that no doubt indicates a transformation of the functions of scripture during this period. A third theme present in the Qur’an also has to do with the question of authenticity. The text, as it has come down to us, is not self-evidently the reproduction hic et nunc of the archetype we have just now been considering. According to an account due to the Egyptian polymath Suyūtī (d. 1505), an unidentified Companion wished one night to insert into his prayer a sura he knew well, but then realized he was incapable of remembering the least thing about it; the same thing happened two more times. Still in shock from the experience, he went to Muhammad to find out what had happened to him. The Prophet replied that the passage he seemed to recall had been removed from the memory of all believers during the night. Similar accounts are found in other authors that sometimes involve historical figures such as Ibn Mas‘ūd. These accounts are etiological in nature and are plainly intended to provide a historical basis for the explanation of at least one passage of the revealed text. In the Qur’an, the Arabic root N-S-Kh is associated with the idea of copying or writing; subsequently it is well attested in the Arab manuscript tradition, where the words that designate a manuscript (nuskha) or a script (naskh) derive from it. Of the four occurrences of this root in the Qur’an, two clearly have this sense

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Introduction

15

(I emphasize in italics the corresponding word in the translation that follows): Here is Our record [kitāb] that tells the truth about you: We have been recording everything you do. (Q. 45:29) When Moses’ anger abated, he picked up the Tablets, on which were inscribed guidance and mercy for those who stood in awe of their Lord. (Q. 7:154) But the root in question has a larger sense, and the two other occurrences—both Form 1 verbs—mean “to abrogate,” a term that has acquired a quite specific technical meaning. The first occurrence is in sura 22, which seems to go back to the Meccan period, although it also contains some Medinan verses. The verse that interests us here is surely Meccan: We have never sent any messenger or prophet before you [Muhammad] into whose wishes Satan did not insinuate something, but God removes what Satan insinuates and then God affirms His message [āya]. (Q. 22:52) The second occurrence is found in a thoroughly Medinan passage, in which it is said: Any revelation [āya] We cause to be superseded or forgotten, We replace with something better or similar. (Q. 2:106) This is the most precise statement of the idea that has come down to us, but it is also the most recent. With these four Qur’anic passages Muslim tradition has associated two other verses, in suras 16 and 87, that seem to allude to the notion of divine abrogation:

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When We substitute one revelation for another— and God knows best what He reveals—[the infidels] say, “You are just making it up,” but most of them have no knowledge. (Q. 16:101) [Prophet], We shall teach you [the Qur’an] and you will not forget . . . (Q. 87:6) Forgetting—a consequence of abrogation—therefore becomes part of a process desired and set in motion by God, who deliberately withdraws or removes revelations. The concept of abrogation nonetheless posed problems for theologians. In Q. 2:106, for example, quoted above, it is said that “We replace with something better or similar.” The implied suggestion that one part of the revealed text might be superior to another appeared unacceptable to early commentators. To resolve this difficulty, they proposed that such verses concerned only points of Qur’anic law. But this solution at once ran up against another problem: abrogation did not systematically cause such verses actually to disappear; several verses were retained in the Qur’anic text even though a new revelation had superseded them. The classic example involves passages concerning the consumption of wine. Why should the original verse, which permits it, have been preserved when a verse prohibiting it had subsequently been revealed? This anomaly gave rise to exegetical attempts to explain the coexistence of discordant revelations, a state of affairs that seems all the more surprising when it is set in the more general context of explanations developed in connection with the concept of abrogation. Muslim tradition wavers between two opposed views. On the one hand, some theologians held that a substantial part of the Qur’an might have disappeared. This claim received implicit confirmation, albeit from an extra-Qur’anic source, in the form of a tradition concerning the annual revision to

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Introduction

17

which the text was supposed to have been submitted. In this telling, Muhammad met each year with the angel Gabriel to recite the whole of what had been revealed to him until then, this in accordance with a procedure that was already well established in the transmission of learning in Islam; in the course of their interview, portions of the revelation were excised, yielding a fresh text. This exercise was carried out in the same manner until the year of Muhammad’s death, when the final revision took place twice. Other Muslim scholars rejected the notion of abrogation on the ground that it attributed to God a lack of foresight or discernment with regard to some particular aspect of His own message—a failing that is manifestly incompatible with divine wisdom. This view was upheld in the late ancient period by Abū Muslim al-Is.fahānī (d. 903), an exponent of Mu‘tazilism. Other commentators sought to dispose of the problem by making a distinction between abrogation and divine insufficiency (al-badā’), from which it followed that God was in fact aware that a revelation pronounced at a given moment was destined to be abrogated later. The situation is complicated by the fact that, in certain cases, the source of an abrogation is not found in the Qur’anic text itself. H.adīth has preserved verses that were (or would have been) omitted from the Qur’anic corpus, and that in certain cases nonetheless continued to be authoritative. The best known example is the doctrine pertaining to the stoning of adulterers. According to tradition, the revelation in which it occurs was not incorporated in the text because only ‘Umar b. al-Khattāb remembered it. In order for a revelation to be incorporated in the recension that Caliph Abū Bakr had ordered to be made following Muhammad’s death, the testimony of at least two persons was required. Curiously, however, in another case involving a certain Khuzayma b. Thābit (sometimes

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Introduction

identified as Abū Khuzayma b. Khuzayma), a single witness had been sufficient for a verse to be incorporated in this recension. It would appear that ‘Umar, though he was later to be elevated to the caliphate himself, was not thought at the time to have the authority or credibility necessary to justify making a similar exception to the rule. According to the account reported by Ibn H.ajar al-‘Asqalānī (d. 1449), ‘Umar refrained from entering this verse in the margin of the official copy of the Qur’an (or perhaps of his own personal copy) for fear that people would say: “ ‘Umar has added a Qur’anic verse.” The verse in question was eventually recognized as a divine commandment, and the verse (Q. 24:2) that initially had instituted corporal punishment for adulterers was effectively abrogated—while yet being retained in the Qur’anic corpus. There are nonetheless serious doubts about the authenticity of the revelation that ‘Umar is supposed to have remembered. As early as 1919, in volume 2 of the second edition of Geschichte des Qorāns, Friedrich Schwally had pointed out that the formulation differs from Qur’anic style. The key words of the verse about stoning due to ‘Umar, as it has come down to us, are indeed completely absent from the lexicon of the Qur’an; additionally, the text of the verse repeats verbatim an expression that occurs in Q. 5:42, which likewise deals with the question of corporal punishment. Unavoidably, then, in view of all this, the notion of abrogation is complex. Medieval commentators sought to define its theoretical contours more precisely, but still they were unable to reach agreement about a list of abrogated verses. That this form of modification was the result of deliberate divine intervention is explicitly asserted by the Qur’anic text. There can be little doubt that during Muhammad’s apostolate it succeeded in its chief purpose, of accounting for changes in the oral record of the revelations granted to the Prophet, and that it exerted a decisive influence on the way in which the Qur’an was understood by the first generation of Muslims.

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Introduction

19

The authenticity of the Qur’an is repeatedly affirmed in the text itself, if only by its chronic repudiation of criticisms brought against it by unbelievers who saw it as merely a collection of old tales. Looking more closely at the variety of its characteristic themes, we see that some of them (the falsification of prior scriptures, for example) are relatively well defined in the Qur’anic text, whereas others (the heavenly template and abrogation) were clarified in large measure only as a consequence of exegetical analysis during the first centuries of Islam. From the beginning, then, and in the years that followed, very great importance was attached to the idea of an immutable text exclusively and integrally containing the divine word. The scandalous and destabilizing character of the two accounts I mentioned at the outset is therefore readily understood. They show that, from the earliest days of Islam, the detection of variant wordings in the Qur’anic text has troubled believers. One very famous h.adīth, justifying such differences, does not seem to have fully reassured later generations of believers and scholars. Yet how could such variations ever have existed at all? It needs to be kept in mind that the Qur’anic text was transmitted orally in the first instance, a circumstance that Yasin Dutton has incisively examined in this connection. In a complementary way, the ideas that I have been discussing here, which figure—at least in embryonic form—in the text of the Qur’an, sketch the outlines of a referential framework that medieval exegetes subsequently filled in with a view to establishing the authenticity of the text and accounting for a certain type of alteration. The same ideas inspired Muslim scholars of the ancient and early medieval periods to accord considerable importance to the literal rendering of the Qur’an. I mentioned earlier the dogma of the uncreated Qur’an. Here one is bound to recall the belief in the miraculous nature of the Qur’an, which once and for all placed the text outside the sphere of human creation.

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Introduction

A further question: does al-A‘z.amī’s claim regarding the unadulterated Words of Allah, which I quoted at the outset, have a historical basis? Do we have reason to believe that the Qur’anic text was in fact maintained without any alteration other than the abrogations ordained by God, following the announcement of His revelations by Muhammad, or do we have grounds for doubting this claim? There are three ways to approach the question. The first involves the Qur’an itself, in the form known to us today, where we can search for clues about how it changed in the course of its formation. A second way of trying to determine how much variation the text may have undergone proceeds from Muslim tradition, which with regard to the constitution and transmission of the Qur’an, in both its oral and written forms, preserves a considerable amount of evidence whose value must be assessed with caution. Information that comes from Arab sources, it should be emphasized, presents a number of difficulties, not least because reports concerning the time of Muhammad’s apostolate and the early period of Islam appear in later compilations and treatises whose historical trustworthiness has sometimes been strenuously contested. A third way is to examine the most ancient manuscripts of the Qur’an. Unlike other sources, they can be dated with a relatively high degree of confidence. The study of these manuscripts has only recently begun, but their very antiquity—some can be dated to only a few decades following Muhammad’s announcement of the revelations—makes them particularly valuable in judging the state of the text and its variants in the first years of Islam. These manuscripts also make it possible, in combination with the information provided by tradition, to understand more precisely the manner in which the early Muslim community conceived of the Qur’an and the nature of its relationship to the sacred text.

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1 The Genesis of the Qur’anic Text and the Sources of Variation

T

he biography of Muhammad furnishes us, in principle, with a general framework for piecing together the genesis of the Qur’an. Precise details are nonetheless few and far between, and their historical value is uneven. We do not know the year of Muhammad’s birth, for example, though various lines of evidence point to a date around 570. It is hardly surprising that the beginnings of his apostolate remain shrouded in obscurity as well. In Muslim tradition, there is some difference of opinion as to which is the oldest revelation; some commentators argue in favor of sura 74, others of sura 96. Both texts seem to confide a mission to Muhammad. Some claim to find the initial message sent to the Prophet in Q. 74:1–2 (“You, wrapped in your cloak, arise and give warning!”), others in 96:1 (“Read! In the name of your Lord who created”). If we accept an account largely supported by Muslim sources, the angel Gabriel (Jibrīl) appeared for the first time to Muhammad during the month of Ramadān, in 610 or so, when he was about forty years old and had gone into seclusion

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in a mountain cave near Mecca, as it was his habit to do from time to time. This interpretation rests on sura 97, “Night of Glory” (al-Qadr), generally thought to have been the twentyseventh night of Ramadān. In the days and weeks that followed, Muhammad spoke of this experience, and of the messages he continued to receive, only within an intimate circle of family members that included his wife Khadīja, his cousin ‘Alī, and his adoptive son Zayd. They were his first followers. Finally Muhammad decided to make public what had been revealed to him. A small community of believers, people from modest backgrounds on the whole, gradually took shape. We saw earlier that two figures who were destined to play roles of the highest importance, Abū Bakr and ‘Umar, the first two caliphs following the Prophet’s death, were among the earliest adherents of the new faith. But relations with the people of Mecca, and particularly with the city’s aristocracy, became strained as Muhammad ever more vigorously attacked the local pagan divinities, preaching a thorough-going monotheism in opposition to the ancestral polytheism of his fellow Quraysh tribesmen. Winning the allegiance of ‘Uthmān, a member of one of the city’s leading families, did nothing to improve matters. Around 615, some of his followers sought refuge in Abyssinia, and Muhammad himself, alarmed by the precariousness of his situation, began to look for a way out. Eventually an agreement was concluded with the inhabitants of Medina, an oasis town to the north that was then called Yathrib. Little by little those who had stayed on quit Mecca, and on 24 September 622 Muhammad secretly left his native town, joining them in Yathrib. This was the hegira—a decisive moment in the history of the Muslim community, and a dividing line between the Meccan revelations that came before and the Medinan revelations that came after.

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The community’s resettlement in Yathrib brought with it a profound change in the circumstances under which future revelations were to be announced. Muhammad’s authority steadily grew, and within a few years he had become a head of state whose legitimacy derived from the mission that had been confided to him by God. Having finally overcome internal conflicts—on the one hand with the Jewish tribes of Yathrib, which refused to recognize him as a prophet, and on the other with all those who for one reason or another did not fully accept his authority—Muhammad took up arms against Mecca, eventually gaining the upper hand. The Muslim community had grown considerably in the interval, not only in Yathrib but throughout the region. The dream of setting foot once again in Mecca was now at last within reach. An agreement concluded with the Meccans in 628 allowed Muhammad and his followers to make a pilgrimage there the following year. In the meantime, having further consolidated his power in Yathrib, he was emboldened to break the treaty in 630 and take Mecca by force. By the time of his death two years later, on 8 June 632, a large part of the Arabian Peninsula had passed under his control. Thinking of the Qur’an as a text of late antiquity—as the title of a recent book by a foremost authority, Angelika Neuwirth, urges us to do—amounts to recognizing what recent studies have made perfectly clear, namely, Arabia’s place in the larger world surrounding it at the end of the sixth century, and the need to revise the traditional view of an age of ignorance (jāhiliyya) in which pre-Islamic Arabia was supposed to have slumbered. The spread of Judaism and Christianity throughout the Peninsula is now well attested by textual, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence; there seem to be traces of Manichaeism as well. We are, by contrast, much less well informed

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about the situation in Mecca during this period, about its paganism, and about the state of Arab literature (here I have in mind poetry, and in particular that part of it which has come down to us because it was written down). On this question— and, more generally, everything associated with writing— there continues to be disagreement, but the spread of the Arabic alphabet into the southern part of the Peninsula as early as the fifth century is now firmly established, with the discovery of Christian inscriptions in the region of Najran. These records justify us in assuming that the practice of writing was relatively widespread alongside oral transmission, which held a preeminent place during the pre-Islamic period and continued to play an important role afterward. Because writing was crucially involved in the history of the Qur’anic text during the first centuries of Islam, it will be instructive to briefly describe the state of the Arabic alphabet in the early seventh century. The Arabic script derived from the ancient West Semitic consonantal alphabet, of which it survives as a cursive version; that is, letters within a word are directly connected to adjacent letters (with the exception of a few that never link up with the one following). Although the Arabic language comprises twenty-eight consonants and three vowels, either long or short, the alphabet contains only eighteen signs in terminal position and fifteen within a word. Thus, for example, a short vertical stroke known as a denticle, placed at the beginning of a word, corresponds to five different consonants if nothing is added to indicate its value. In order to compensate for this insufficiency, and to adequately specify the full set of signs, diacritical marks—dashes and dots—are placed above and below certain letters. The use of diacritics seems to be attested before the seventh century; at all events, papyri dating from the first decades of Islam show that they had long been known and employed. And yet they were very seldom

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25

used by copyists of the oldest manuscripts of the Qur’an, which date from the second half of the seventh century; only gradually did they become an integral part of the transcription of the text. Moreover, these same manuscripts are devoid of any notation of short vowels. The signs that allow them to be indicated in written form were invented in the course of the seventh century, after Muhammad’s death, but their partial usage does not occur in Qur’anic manuscripts before the very end of that century. Long vowels, in accordance with a custom that is well known in Semitic languages, are indicated with the aid of three consonantal signs, alif, wāw, and yā’, which in turn are roughly associated with the three vowels of classical Arabic (a, u, and i). Nevertheless this notation was not systematically employed at first, particularly with regard to the phonetic value /ā/. With the development of a specifically Arabic terminology, a distinction came to be recognized between the rasm— the fundamental pattern of letters inscribed on a papyrus sheet or codex leaf, conventionally known as the consonantal skeleton—and the dabt—the set of markings that complete the basic signs of the rasm, including ones indicating specific aspects of pronunciation that were not introduced until much later. Finally, the ancient Greek and Latin tradition of scriptio continua—in which the letters are equally spaced in relation to one another, forming an unbroken sequence with no division between words or sentences—was adapted by copyists to Arabic script, so that now it involved only the continuous and proportionate display of individual letters and groups of letters, together with the possibility of splitting a word in two at the end of a line when it is composed of two or more segments. In principle, the Qur’an collects all of the inspired words uttered by Muhammad over a period of a little more than twenty years, between 610 or so and his death in 632. I say “in principle” because, as we saw earlier in connection with

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the claims of Muslim tradition regarding abrogation, certain revelations are supposed to have been removed as part of God’s plan. It would appear that there can be no doubting the genuineness of Muhammad’s spiritual experience, even if, according to certain accounts, contemporaries did express skepticism to one degree or another. The charges I mentioned earlier, brought by Meccan notables who denigrated Muhammad’s apostolate, are plainly echoed in the Qur’anic text itself. In sura 25, for example, one reads: The disbelievers say, “This can only be a lie he has forged with the help of others” . . . and they say, “[These are] just ancient fables, which he has had written down: they are dictated to him morning and evening.” (Q. 25:4–5) By contrast, the Qur’an tells us very little about how the revelations came to Muhammad. The various accounts that have been preserved by Muslim tradition have more to say, but their credibility is problematic. It would appear that Muhammad’s sense of being the instrument of divine purpose was the result of a vision. One Qur’anic passage, in particular, in sura 53, insists on the reality of this decisive moment while providing some insight into what occurred: The Qur’an is nothing less than a revelation that is sent to him. It was taught to him by [an angel] with mighty powers and great strength, who stood on the highest horizon and then approached—coming down until he was two bow-lengths away or even closer—and revealed to God’s servant what He revealed. [The Prophet’s] own heart did not distort what he saw. Are you going to dispute with him what he saw with his own eyes? A second time he saw him: by the lote tree beyond which none may

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pass near the Garden of Restfulness, when the tree was covered in nameless [splendour]. His sight never wavered, nor was it too bold, and he saw some of the greatest signs of his Lord. (Q. 53:4–18) Apart from this initial episode, the later revelations were auditory in nature: Muhammad heard the message he had to announce. As I say, the circumstances and the unfolding of these experiences remain mysterious for the most part. According to one of the most widely reported testimonies in the traditional corpus, the revelations occurred when Muhammad was in a waking state and were accompanied by the sound of bells; according to another account, however, sura 108 was revealed to him while he was asleep. In both cases the heavenly origin of inspiration (wah.y) is very forcefully affirmed, but we do not know whether an immediate relationship to God is implied or whether the revelation came through an intermediary. Certain early passages seem to support the first hypothesis, notably this one: [Prophet], We shall teach you [the Qur’an] and you will not forget. (Q. 87:6) Later, however—toward the end of the Meccan period, it would appear—the belief began to grow, and eventually became accepted, that an intermediary was charged with transmitting the revelation to Muhammad: Truly, this Qur’an has been sent down by the Lord of the Worlds: the Trustworthy Spirit brought it down to your heart, [Prophet] . . . (Q. 26:192–93) A late—and unique—passage identifies the intermediary charged with communicating the word of God. In a verse of sura 2, which constitutes the basis for the traditional account of the process of revelation, Muhammad is told that it is

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[the Angel Gabriel] who by God’s leave brought down the Qur’an to your heart confirming previous scriptures as a guide and good news for the faithful . . . (Q. 2:97) We know that believers were sometimes present; in later years, a scribe was close at hand. One episode, in particular, involving ‘Abd Allāh b. abī Sarh. (d. 656 or 658), about whom I shall have more to say, suggests that members of the Prophet’s immediate circle might have influenced the composition of the Qur’anic corpus. One thinks, too, of various occasions when a revelation comes to Muhammad that incorporates a phrase spoken shortly beforehand by one or another of the Companions. The fifteenth-century Egyptian scholar al-Suyūtī devoted a chapter of his Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān (The Perfect Guide to the Sciences of the Qur’an) to “Verses of the Qur’an that were revealed in conformity with words of certain Companions.” Thus, for example, ‘Umar affirmed that on three occasions words he had spoken were found to correspond to a revelation that occurred shortly afterward. But let us come back to the genesis of the text. The Qur’an preserves a significant piece of information in sura 17: [I]t is a recitation [qur’an] that We have revealed in parts [faraqnā-hu], so that you can recite it to people at intervals . . . (Q. 17:106) Revelations were therefore transmitted in the form of fragments of manageable length that were announced from time to time to members of the community. Suyūtī, for his part, relying on tradition, held that the revelations came in groups of five or ten verses—“more or less,” he added cautiously. Verses are a distinctive feature of the Qur’an. The Arabic term that designates them (āya) frequently recurs at various places

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in the text. Arne Ambros, in his authoritative dictionary of Qur’anic Arabic, gives the most common meaning as “[marvelous] sign,” adding that “in certain places, āya(t) may also be understood as a ‘textual segment’ [of the Revelation].” There is nothing to indicate that the dividing up of the Qur’anic chapters into brief segments, clearly identified and numbered in every modern edition of the Qur’an, was the work of medieval editors. Verse divisions were, if not an original characteristic of the Qur’an in its written form, at least a very ancient one. Careful examination of the earliest manuscripts and fragments that have come down to us shows that verse endings were very scrupulously marked by a specific sign. Because our evidence dates from the latter part of the seventh century, about fifty years after the death of Muhammad, it is not unreasonable to suppose that these signs were introduced in accordance with instructions that had been given to the very persons who were initially responsible for producing a written version of the Qur’an, no matter that the length of the units themselves may have varied between the time of their first being proclaimed and their being recorded in scriptural form. While graphic signs were used to indicate verse endings, another element, this one stylistic, was often relied on to determine where these endings were to be located: rhyme. The Qur’an is not poetry, of course, but it is presented mainly in the form of a sort of rhymed prose (saj‘) in which sequences of variable length are closed by a rhyme that is subject to less stringent conditions than poetry proper. Devin Stewart has calculated that 86 percent of the verses exhibit an end rhyme, but the proportion of saj‘ is smaller, since verses finishing with a rhyme do not all come under this head. In many cases the rhyme is the final element of a kind of textual segment known as a clausula, about which I will have more to say later. Phrases of this type hold an important place in Qur’anic style

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owing to their position at the end of a verse. Angelika Neuwirth, the leading authority on the Qur’an today, feels that they first began to be substituted for strict rhymes toward the end of Muhammad’s apostolate. A coincidence of rhyme and verse ending is generally the rule, but there are many cases (notably in the absence of a rhyme) where there continued to be some hesitation between two methods for fixing the termination of a verse. This is why Muslim tradition recognizes different breaks in the text commissioned by ‘Uthmān by comparison with rival transmissions, leading to slight differences in the total number of verses in each case. The so-called vulgate—the most common version of the ‘Uthmānic text, transmitted by H.afs. b. Sulaymān (d. 796) and used today in the 1924 Cairo edition of the Qur’an and other editions based on this—puts the number of verses at 6,236. If the verse (or small group of verses) effectively constitutes the fundamental unit of revelation, the presentation of the text as we know it today, in the form of suras, or chapters, of which there are 114 in the vulgate, allows us to deduce that in a majority of cases the grouping of these larger textual divisions was not completely settled in Muhammad’s lifetime. The word sūra appears on nine occasions in the Qur’an, but its origin and meaning are a matter of debate. The term first appeared during the intermediate Meccan period in the context of verses in which an unidentified adversary is challenged to produce a text similar to a sūra. One such verse reads: If they say, “He has invented it himself,” say “Then produce ten invented suras like it, and call in whoever you can beside God, if you are truthful.” (Q. 11:13) What does the term designate in this instance? Probably a relatively brief passage, perhaps on the model of the oldest suras,

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but in any case one capable of being written down at one sitting. Ambros defines the sura thus: “Text authorized by God,” as appears to be the meaning of this term in Q itself, preceding the later, more specialized meaning “chapter of the Koran, sura”; occurs only as obj. of nazzala (9/64, 47/20) and ’anzala (9/86, 124, 127, 24/1, 47/20) and in 2/23, 10/38: fa-‘tū bi-sūratin (min) mitlihī), pl. suwar ¯ (11/13: fa-‘tū bi-‘ašri suwarin mitlihī). ¯ The antiquity of the Qur’anic text’s division into suras is confirmed by the oldest extant copies of the Qur’an, which can be dated to the second half of the seventh century. In some of these, perhaps slightly more recent copies, we encounter for the first time the practice of designating each sura by a name, either at the beginning or the end; the title is preceded by the word sūra, which is employed in the sense that we understand it today. The presence of a certain degree of variation in the titles of some of the suras, not only in these ancient copies but also in medieval Muslim commentaries, suggests that the habit of naming suras did not go back to Muhammad, or at least not in every instance, even if traditional accounts seem to imply the contrary. Some traditional accounts describe Muhammad as giving instructions to a “scribe of revelation,” the term used for those who took down his words, so that a newly revealed verse could be placed in one or another of the suras. The reliability of this information is difficult to establish and, in any case, such accounts concern only a later phase in the history of prophetic revelation, when relatively systematic work on a written version had already gotten under way, apparently sometime during the intermediate or the final Meccan periods. Medieval commentators seem to indicate that verses were arranged in suras by a simple process of addition and interpolation that

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involved no attempt at harmonizing the component elements. Another detail preserved by tradition concerns the period following Muhammad’s death, when the text was still being codified, and suggests that the suras had not yet all been put into finished form. An account of particular interest in this regard comes to us from the traditionist Zuhrī (d. 742) via ‘Umāra b. Ghaziyya. It was later retained by T.abarī, who considered it to contain valuable information about the making of a written version of the Qur’an. According to this account, Zayd b. Thābit (d. between 662 and 673) left a record of his share in the collection of ‘Uthmān’s recension, in which he mentions in particular his search for someone who remembered the verse that we know as Q. 33:23, which he got from a certain Khuzayma b. Thābit. At the time he was still lacking two other verses as well (Q. 9:128–29). Finally, he says, I got them from another man also named Khuzayma, and I put them at the end of Barā’a [sura 9]. If there had been three verses, I would have put them in their own sura. If we are to credit this account, an alternate version of which involves a certain al-H.ārith b. Khuzayma and ‘Umar, not all the suras were yet fully constituted, and the Companions felt that it was permissible either to locate newly recovered verses in a separate sura or else to place them at the end of the sura that was then believed to be the most recent, in this case sura 9. Zayd’s account of the collection process itself is puzzling. When the compilation for which he had been assigned responsibility was complete, he says, ‘Uthmān asked H.afs.a (d. 665), one of Muhammad’s widows, for the parchment leaves (s.uh.ūf) on which a prior version of the Qur’an had been written down during the caliphate of Abū Bakr (r. 632–34); after comparing them line by line, the caliph certified that there

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was not the slightest difference between the two. This seems to suggest that Q. 9:128–29 had in fact already been incorporated in Abū Bakr’s recension. If so, it raises the possibility that other versions of the account concerning H.afs.a existed. However this may be, the anecdote is wholly consistent with what we know of the fragmentary character of the revelations. The two formal units that make up the Qur’an, chapter and verse, are evidently of ancient origin, but, as we have already seen, neither one clearly corresponds to the basic textual units—the revelations themselves. The verses, or at least most of them, are said to have been revealed in batches. As for the suras, they seem mainly to be the result of editorial intervention: most of them are too long to have been written down all at once, and the frequent breaks in the Qur’anic text are readily explained by the need to sequentially order the revelations. Nevertheless the possibility cannot be ruled out that the brief suras that appear at the end of the collection correspond in some cases to a single revelation. According to medieval scholars, the longest chapters communicated in one session that recount a single revelation are suras 61 (14 verses and 27 lines in the Cairo edition) and / or 76 (31 verses and 32 lines). Claims of this sort nonetheless must be treated with caution, for they are very often contradictory. The traditionist Bukhārī (d. 870) held that suras 9 and 10 were the only ones to have been received at once, in their entirety. Abū al-Layth al-Samarqandī (d. 983), for his part, affirmed on the one hand that sura 6 represented a single Meccan revelation, but declared on the other hand that two of its verses had been revealed at another time. Modern historians of the Qur’anic text are divided in the matter of exactly when the suras came into being. Theodor Nöldeke wavered between two interpretations, one attributing their origin to Muhammad himself, the other placing it at the time of the first recension due to Abū Bakr. Nöldeke’s student

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Friedrich Schwally, who carried on his work, suggested on the basis of textual analysis that a significant portion of the Qur’an had already been given its definitive form during Muhammad’s lifetime, a point of view shared at least in part by Neuwirth today. Here it must be kept in mind that Muslim tradition is undecided with regard to the principle for ordering the suras as they appear in the vulgate. The suras are arranged approximately in order of decreasing length, with the exception of the first chapter, which is among the shortest. Who chose this method of presentation? And why? Medieval commentators professed ignorance on this point, while taking note of accounts in which an element of human intervention is acknowledged. Thus it is reported, for example, that sura 9 was put in this position on the instructions of ‘Uthmān, who is also said to have ordered that it not be prefaced by a basmala. Ancient sources record that, in compilations of the Qur’anic text made by Companions such as Ibn Mas‘ūd, the sequence of suras differed notably from that of ‘Uthmān’s collection. The dominant opinion in the Muslim world today, which took shape gradually over the intervening centuries—that Muhammad himself took the decision to arrange the suras in the order we know from the vulgate—is plainly at odds with older accounts, as the perplexity expressed by al-A‘z.amī in connection with Ibn Mas‘ūd’s collection shows. These various pieces of evidence concerning the organization of the Qur’anic text into verses and suras lead on to the problem of the chronological development and establishment of the text itself. Does close textual analysis enable us to identify different phases of Muhammad’s preaching during the twenty years or so of his apostolate? Can we detect traces of variation in the suras as they have come down to us? Even though the arrangement of these chapters in the ‘Uthmānic

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recension bears no relation to the chronology of their revelation, this does not mean that Muslim tradition showed no interest in these questions. Quite to the contrary, it undertook very early to relate each verse to a known episode in the history of Muhammad’s preaching, on the one hand with the exegetical purpose of contextualizing the sources of his ministry, and on the other in order to determine whether a particular teaching had been supplanted by another, more recent one in accordance with the principle of abrogation. This branch of Qur’anic studies, known as asbāb al-nuzul (occasions of revelation) has meticulously inventoried accounts reporting the circumstances under which the divine message had been sent to Muhammad in discrete groups of verses. But these accounts are not exhaustive. In a not inconsiderable number of cases, no information is available; what is more, the conclusions of medieval Muslim scholars often invite a certain degree of skepticism. Régis Blachère rightly spoke of their “excessive sagacity,” noting how confidently they identify even the vaguest allusions. I would also emphasize that this way of considering the text, verse by verse, is the same one followed in exegetical commentaries. For our purposes, what matters is being able to assign a date to certain elements within suras that nonetheless do not correspond, or only seldom correspond, to the revelations themselves. In the final analysis, however, it is the sura, rather than the verse, that must take precedence if we are to be able to determine the chronological sequence of the revelations. This approach is associated with Suyūtī, though its origins are much more ancient. Earlier commentators had identified various aspects of the text that furnished clues about the date of individual suras, making it possible to assign them to one of two groups depending on the place where revelation had occurred: on the one hand, those messages that had been received in

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Mecca; on the other, those that had been received in Medina after the hegira. This method of classifying Qur’anic material chronologically came gradually to be introduced in the manuscript tradition, with the title bands at the head of the sura frequently incorporating this information alongside the title itself; beginning in the eleventh century, the total number of verses was indicated as well. This way of proceeding nonetheless runs up against various problems. Because the suras are a result of assembling revelations from different times, some of them may be mainly constituted of verses from one period while yet incorporating a small number of verses that come from another period. Sura 11, for example, in the Cairo edition of the Qur’an (fig. 1), begins thus: (11) Hūd sura, Meccan, except for verses 12, 17, and 114, Medinan. In this same edition, again with regard to sura 11, the title also specifies the chapter’s position within the sequence of revelations; after the indication of the total number of verses, one reads: [This sura] was revealed after the Yūnus sura [= sura 10]. The classification due to Suyūtī has been widely adopted by Western scholars since the nineteenth century. Gustav Weil, Theodor Nöldeke, and William Muir all drew up lists, but it was the one proposed by Nöldeke in his Geschichte des Qorāns (1860), subsequently reproduced in the second edition (1909–38) published by Schwally in collaboration with Gotthelf Bergsträsser and Otto Pretzl, that was most favorably received. In particular, it popularized the idea of subividing the Meccan period into three phases—early, intermediate, and

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Figure 1. Title of sura 11. The Qur’an (al-Qur’ān al-karīm = ‘Uthmānic recension [the so-called vulgate]) (Cairo, 1347/1928), 283.

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late—on the basis of stylistic criteria (verse length and structure) and substantive criteria (verse content). The fundamental point stressed by Weil and Nöldeke involves changes in the length of the verses, which thanks to modern methods of analysis can now be discerned more clearly. Whereas the verses of the Meccan suras—the textual stratum that is considered to be the oldest—are notable for their brevity, in the Medinan suras of the Cairo edition they frequently take up several lines; Q. 2:282 takes up fully fifteen lines there. This chronological classification served as a point of departure for other studies on the formation of the text. Neuwirth has made a more thorough analysis of the Meccan suras that reveals well-defined patterns of composition, particularly in the suras of the intermediate and late periods. The choice of chapters as the unit of analysis, rather than smaller textual segments, is justified in her view by the fact that the sura is “the unit that was intended by the Prophet himself as the formal medium for his proclamation.” In the Meccan suras, a tripartite structure is identifiable in many cases, with the central part consisting of a narrative account, either all of a piece or combining various elements that are treated on an equal basis. This approach nonetheless carries with it the risk of obscuring the way in which the suras were assembled, through an editorial process operating on them individually that gradually modified their original configurations. Muslim tradition acknowledges the existence of this process, as the example of sura 11 shows. Nicolai Sinai has recently shown that, in the case of sura 37, a later phase of assembly can be detected. His research demonstrates that the contours of other chapters were modified to one degree or another during Muhammad’s apostolate as well. In opposition to the dominant tendency in the first decades of the twentieth century, of taking the suras themselves

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as the basic unit of analysis, the British Arabist Richard Bell devised a technique for dating verses and groups of verses, first as part of a translation of the Qur’an in which the typography was designed to bring out what he supposed to be still more fundamental units (fig. 2), and subsequently in a commentary on the Qur’an that appeared some forty years after his death. Bell’s work, in the words of Alford T. Welch, is “the most elaborate attempt so far to identify and date the original units of revelation.” While Bell’s arguments failed to persuade most scholars, a few—notably John Wansbrough and John Burton—have drawn inspiration from them. Rejecting the venerable prejudice in favor of the suras, which had rapidly established itself in Muslim tradition and which then came to be endorsed by Nöldeke and other scholars in the West, Bell relied on Q. 17:106 in order to discover the fundamental ordering principle of revelation at the level of the verse. Observing that one of the characteristic features of the Qur’an consists in sudden thematic shifts marked by breaks that generally occur at the end of relatively brief passages, independently of the degree of formal coherence introduced by rhyme, he gradually became convinced that these interruptions were evidence of the constitution of the Qur’anic text as we know it today. He therefore set out to systematically identify them, working on the assumption that each one corresponds to the beginning and the ending of a prophetic utterance. Having succeeded to his satisfaction in defining the relevant sequence, he then attempted to assign a date to them, so far as this was possible. His translation of the Qur’an, published in two volumes between 1937 and 1939, typographically displayed the results of his research. Bell’s speculations did not end there. Working out the implications of his findings, he was led to regard the fragmentation of the text as the source of both the transition to writing

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Figure 2. Q. 7:180–89. The Qur’ān, ed. and trans. Richard Bell, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1937–39), 1:156.

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and the codification of the Qur’an as it has come down to us today. The appeal of this intuition, it seems to me, lies in the way it integrates the physical character of the text with the act of its composition. Bell suggested that the scribes wrote down the revelations on what he figuratively called “scraps of paper.” To begin with, they used the recto of small pieces of parchment and other materials; later, faced with the need to record a new proclamation, they took the same document and this time wrote on its blank verso. Subsequently, in the course of merging the collected transcriptions into a single Qur’anic corpus, perhaps together with other scribes, they recopied the two sides of these assorted documents, having forgotten in the meantime that they were chronologically distinct. The plausibility of Bell’s ingenious hypothesis is fully apparent from the analysis of certain passages, but it would be unwise to suppose, without further scrutiny, that it should be accepted as forming the basis of a more generally satisfactory explanation. Bell also observed the presence of “hidden rhymes” in certain passages, which led him to postulate that they were the result of editorial revisions made in the course of filling out the framework of the suras by aggregating distinct revelations. On this view, the Qur’anic text could therefore be seen as the fossilized traces, as it were, of an intermediate stage of written composition. One of the characteristic features of Qur’anic style, as I say, is the occurrence of rhymes at the ends of verses. If we look at the beginning of sura 23, we see that the verses end in -ūn (verses 5–11 and 15–16) or -īn (verses 12–14). These are the dominant rhymes of the sura as a whole. Looking more closely at verses 12–14, which concern the creation of man, we see that the final verse is distinguished by its length, greater not only than the two preceding verses, which are thematically related to it, but also than the verses that bracket this passage—a state of affairs that the typography of Bell’s translation throws into

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relief (fig. 3). On still closer examination, it becomes clear that verse 14 can be divided into six shorter units (including the final segment) which Bell’s translation identifies clearly. The first four units of the Arabic text end in -atan or -an (clot / ‘alaqatan, morsel / mudghat an, bones / ‘iz.āman, flesh / lah.man); the last unit ends in -īn, the current rhyme of the three verses, 12–14. The graphic presentation of Bell’s translation also emphasizes the differences between verses 12–13 and verse 14. The former end in a word or a group of words—v. 12: “of clay”(min tīnin); v. 13: “in a receptacle sure” (fī qarār in makīnin)—visually separated from the rest of the verse by a blank space in the translation. The words before that space, “extract” and “drop” (sulālat in and nutfat an, respectively), exhibit an ending which matches that of the four segments found in verse 14. They are now within verses 12 and 13, rather than at the end, for in both cases a final rhyming element required by the passage as a whole (min tīnin and makīnin, respectively) has been inserted. Verse 14 concludes with a segment (fa-tabāraka Llāhu ah.sanu al-khāliqīna) whose meaning (Blessed be Allah, the best of creators) contributes nothing of significance to the whole, but that carries on the preceding rhymes in -īn. In Bell’s translation, this last segment is indented to signify its supplementary character. According to Bell, then, an initial text on the creation of man as a sign of divine power was completed by rhymes (in verses 12–14, which he defines as “Meccan, adapted”) that allowed it to be incorporated into a larger whole (what was to become sura 23), either in the form that is known to us today or in a preliminary version. When did these adaptations take place? As we will see later, partial collections were assembled during Muhammad’s lifetime. Could it have been during the process of compilation that such alterations were made? Or was it in the course of producing written versions under the first caliphs? Or even earlier, during recitations in which the

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Figure 3. Q. 23:1–18. The Qur’ān, ed. and trans. Richard Bell, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1937–39), 1:327.

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reciters took the liberty of modifying the wording of certain passages? Because the chronology of these adjustments remains uncertain, I will leave this point to one side for the time being. Bell, although he did not directly challenge the traditional chronological framework for the codification of the Qur’an, did introduce a new approach to the Qur’anic text by applying methods of formal criticism and by bringing to bear original insights into its material basis. These different ways of trying to understand the formation of the Qur’anic corpus and to retrace its chronology naturally lead us to inquire into the transmission of Muhammad’s teaching in its earliest stages. The initial form of the Qur’anic message was oral—a circumstance that Muslim tradition was to cite as proof of its total authenticity. Its very name in Arabic, Qur’ān, appears in almost seventy places in the text, in passages that are mostly prior to the battle of Badr (624), the first victory over the Meccans won by Muhammad and his loyalists. Muslim tradition understands it to derive from the verb qara’a, meaning “to recite” or “to read.” Schwally saw this as a borrowing from the Syriac qeryāna, which refers to the readings performed during a religious service; his derivation has been largely accepted by present-day commentators, sometimes with qualifications. In Arabic the term Qur’ān has two senses: on the one hand, “recitation”; on the other, “sacred text meant to be recited.” Bell distinguished three phases in the genesis of the Qur’anic text, independently of the chronology of the suras; in arguing that the second phase, characterized by the use of the word Qur’ān to designate the message proclaimed by Muhammad, extended from the late Meccan period to the first two years in Medina, he did away with the traditional distinction between Meccan and Medinan suras. Durably preserving the Qur’anic text had the effect of uniting memory and writing. Let us begin by examining the

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origins of oral transmission during Muhammad’s lifetime. What do we know about memorization of the text by the earliest believers? Was it a widespread practice involving the whole of the text or, to the contrary, only fragments? Considering the reports that have come down to us, one might be inclined to suppose that many of the Companions of Muhammad knew the Qur’an by heart and were responsible in the first instance for establishing the channels of transmission that developed over the course of succeeding centuries. One later commentator, Ibn H.ajar al-‘Asqalānī (d. 1449), claimed that the number of these Companions exceeded one hundred thousand. This perfectly fantastic figure is explained by the overriding necessity, in the minds of medieval Muslim scholars, of proving once and for all that the transmission of the Qur’anic text was mutawātir. This meant that the information thus conveyed had been authenticated by independent witnesses and transmitted without interruption (tawātur), so that its truth was both completely guaranteed and immune from dispute of any kind. And yet Muslim tradition retained traces of variation that undermined the claims of immutability (and therefore authenticity) made on behalf of what medieval commentators called “our Qur’an.” An essential piece of evidence in this connection is the so-called h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf. There exist several versions of this h.adīth, but it happens that one of them, which I mentioned in the introduction, involving the second caliph, ‘Umar b. al-Khattāb, came to occupy a privileged place. This account figures in various collections of h.adīth, notably in the Muwattā’ of the great jurist Mālik b. Anas (d. 796), chronologically the first of those in which it appears (though the recensions through which they are known to us came later). The information went back to al-Zuhrī, who played a leading role in the transmission of h.adīth generally. Zuhrī’s motives are nonetheless not above suspicion. In the years after

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his death, Muslim scholars reproached him for having served the interests of the Umayyad caliphs and for having falsified h.adīth. With the passing of time, however, a more balanced assessment has become possible. Viviane Comerro, for example, argues that Zuhrī is to be given his due for having skillfully pieced together the various accounts that were then current about the codification of the Qur’an into a consistent and fluent narrative, as well as for inventing a largely imaginary but nonetheless credible chain of transmission of the constituent elements of prophetic biography from one scholar to another (isnād). With the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, we come to an important moment in the history of the Qur’an during the early years of Islam, particularly with regard to the relationship of the first communities of believers to the text. Because the meaning of the word h.arf (singular of ah.ruf) is problematic, I will postpone further discussion of this point. For the moment it is enough to keep in mind that the h.adīth suggests that different versions of particular revelations were repeated from an early date, with the express approval of Muhammad himself, the only person having the authority to settle such questions. Traditional accounts may also reflect differences among the various groups that made up the Islamic community in Medina. This community included Meccans who had followed Muhammad and Medinans who then joined them; new clans were formed, such as the one that grew up around ‘Alī. Signs of internal dissension are apparent from the Qur’an itself, which denounces the resistance of “hypocrites” (munāfiqūn) and others. In Mecca, following the city’s capitulation to Muhammad’s forces in 630, members of the Quraysh elite sought to retain positions of authority, and in many cases succeeded— angering some of the Prophet’s early supporters. Other Meccan tribes hastened to take tactical advantage of old bonds of

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solidarity as well. So long as Muhammad was alive, his personal charisma was enough to hold in check the tensions that were to erupt in violence following his death. Traditional accounts raise the question, without answering it, of how the faithful learned the Qur’an and committed its verses to memory. Suyūtī devoted a chapter of his al-Itqān to those who had memorized the Qur’anic text during Muhammad’s lifetime, but he was more interested in identifying the persons who had managed this feat than in asking how exactly the text was learned during this period. The hagiographic report of the annual recitations Muhammad was summoned to give before the angel Gabriel is more informative in this regard, but it is of no practical use for our purposes. There can be no doubt, however, that the complex methods of analysis that subsequently were applied to the Qur’anic text, and the highly specialized erudition on which they depended, had not yet come into existence. It was memory, in the first instance, that established the form in which a text spoken aloud was to be preserved. Written notations nonetheless began to circulate from a quite early date, at all events before the emigration to Medina in 622. Several accounts, whose trustworthiness is difficult to evaluate, suggest that portions of the Qur’an had already been written down by then. One report—a famous one, and undoubtedly from the Meccan period—mentions a parchment inscribed with a Qur’anic text in connection with the conversion of the future caliph ‘Umar. Lists with names of “scribes of revelation,” the secretaries responsible for writing down the inspired words as they were spoken by Muhammad, were also kept. But certain nouns in these lists appear to be anachronistic or otherwise suspect, as Paul Casanova pointed out more than a hundred years ago, holding that they reflect a later state of affairs. Neuwirth suspects that the very complexity of the task

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of assembling the various elements of the suras during the late Meccan period must imply the use at that time of some sort of writing material, which could have served as an aid for teaching as well. More than twenty years ago, Tilman Nagel argued that the making of a written version of the Qur’an first began in Mecca, and that evidence of a change in the sense of the word kitāb (writing, book) can in fact be detected during Muhammad’s apostolate. In Medina, quite obviously, the importance attached to writing became enlarged as Muhammad consolidated his position there and an embryonic state began to take shape. Neuwirth believes that the Qur’anic text had already been written down by the time of Muhammad’s death in the form of notes (Niederschrift) that circulated with his approval. What sort of notes were they exactly? The notion of a fragment presents itself once more. It cannot fail to call to mind a report, attributed to Zayd b. Thābit, of the editing and compilation of the Qur’an on the basis of what had been written down on a variety of materials, which according to tradition included palm leaf stalks and camel shoulder blades—in short, the metaphorical scraps of paper (riqā‘) that Bell referred to. Nevertheless one must clearly distinguish between fragments in this sense, each of which constituted a well-defined and coherent textual unit, and material fragments of a once whole manuscript, as in the case of the many surviving copies from the early decades of Islam that for circumstantial reasons—unfavorable storage conditions, wear from prolonged use, carelessness in handling—suffered various degrees of decay or degradation. The ‘Uthmānic text, in its current state, also contains sequences of letters unrelated to the length of the Qur’an’s 114 chapters, the so-called mysterious letters. These letters are placed at the head of certain suras that in some cases are grouped together in violation of the Qur’an’s organizing prin-

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ciple, namely, classification according to decreasing length. Some scholars argue that this apparently inconsistent arrangement may be a residue of the ordering found in partial and provisional collections, assembled before the Qur’anic text as a whole was established. According to Muslim tradition, the text was not established until after Muhammad’s death. To what uses were the revelations put during Muhammad’s lifetime? There is very little we can say with confidence. Several accounts emphasize how much Muhammad enjoyed the recitation of revelations that were already known, how moved he was, to the point of openly weeping. Others report that he admired the manner in which certain Companions recited, especially Abū Mūsā al-Ash‘arī (d. 664). These details, meager though they are, nonetheless permit us to conclude that the custom of reciting Qur’anic passages aloud dates from the Prophet’s lifetime. We are also told that Muhammad was in the habit of proclaiming one or another sura at a particular moment of the day or night, or during a particular prayer. Certain gestures he was known to make were imitated by later generations, notably among them ishmām—a movement of the lips that accompanies Q. 12:11 in every transmission except that of Abū Ja‘far (d. 748)—which was said to have originated with Muhammad himself. This fragmentary information does not allow us to form a precise idea of the way in which the revelations were incorporated in the rites of the early Muslim community. Medieval scholars did indeed draw up lists of the occasions on which a given sura or verse was recited in Muhammad’s time, but modern commentators, while feeling sure that the revelations were an integral part of ritual practice, freely admit that any more detailed picture of the emergence of organized worship during this period remains at bottom a matter of conjecture. Neuwirth, in her analysis of the formal evolution of the suras,

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finds evidence for the institution of a liturgy—what she calls an elementary prayer service—in sura 15 from the intermediate Meccan period. In her view, a link with well-attested practices elsewhere in the Near East at this time is inescapable. “The sura unit,” she says, “came to fulfill for the Qur’anic community the function of those liturgical reading pericopes known from neighboring religions.” Furthermore, Neuwirth notes, most of the late Meccan suras begin with an invocation of the book, al-kitāb, signaling the advent of a new phase in the recitation of the Qur’an—a transition that fits with the periodization proposed by Bell. Even if the form of the ritual is not clear, it very probably consisted of a series of repeated elements (perhaps prayer, recitation, and public reading). This may in turn have influenced the constitution of the Qur’anic corpus, as many have suspected; Suyūtī was not alone in noticing that the ‘Uthmānic recension contains reiterated passages. In the case of Muhammad’s preaching, which extended over a relatively long period and which was written down in a fragmentary manner, the possibility that passages were reiterated or else modified as a consequence of contamination (in the literary sense of interpenetration by different sources) cannot be ruled out. It would not be surprising, of course, if some degree of mutual influence had obtained between the revelations themselves and the language of Muhammad’s teaching. AlfredLouis Prémare observes that a certain number of elements that figure in the so-called farewell sermon—a collection of proclamations made by Muhammad shortly before his death— are expressed “in the present-day Qur’an in the same terms, though with notable variants.” William Graham, for his part, has drawn attention to the special status of what is known as the h.adīth qudsī, which consists of divine utterances—messages sent to the Prophet that were unmediated by angel Ga-

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briel—that nonetheless were not included in the Qur’an. As we will see later, discrepancies between different recensions of the revelations (in one version three suras found in the vulgate were removed, in another two more were added) were the result no doubt of uncertainties in the first decades of Islam regarding the status of variant texts. A certain porousness, as it might be called, can naturally be expected to have contributed to the marginal variations that have been detected by historians in the Qur’anic corpus. It bears repeating once more that our information concerning the state of the text as it was being composed during Muhammad’s lifetime, prior to being codified and transmitted, is exceedingly imprecise. Nevertheless we may be quite certain that the Qur’an was known to the earliest adherents of Islam primarily in oral form. This means that they had direct experience of textual variation, for they could not have failed to notice that the revelations had grown in number and extent over the years, notwithstanding that some had disappeared along the way; that their statement had occasionally been modified during recitation; and that the chapters in which they were grouped had changed with the passage of time. It is therefore not only the contours of individual suras that underwent alteration, but also those of the corpus of revelations as a whole. Given this much, the first conclusion to be drawn from the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf is that different versions of a single teaching were in circulation at the same time. In the classic account due to Zuhrī, for example, ‘Umar seems to have shown no hesitation in identifying the sura al-Furqān, though it was recited in a variant h.arf. The introduction of writing as a means of preserving texts composed prior to 622 does not seem to have dramatically limited such differences. Although partial collections were probably made with Muhammad’s approval, it may also be the case that they were based on well-known

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oral versions, associated with one or another Companion (or group of Companions), with no intention of producing an authorized text version. And yet there can be no doubt that the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf was a response to a real problem—the very existence of variants, which inevitably raised the question of authenticity. Which version of al-Furqān was correct? Whatever may have been the true state of affairs described in the h.adīth, it clearly suggests that differences arose in the first instance from Muhammad’s own teaching. They were, in fact, an integral part of his message.

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2 The Qur’an and Orality in the First Decades of Islam

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he revelations announced by Muhammad were orally transmitted from the Meccan period onward, which is to say prior to the emergence of written transmission. What began as a recitation of a part of the Qur’anic text, possibly in a ritual setting, gave way to the increasingly formalistic practice of memorizing and reciting the entire text. For reasons that will soon become apparent, the analysis of oral transmission must take into consideration a period that extends well beyond the seventh century. At the beginning of the tenth century, in Baghdad, a major reform undertaken by Ibn Mujāhid marked the end of an important stage in the history of the Qur’an. In the almost three hundred years since Muhammad’s death in 632, Islam had undergone a dazzling expansion. The reigns of the so-called Rightly Guided Caliphs, between 632 and 661, were marked not only by military conquest abroad but also by campaigns against rebel populations (ridda) throughout Arabia and by internal dissension—three of these four caliphs died a violent death.

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In 661, the coming to power of the Umayyads, long opposed to Muhammad, failed to put an end to internecine struggles. One has only to recall the tragic episode of Karbala, where H.usayn, son of ‘Alī, died in 680, or the attempt by ‘Abd Allāh b. al-Zubayr to establish himself as caliph in Mecca between 683 and his death in 692. Weakened by internal division, the Umayyads were finally overthrown by insurgent forces led by the Abbasids in 750. It was under this dynasty that orthodox Islamic doctrine gradually took shape, notwithstanding fierce opposition to the official insistence on the divinely created character of the Qur’an. As Yasin Dutton has correctly emphasized, the Qur’an was first and foremost an oral phenomenon which first manifested [itself] in a society in which such “oral transmission,” “oral composition,” “oral creation,” and “oral performance” of poetry was very much the norm. So we can expect it to have been experienced, in a cultural sense, rather in the same way that poetry was at that time; meaning, that a limited amount of “variation” was not only accepted but also expected, if it was even noticed; it was, in a sense, built into the very text. Without denying the importance of oral transmission and (as its very name, Qur’ān, indicates) the predominantly recitative character of the sacred text in the earliest years of Islam, it is difficult to speak of the Qur’an without mentioning its written character. There are two reasons for this. First, there can be no hard-and-fast distinction between these two aspects of its transmission; as a historical matter, they are interwoven with each other. And second, as we will see, written versions strongly affected the nature of oral performance—negatively, if one may put it this way, because the system of writing initially

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employed to record the revelations was inadequate to prevent the appearance of variants; and positively, to the extent that the consonantal skeleton (rasm) of the ‘Uthmānic recension proved to be crucial in assuring the success of this version and in serving as the basis for the set of canonical readings later laid down by Ibn Mujāhid. That the written character of the Qur’an was a key element in the development of Islam is amply demonstrated by comparing the vulgate with the text as it was written down during the course of the seventh century (figs. 4 and 5): one notes at once the various signs that appear in the vulgate (diacritical marks, short vowel signs, and so on) whose invention answered an urgent need to disambiguate the script as precisely as possible. Indeed, the definition of the Qur’an proposed by Muh.ammad Mus.tafā al-A‘z.amī refers specifically to the ‘Uthmānic recension, as we saw at the very outset. The interaction between the written and the oral during this period is an aspect of the history of the text that has only just now begun to be explored through careful scrutiny of early manuscripts. Muslim orthodoxy grants special importance to the oral tradition. And yet in accounts of the circumstances under which the Qur’an was written down, which we will examine later, the chief motivation for producing a written version of the text around the middle of the seventh century was an awareness of the inadequacies of oral transmission. According to the best known of these accounts, discrepancies in the recitation of the Qur’an by Muslim troops from Syria and Iraq were decisive in this regard. Paradoxically, then, considering the very great value attached to orality, its very weaknesses gave rise to the text that we know today. A scriptural version was seen by both political and religious authorities as the only means of protecting the community against potentially divisive variations in the recited text.

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Figure 4. Q. 6:150–53. The Qur’an (al-Qur’ān al-karīm = ‘Uthmānic recension [the so-called vulgate]) (Cairo, 1347/1928), 189.

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Figure 5. Q. 6:150–53. The state of the text as it appears in a manuscript from the third quarter of the seventh century (see figure 16, lines 7–21); with the exception of a single diacritical mark (line 5), it contains only the rasm.

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Orality nonetheless represented an important channel of transmission in the early years of Islam by virtue of the deficiencies of the Arabic alphabet during this period. I mentioned earlier that the copyists of the first Qur’anic manuscripts wrote down only the rasm and a few diacritical marks—and not necessarily the most useful ones for a correct reading. The integrity of the text was therefore threatened on both sides. Religious leaders were all the more alert to the dangers posed by disagreement as variants were present in the Qur’an almost from the moment of its inception. The h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf perfectly illustrates this state of affairs; accordingly, it will need to be examined in greater detail with reference to the various aspects of what is known about oral transmission. The best known version of the h.adīth, which we have already encountered in the introduction, involves ‘Umar b. al-Khattāb, who was later to become the second caliph, and a man named Hishām b. H.akīm. But there are many others. Some retain the same framework while modifying certain details; others are completely different. Consider, for example, an alternate version that nonetheless derives from the same source, ‘Umar b. al-Khattāb: One man recited before ‘Umar in a different manner. ‘Umar said, “I have recited before the Prophet and his reading was not different [from mine].” He [the narrator?] said, “The two of them disputed with each other in the presence of the Prophet.” ‘Umar said, “O Messenger of God! Did you not teach me such-and-such a verse?” The Prophet replied, “Why yes, of course!” And ‘Umar began to have doubts. The Prophet, seeing the look on [‘Umar’s] face, began to beat his breast, and three times he cried, “Go away, Devil!” And then he declared, “O

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‘Umar! All of the Qur’an is correct so long as you do not substitute mercy for punishment or punishment for mercy.” This version of the episode, which is reported by T.abarī in his commentary on the Qur’an alongside the one we have already considered, is interesting because the same basic situation—discrepant recitations by two Companions of the same Qur’anic passage—now has a strikingly different implication. The first version implies that variations in the text have a divine origin; the second implies that substitutions were left to the discretion of the reciters—so long as they did not distort the meaning of the text. The divergence between the two accounts can be explained by the fact that they correspond to different moments in the early history of Islam. The second one calls into question Muhammad’s claim to have been entrusted with a prophetic mission, which could not have helped but arouse doubts in the minds of some of his early followers. The first one, we may suppose, was a response to this, solving the problem of conflicting testimonies by placing the revealed text in the sphere of the sacred. In this telling, God’s word was sent to Muhammad in several forms. ‘Umar’s reaction is no longer one of doubt, but one of certainty (in relation to what he knew from his own experience); and also one of indignation at what he imagined to be (because he could not be entirely sure) a falsification. The word h.arf (pl. ah.ruf) does not appear in the second account, but traditionists arrange the two accounts alongside each other. The main feature common to both is textual variation. Shady Hekmat Nasser has recently classified the various versions of the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf in seven groups (A to G), with a few subdivisions. Version A, the one we looked at to begin with, enjoyed the greatest success. To be sure, it did not

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do away with the other accounts that are conserved in different collections of h.adīth, but two of the most important collections, the Muwattā’ due to Mālik b. Anas (d. 796) and the S.ah.īh. due to Bukhārī (d. 870), retained version A alone. Historians of the early period of Islam also tended to favor this account. Medieval experts on this question were concerned above all to penetrate the mystery of the meaning of the word h.arf. Independently of the methods on which they relied in order to determine the authenticity of a h.adīth, and which explain why extremely varied accounts of this episode are placed on an equal footing, they had to resolve the crucial question of what exactly was at issue in the dispute between the two Companions. It is perfectly plausible that those who were responsible for circulating different versions of the h.adīth may have been prompted by an analogous concern, namely, to account for the existence of a plural Qur’an in which the same passage could legitimately assume different forms. In the fifteenth century, Suyūtī claimed to know some forty senses of the word h.arf—several of which, strictly speaking, were only variants of a particular interpretation. For many commentators, and no doubt also for quite a few of the faithful, a straightforward equivalence obtained between the seven ah.ruf—roughly, as we would say today, “manners of speaking”—and another singular aspect of the oral transmission of the Qur’anic text, known as qirā’āt (a term generally translated as “readings” that I will come back to later), which often appear in groups of seven. Suyūtī did not have words harsh enough to reject this view, however. Well before his time, the great Andalusian authority on qirā’āt, al-Dānī (d. 1052), had unequivocally formulated the difference between these two terms: h.arf could be used either to designate types of dialectal variation—that is, ways of using the language, each of which represents an “aspect” of it (one of the term’s meanings)—or to designate something by reference

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to one of its parts (synecdoche, in other words), since qirā’a involves changes undergone by a word or a letter (another sense of h.arf). Most traditional scholars chose the first option, considering the ah.ruf of which the h.adīth speaks to be linguistic in nature and concerned with dialectical variants of Arabic. Lists of various tribes are mentioned in this connection, but, as Ibn al-Jazarī (d. 1430) remarked, they explain very little since the two persons who figure in the best known version of the h.adīth, ‘Umar and Hishām b. H.akīm, both belonged to the same Meccan tribe, the Quraysh (the tribe also of Muhammad, the third protagonist of this episode); if the h.arf they used was different, although both spoke the same dialect, then, Ibn al-Jazarī pointed out, it followed that the nature of h.arf has nothing to do with Arabian dialects. Suyūtī, for his part, discussed sixteen possible interpretations of the word h.arf, which Claude Gilliot has reduced to seven: 1. It has a variety of senses (dialect, letter, meaning, mode), and so what is meant cannot be known. 2. It is a symbolic numeral, signifying a large number, used to facilitate the recitation of the Qur’an to the community. 3. It is used to designate phonetic, morphological, lexical (within certain limits), and grammatical variants. 4. It is used to designate different readings. 5. It is used to designate different ways of talking. 6. It is used to designate different categories (as.nāf ): commands, that which is permissible or impermissible, prohibitions, accounts, parables, ambiguous passages, sciences.

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7. It is used to designate the attributes and names of God. The other interpretations conserved by the traditional literature were still less acceptable to orthodox thinking; indeed, both Ibn al-Jazarī and Suyūtī dismissed them out of hand. One suggested that ah.ruf concerned the division of Qur’anic teaching into seven categories (for example, what is permitted, what is prohibited, and so on)—a view that immediately ran up against a major objection: how could two Companions have disagreed about the very teaching of the Qur’an? And if that had actually been the case, it is hard to see why Muhammad himself should not have been able to give them a clear answer. One can only conclude that it is impossible to satisfactorily answer the fundamental question of what the word h.arf means in the various h.adīth in which it occurs. A recurrent feature of these texts is the number of ah.ruf. With the exception of one account in which they are three, generally they are seven (though some accounts begin with the mention of only one h.arf). The symbolic value of the number seven in Near Eastern cultures of the ancient period was well known, of course, and it did not escape Suyūtī, as we have just seen. It is nonetheless important to determine whether this was simply a customary way of designating multiplicity, or whether the number seven had its own value—whether, in other words, the ah.ruf are neither six nor eight in number, but well and truly seven. Dutton has recently reexamined the explication of the famous h.adīth involving ‘Umar and Hishām given by Ibn alJazarī, another great expert on Qur’anic readings (qirā’āt). While clearly rejecting an equivalence between the number of ah.ruf and the number of canonical systems of qirā’āt, Ibn al-Jazarī managed to account for the actual number of the for-

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mer on the basis of a typology of the latter, in accordance with the teaching of the recognized authorities in this domain, the Readers, as they were known. His analysis is of interest for our purposes to the extent that it allows us to make a preliminary assessment of the incidence of variation in the canonical text as this was understood by a traditional scholar. Ibn al-Jazarī identified the following seven categories, which, as we will see, do not all come under the head of orality. 1. The vocalization is different, but the meaning remains the same. The case of imāla, a modification of the timbre of the vowel a (pronounced like French é or English long a in certain contexts), is no doubt the clearest example. But one may also choose between sadd and sudd (meaning “barrier” in each case), and between udhn and udhun (ear). 2. Both the vocalization and the meaning are different. This occurs in Q. 85:22, for example, a verse that we have already encountered. Depending on whether the participle mahfūz. is construed as the nominative or the indirect case, the meaning may be slightly different. In the first instance the reading is mahfūz.un, and so one has fī lawh.in mahfūz.un, which means “preserved on a table / tablet”; in the second instance, reading mahfūz.in (and thus fī lawh.in mahfūz.in) yields “on a preserved table / tablet.” 3. The diacritical punctuation is different, but the rasm remains unchanged. The simplest case consists of a modification in the placement of the diacritical marks—which distinguish between homographs—on the first letter of an imperfect (or imperfective) verb signifying incompleted action. In Q.  36:68, it is possible to read the verb either in the second person (ta‘qilūna) or in the third (ya‘qilūna, substituting yā’ for tā’). The meaning is therefore either “Do you not understand?” or “Do they not understand?” (figs. 6 and 7). Less frequent

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Figure 6. Q. 36:58–75. Qur’anic manuscript Paris, BnF Arabe 332, fol. 42v (first half of the eighth century). In verse 68, because the first letter of the verb indicated by a dashed line beneath has no diacritical markings, it can be read either as ta‘qilūn or as ya‘qilūn.

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Figure 7. Detail of figure 6 including verse 68. The two dots placed beneath the first letter of the underlined verb, the same word as the one underlined in figure 6, indicate that the reading is ya‘qilūn. The Qur’an (al-Qur’ān al-karīm = ‘Uthmānic recension [the so-called vulgate]) (Cairo, 1347/1928), 585.

are occurrences in which the difference of diacritical punctuation concerns one of the consonants of the root of the verb, as in the case of Q. 6:57: half of the Readers read yaqus.s.u ’l-h.aqq a (He speaks the truth); the others read yaqdi ’l-h.aqqa (He decides the truth). The former considered that the second consonant has no dot and therefore is to be read as a s.ād, whereas the latter punctuated it and read a dād. Situations of this sort are sometimes more complicated: in Q.  10:22, most Readers read yussayirukum, but two of them transmitted the reading yanshurukum. According to the former, then, the passage is to be recited as huwa lladhī yusayyirukum fī al-barri wa-l-bah.r i (It is He who enables you to travel on land and sea); according to the two others, as huwa lladhī yanshurukum fī al-barri wa-lbah.ri (It is He who scatters you over land and sea). 4. The rasm is different, but the meaning remains the same. Here we enter into the domain of writing and, more

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precisely, the rasm, the consonantal skeleton of the Qur’anic text. The emblematic case is the difference between the readings qāla and qul, which occur on four occasions in the Qur’an and which were listed by medieval experts among known variants of the rasm; in the vulgate, qāla, third person singular of the perfect form of the verb (“he said”), is graphically distinguished from qul (imperative of the same verb, “say!”) by the presence of the letter alif between two consonants. To this could be added a few cases in which a long a or a long i is or is not marked, for example in Q. 83:31, where faqihīn represents one possible reading alongside faqīhīn, with two long vowels (the sense—of speaking in jest—is the same for both readings); or in Q. 18:74, where some read zākiyya, others zakiyya (both meaning “pure”). The former case involves the addition of a yā’; the latter case involves the addition of an alif, written above the line. Although these modifications affect the rasm, the variants I have just mentioned do not change the meaning, or do so only very slightly. 5. Both the rasm and the meaning are different. This is clearly a distinct type. In Q. 40:21, a variation is apparent between the Syrian reading minkum (among you) and others, far more widespread, which have minhum (among them). The situation is quite different in Arabic from case (3) above: the pronoun suffix of the second person plural includes the consonant kāf, graphically distinct from the hā’ that is found in the pronoun suffix of the third person plural. Here again, however, we are dealing with a variant that was classified by medieval experts such as Dānī among the variants of the rasm. 6. The word order is modified. The example given by Ibn al-Jazarī is similar to the one found at the beginning of sura 30, which involves the use first of the active form of the verb ghalaba (he conquered), then of the passive ghuliba (he was conquered), or vice versa. In Q. 9:111, some read fa-yaqtulūna

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wa-yuqtalūna (they kill or are killed), others fa-yuqtalūna wayaqtulūna (they are killed or they kill). In other words, certain pairs of active-passive verbs can undergo permutation without the rasm being affected, since it involves only vocalization. 7. The change bears upon an element (a letter or word) that is either added or missing. In this last category of Ibn al-Jazarī’s list, we encounter once again examples that we came across in examining variants of the rasm, as in the case of Q.  2:132 (wa-aws.ā by contrast with the more widespread form wawas.s.ā; the difference resides in the presence of a supplementary alif in the first form) and also Q. 36:35 (‘amilat instead of ‘amilat-hu; the final hā’ is absent in the Kūfan variant). Quite apart from whatever apologetic intent it may have had, Ibn al-Jazarī’s sevenfold typology is instructive for two reasons. Not only does it illuminate the very detailed awareness of the complexities of the Qur’anic text one finds in the great works of medieval commentary, it also shows how difficult it is to conceptualize these variations, even for scholars today. Dutton, for example, proposes a list of five categories that cover the same situations, while reorganizing the relevant material. In both cases one notices that different types of variants are mixed together—a departure from the traditional manner of presentation, which obeys a historical logic that I will examine later. Modern historians of the Qur’an have interpreted the meaning of the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf in many different ways. Let us briefly consider a few of them. Bergsträsser, in the second edition of Nöldeke’s Geschichte des Qorāns, argued that the h.adīth had been used by a faction that sought to put an end to the chronic quarrels over the Qur’an, which had grown in intensity during the seventh century, by urging tolerance and asking that the diversity of wording endorsed

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by Muhammad himself be respected. Nearer our own time, Gilliot has sketched a classification of the fifty-seven accounts reported by T.abarī, a miscellaneous compendium “that neither ‘synonymic’ themes treating of the names of God . . . nor imprecise religious concepts [succeed] in unifying; the only thing that is argued for is [the legitimacy of] replacing ‘adhāb by rah.ma or vice versa.” Gilliot therefore distinguishes between accounts that have no “frame” (or “framing theme”)— which is to say no accompanying commentary, only “raw” assertion, as it were—and those that do have one. The latter are richer and may be divided into two groups: one in which an angel intervenes (actually two angels) and one in which two Companions fall to quarreling. Gilliot deals more rapidly with “unframed” traditions, whether or not they are accompanied by brief explanatory remarks; where such remarks are found, “the referential function . . . constitutes the point of the account, in the form of a rough explanation.” Dutton, for his part, accepts without discussion the authenticity of the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf in the various versions that he studies, and attempts to reconcile the existence of a plurality of ah.ruf with the uniqueness of the revealed text. His conclusion, which certainly contains an element of truth, emphasizes the transition from the oral to the written, from a multiform spoken practice to a “necessarily more uniform” written version. While showing all due respect for the views of traditional scholars, he feels that they had “a fairly limited understanding of the various readings—especially those that are shādhdh— . . . and [did not take] into account the different expectations and realities of a primarily ‘oral,’ rather than ‘literate,’ society.” He compares the situation of the Qur’an to the practice of oral poetry by the Yugoslav bards of the twentieth century studied by Albert Lord in relation to the Homeric poems, and shows how

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this study led to a reconsideration of the link between oral literature and its written version. The flexibility of the text, both in Muhammad’s various performative interpretations of it and in its use and transmission by the Companions, gave rise to deviations that, although they did not challenge the message itself, did marginally alter it. On this view, the fundamental historical reality, namely, the existence of different ah.ruf in the Qur’an, goes back to the period of Muhammad’s apostolate, which in the minds of his followers justified the discrepancies that they noticed in oral performance and provided guidance in compiling a written collection with regard to how much variation was permissible. Nasser has approached the matter from another angle. He holds that the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf appeared only when various recensions of the Qur’an, which made the variants more manifest, had begun to be circulated. I mentioned earlier that he organizes the relevant texts (matn) into seven groups (A to G) and with several subdivisions. He is especially interested in matn A, which corresponds to h.adīth that Gilliot classified as accounts with a framing theme (in this case the quarrel between two Companions), prominently among them the version due to Zuhrī. By examining a variant of this matn that refers to an anonymous sura whose opening verses were recited according to another h.arf, Nasser is able to compare Zuhrī’s version with an alternate version in Q.  25:1 due to ‘Abd Allāh b. al-Zubayr; this leads him in turn to date the dissemination of the account to the last quarter of the seventh century, after the text had been put into written form during the time of ‘Uthmān’s caliphate. In support of this hypothesis he cites the fact that the name of al-Zubayr’s brother, ‘Urwa (d. 712), figures in the chain of transmission (isnād) of matn A. From this he infers that the h.adīth was meant to account

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for differences between the ‘Uthmānic codex and the one the Zubayr family possessed, and to defend the authenticity of the latter. Nasser concludes: This indicates that the multiplicity of the Qur’anic readings, not long after the codification process [ordered] by ‘Uthmān [was complete], still lacked official validation by the Prophet, thus giving way to the promulgation of the sab‘at ah.ruf tradition. The shī‘īs rejected the accounts of the sab‘at ah.ruf and considered this tradition to be one form of the falsification of the Qur’an [tah.rīf]. The alternate version of the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf studied by Nasser suggests that the reciter was allowed to make substitutions—so long, of course, as he did not substitute mercy for punishment or punishment for mercy. Various reports seem to indicate that, in the seventh century, the Companions felt that it was acceptable to use synonyms during the recitation of a Qur’anic passage, that is, to replace one word by another while respecting its meaning. This conception of recitation “according to sense” (bi-l-ma‘nā) was opposed to another one, which insisted on the need to respect the very letter of the text (bi-l-lafz.), and which in the end prevailed. Thus, for example, in the case of Q. 73:6, one Companion, Anas b. Mālik (d. between 709 and 711), accepted both aqwamu qīl an (“more correct in respect of form,” as he put it) and as.wabu qīl an (more righteous in respect of form). In response to someone who objected that in his recitation of Q. 9:57 he replaced yajmah.ūn by yajmizūn, he cried out: “yajmah.ūn, yajmizūn, yashtaddūn— they all mean the same thing!” The scholar who reported Anas’s words, Ibn Jinnī (d. 1002), concluded from them that Anas therefore must have heard the three manners of reciting from Muhammad’s own mouth, dismissing the possibility

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that he had acted on his own initiative—something that was once allowed but that was unthinkable in Jinnī’s time. ‘Umar b. al-Khattāb, for his part, knew a version of Q. 62:9 ( fa-mdū ilā dhikr i Llāh i: come at Allah’s invocation) that differed from the one that occurs in the ‘Uthmānic recension by the use of the verb madā in place of sa‘ā (make haste at Allah’s invocation). The sense in each case is similar (to walk, to go), but the second has a more emphatic nuance that in certain contexts may imply haste (to hurry, to rush). It is important to keep in mind that neither of these two examples involves people who were opposed to the established religious authorities, quite to the contrary; both Anas and ‘Umar belonged to the same group within the early community from which the ‘Uthmānic version emerged. The freedom to substitute one word for another during recitation was not limited solely to the Companions of Muhammad. Later and very eminent authorities, including Zuhrī and the jurist Shāfi‘ī (d. 819) appealed to this license, originally granted in the case of the Qur’an, in support of the view that it authorized the transmission of h.adīth according to sense (bi-l-ma‘nā). Until the early ninth century, then, the recitation of the Qur’anic text was not subject to the extremely rigid constraints that subsequently were placed upon it. The replacement of a term by a synonym, at the discretion of the reciter (notwithstanding the commentary of Ibn Jinnī, wary no doubt of offending against doctrinal orthodoxy), could be justified by reference to the example of Muhammad himself, observantly recalled by religious authorities of the first rank. Ultimately, the sense of h.arf / ah.ruf in the context of this particular h.adīth remained a mystery for Muslim commentators, who after protracted debate were nonetheless unable to advance any satisfactory explanation. As Gilliot remarked in connection with T.abarī’s opinion in this matter, “all trace of

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the six other ah.ruf disappeared from the community” once it had agreed to recognize a single h.arf: To anyone who persisted in wishing to find traces of the six ah.ruf that were not retained by ‘Uthmān, T.abarī responded with a flat refusal: the community has no need of knowing them; if it still had them in its possession it would not use them in its recitation. A written version of the Qur’an—in the event, the ‘Uthmānic recension—held out the prospect of eliminating variation altogether, not merely limiting its scope, as T.abarī himself worked so hard to do. ‘Uthmān’s edition, it seems fair to say, was an attempt on the part of the political and religious authorities to heal the divisions that had arisen within the Muslim community in its first decades—an aim that is praised still today in the Islamic world. Indeed, Muslim scholars who labored to eliminate dissension during the first centuries of Islam enjoyed the unqualified support of these same authorities. All the evidence available to us suggests that textual variants were perceived as a threat to the unity of Islam, and that the remedy was believed to be a standard written version of the Qur’an. Nevertheless it is plain that a well-known aspect of Muslim tradition was neglected in the debate over the nature of the ah.ruf. There was no mention by leading experts such as Ibn al-Jazarī (or at least not in this connection) of the existence of recensions other than ‘Uthmān’s that might have contained the alternate formulations mentioned by the h.adīth. We know that some of the Companions of Muhammad possessed their own versions of prophetic revelation, and that the various texts they recited from came to be more or less widely known over a period of several centuries. Among the most famous

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recensions were those of Ibn Mas‘ūd and Ubayy (d.  before 656), which I will discuss in greater detail later. They were not wholly preserved; only very brief excerpts have survived, passages recorded by medieval scholars that differ from the ‘Uthmānic version. These other Qur’ans, which are of great interest to anyone seeking to analyze variation in extant manuscripts, do not appear in the debate about the seven ah.ruf—or only marginally, as in the case of Suyūtī’s Itqān, where one interpretation that makes reference to them is mentioned in passing. Religious and political authorities having prohibited the use of noncanonical versions as part of ritual practice from the eighth century onward, mainstream scholars could not imagine reinstating the legitimacy of these versions by placing them on an equal footing with the ‘Uthmānic recension for the purpose of interpreting the h.adīth. If T.abarī suspected that this was the reason for their silence, his own refusal to inquire further may likewise have been motivated by a desire to safeguard orthodoxy. The undeniable importance of the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf in the attempt to account for discrepancies in the Qur’anic text during the early years of Islam must not cause us to overlook another aspect of oral transmission in which variation is a notable feature. I have already emphasized that a recurrent element in several versions of the h.adīth in which the word h.arf appears is the number of times it occurs; in this connection it became customary, as I myself have done, to use the expression “seven ah.ruf.” Now, the number seven is also the number of readings (qirā’āt, plural of qirā’a) in the system instituted by Ibn Mujāhid with the support of the Abbasid caliphate. The possibility cannot be excluded that Ibn Mujāhid’s purpose was to elide the distinction between the two terms, even if the value of the number seven is not the same in the two cases (symbolic in the case of ah.ruf and quite specific in

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the case of readings); indeed, some medieval scholars later reproached him for the confusion he had introduced between ah.ruf and qirā’āt. In spite of the contempt in which Suyūtī held those who confused them, however, the two terms were often taken to mean one and the same thing. This understanding had the advantage of making it possible to accept prophetic teaching by affirming the multiform character of the revelations received by Muhammad without calling into question the exalted status of the ‘Uthmānic rasm. The equivalence was nonetheless merely apparent: on the one hand, the number of canonical qirā’āt was sometimes reckoned to be as high as ten, even fourteen; and, on the other, even if the number of Readers initially recognized by Ibn Mujāhid was limited to seven, the number of systems of reading was considerably greater. What later experts knew were not the qirā’āt of seven, ten, or fourteen Readers, of which we are wholly ignorant, but the readings of their disciples—which multiplies the number of variants correspondingly. The word qirā’a, though it is generally translated as “reading,” is more accurately said to designate a fashion of reciting the Qur’an; indeed, it derives from the same root as Qur’ān. The meaning of this term nonetheless varied over the course of the first centuries of Islam. The exegetical commentary of Sufyān al-Thawrī (d. 778) contains sixty-seven examples of Qur’anic variants, of which twenty-four have a different rasm than that of ‘Uthmān. “On the whole,” as Frederik Leemhuis observes, “it appears that in the second Islamic century [eighth century CE] variant readings with a different rasm [than that of the ‘Uthmānic version] . . . were still freely discussed and were called either qirā’āt or, less commonly, h.urūf.” An examination of exegetical commentaries composed during the eighth and ninth centuries by al-Farrā’, ‘Abd al-Razzāq al-S.an‘ānī, and T.abarī, in addition to the one by al-Thawrī, shows that these authors described a variant found in Ibn Mas‘ūd that subse-

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quently was ruled to be invalid or noncanonical (shādhdh) as either qirā’a or h.arf. Contrary to what other commentators suggested, then, the two terms could be equivalent. And yet none of them identified an oral variant (which properly would be qirā’a) by contrast with a written variant concerning the rasm (which would be h.arf). All the readings that al-Farrā’ and the others cited with reference to various passages of the Qur’an were accorded equal status. During the eighth century, and then still more clearly during the ninth, the idea that a Qur’anic reading had to be consistent with ‘Uthmān’s recension (often called “our mus.h.af ”) nonetheless gained ground. In the eighth century, the Meccan traditionist Anas b. Mālik condemned the version due to Ibn Mas‘ūd, then dominant in Kūfa. T.abarī’s devotion to the ‘Uthmānic rasm was unwavering, even if he himself occasionally had recourse to variants found in Ibn Mas‘ūd. The reform introduced by Ibn Mujāhid was in every respect decisive in definitively establishing the ‘Uthmānic rasm as the only one allowed to be used in prayers. His treatise on the seven readings implicitly defined three criteria that a reading had to satisfy in order to be accepted, perhaps even four if one admits the hypothesis recently advanced by Nasser. It must be emphasized that Ibn Mujāhid did not himself draw up such a list; later commentators took it upon themselves to do this. With Ibn Mujāhid, as Leemhuis observes, the meaning of the word qirā’a slightly changed, from “fashion of reciting the Qur’an” to “fashion of reciting the canonical written text of the Qur’an.” The first of his criteria was that the transmission of each reading had to have been corroborated in every detail and then approved by a majority of experts. Second, the rules of Arabic grammar had to be respected. Third, and finally, each reading had to conform to the ‘Uthmānic rasm. It was on account of this final condition that writing played an essential role in winning acceptance for a standard version. As for Ibn

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Mas‘ūd’s version, whose importance in the ancient era we have already noted, Ibn Mujāhid rejected it because it was prior to what he called “ ‘Uthmān’s h.arf.” Let us try to define qirā’āt a bit more precisely. They correspond in part to specific characteristics of the rasm found in each of the four mas.āh.if al-ams.ār, of which there are some forty instances. Many more instances involve elements of punctuation that graphically orbit around the rasm, collectively known as the dabt (see figure 4). These elements were not originally written down in the oldest copies of the Qur’an, either for want of ad hoc signs (short vowels and orthoepic signs, which is to say marks related to pronunciation) or because copyists did not use all the signs available to them (diacritical dots and dashes). They primarily concern peculiarities in the pronunciation of vowels, with no effect (or very little) on the meaning of the text; but they also concern differences affecting consonants, whether in relation to diacritical punctuation, or the attribution of a letter to a word or the one following, or else variants involving one or two consonants (by alteration or addition). All these variants figure in one or another of the categories that Ibn al-Jazarī described in his interpretation of the seven ah.ruf. Qirā’āt were subject to the judgment of experts known as qurrā’ (plural of the word qārī), or readers. These were men who, in the early years of Islam, had memorized the Qur’anic text and recited it in public. The history of the seventh and eighth centuries shows that they frequently came into conflict with established political authority. The role they played was crucial for the Muslim community of the period since, in the absence of a precise system of notation for at least fifty years, their approval was in principle required in order to transmit the Qur’anic text correctly. The importance of their judgments derived from just this, the various deficiencies of the earliest manuscript copies that they were charged with remedying.

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It might be thought that a significant part of oral transmission went back as far as Muhammad. Yet we have seen that repeated recitation of prophetic revelations was perfectly capable of accommodating variations that gave rise to distinct traditions for a single passage—a plausible explanation for the existence of different ah.ruf. For certain variants, however, another origin can be imagined. Assuming that the multiplicity of readings is not an aspect of the Qur’anic miracle, as the orthodox suppose, an alternative explanation may be sought in the occurrence of variants in the written transmission of the text. Recall that in Ibn al-Jazarī’s typology the first five categories correspond to situations in which the manuscripts of the second half of the seventh century, owing to the nature of orthographic practice at that time, did not furnish readers with precise indications; to the contrary, it permitted them to choose one reading rather than another. With regard to the first and second categories (concerning different vocalizations), the lack of a method for marking short vowels, and then the increasingly common use of these unmarked vowels in copies of the Qur’an, might explain such variants; for want of a suitable set of diacritical signs, in other words, the written version could not completely reproduce the oral version. In leaving room for some degree of interpretation, written copies allowed new variants to appear that did not necessarily correspond in every case to Muhammad’s own teaching. The third category involves cases where differences in punctuation do not affect the rasm. In Q. 36:68, for example, readers faced with an initial denticle devoid of diacritical marks could not look to context for guidance; some thought that a yā’ was indicated (rather than a tā’) and therefore the third person form ya‘qilūn (see figure 7). The source of the  variant in this case is the absence of dots above or below the first letter (see figure 6). The same is true of Q 6:57, depending on whether or not the second letter of the root is considered to

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bear a diacritical mark and whether the letter is a dād or a s.ād. In Q. 10:22 we encounter a situation that is less common than the preceding one, but much more revealing. Again, the fact that a brief sequence of strokes can produce two orally very different readings of the verb (yanshurukum, on the one hand, and yussayirukum, on the other) is almost surely due to the ambiguity of the text, in this case four probably rather carelessly written denticles having neither diacritical punctuation nor short vowel markings. The majority of readers favored a 3  + 1 division, sīn + yā’, or 0 + 2 dots below (fig. 9) rather than 1 + 3, nūn + shīn, or 1 + 3 dots above (fig. 8), which entails a

Figure 9. The reading of the same characters in the vulgate is yussayirukum. The Qur’an (al-Qur’ān al-karīm = ‘Uthmānic recension [the so-called vulgate]) (Cairo, 1347/1928), 262.

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Figure 8. In Q. 10:22, the intended reading of the characters marked by a dashed line beneath is yanshurukum, even if the dots are absent. Qur’anic manuscript Paris, BnF Arabe 328, fol. 46r (Codex ParisinoPetropolitanus, third quarter of the seventh century).

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quite distinct reading. Had the diacritical dots been present to begin with, no confusion would have been possible. Unfortunately we have no evidence when this difference in interpretation first appeared. A similar difficulty in reading the oldest manuscripts explains another series of variants. The difficulty arises from the fact that copyists applied to the Arabic text the Greco-Roman tradition of scriptio continua, in which the letters are equally spaced, independently of their division into words. In Arabic, the identification of individual words is nonetheless generally facilitated by an alphabetic peculiarity, namely, that certain letters are connected when they are part of a word. Some characters are never connected to the following one, however, with the result that the break between two words cannot always be located with confidence. In Q. 74:33, for example, depending on the position assigned to one alif in particular, it is possible to read idh adbara, as in the vulgate, where this letter forms part of the verb; or idhā dubira, as in the Ubayy recension, where the alif forms part of the preceding conjunction; or idhā dabara, as likewise in the reading transmitted by the eighth Umayyad caliph, ‘Umar b. ‘Abd al-‘Azīz (fig. 10). Ibn al-Jazarī’s fourth category includes various situations where, in fifteenth-century copies of the Qur’an, the rasm was altered without the meaning being changed. This was not the case in the second half of the seventh century, however, for the defective orthography found in copies from this period did not systematically indicate the presence of a long a by an alif; as a result, qāla and qul were written in exactly the same fashion (fig. 11). Some readers, having no alternative but to look to context for guidance in interpreting the texts available to them, restored a long a whose presence was only later made visible by the addition of an alif, which settled the question once and for all (fig. 12a and b). Indeed, some ancient manu-

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Figure 10. The ambiguity in Q. 74:33 of the characters marked by a dashed line beneath licenses three distinct readings. Qur’anic manuscript Paris, BnF Arabe 349, fol. 46r (late eighth or early ninth century).

scripts were corrected in order to clarify the reading retroactively, as in the case of Q.  18:74. Here the ‘Uthmānic rasm was supplemented by an alif in the copies used by schools that taught students to recite zākiya (pure, innocent, untainted), but it remained unchanged in others that considered the letter yā’ to be doubled (or geminated)—something that was not graphically represented by the addition of a specific sign above the letter until later. In these cases, the rasm was altered only as a consequence of the evolution of Qur’anic orthography. The two examples given by Ibn al-Jazarī in order to illustrate his sixth category are usually supposed to display a modification of word order. But in fact there is no real modification,

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Figure 11. In this folio containing Q. 6:68–76, two semantically distinct but graphically identical verbal forms, qāla and qul, appear a few lines apart from each other: qul, at lines 9 and 13 (6:71) and qāla at line 19 (6:74). Qur’anic manuscript Paris, BnF Arabe 328, fol. 25r (Codex ParisinoPetropolitanus, third quarter of the seventh century).

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Figure 12a and b. In the corresponding passage in the vulgate (the detail from the two pages shown here contains 6:70–74), the two forms are graphically differentiated. The Qur’an (al-Qur’ān al-karīm = ‘Uthmānic recension [the so-called vulgate]) (Cairo, 1347/1928), 173–74.

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at least so far as the rasm is concerned; for this reason the situation is analogous to that of the first two categories. Here variation arises from an initial absence of marks indicating short vowels, so that assuming the presence of an active verb in the first instance logically entails a passive verb in the second position (or vice versa). The two remaining categories (5 and 7), by contrast, are solely concerned with the rasm, which undergoes change of some kind, from either the addition or subtraction of a letter or a word, by comparison with the ‘Uthmānic version. Many variants are therefore explained by the need to interpret ambiguous passages in manuscripts, and not by the existence of different manners of recitation. So far as possible, of course—to the extent, in other words, that suitable methods of graphic representation were available—writing attempted to translate oral performance to the page. Unlike modern editions, manuscripts from the second half of the seventh century did not give their users a complete idea of the state of the text; they informed them only—though this was no small thing— about the rasm. It comes as no surprise that variants concerning the rasm, notably those that did not result from later orthographic reforms, should have been many fewer in number than those concerning the dabt. The rasm / dabt dichotomy was to be long-lasting, and for centuries Muslim tradition maintained a de facto distinction between the two. The sources of variation in each case are quite different in nature and developed chronologically in different ways. In this connection the evidence of the surviving manuscripts is instructive. Deficiencies in written transmission are not the only sources of the variants that appeared in oral transmission. Yet oral transmission seems to have been favored by fortune, even if many medieval scholars sought to demonstrate that it was based on an implausibly large number of trustworthy and mu-

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tually reinforcing testimonies—Ibn H.ajar al-‘Asqalānī’s claim regarding the number of Companions being an extreme example of this tendency. Notwithstanding the painstaking collection of corroborative evidence by Muslim tradition (notably, the names of those who inaugurated the various chains of transmission (isnad) that extended from Muhammad until our own time), careful scrutiny of these sources permits us to conclude that the number of Companions who knew the revealed text by heart at the moment of Muhammad’s death was in fact rather small. This must have considerably limited the scope for variation. Gilliot has shown, on the basis of information collected by medieval authors about readers’ chains of transmission, that only thirty-eight Companions had partly or completely memorized the text of the Qur’an. Moreover, despite the uncertain reliability and often contradictory nature of much of this information, he was able to establish that only eight Companions were responsible for the learning that the seven (or ten) authorities on Qur’anic readings claimed to possess, which is to say for the recitations recognized by Islamic orthodoxy. These eight Companions were ‘Umar b. al-Khattāb (second caliph, d. 644), Ubayy b. Ka‘b (d. before 656), Ibn Mas‘ūd (d. 653/654), Abū al-Dardā’ (d. 652), ‘Uthmān b. ‘Affān (third caliph, d. 656), ‘Alī b. Abī T.ālib (fourth caliph, d. 660), Abū Mūsā al-Ash‘arī (d. 664), and Zayd b. Thābit (d. between 662 and 673). Ibn al-Jazarī, in his Ghāya al-nihāya fī tabaqāt al-qurrā’, mentioned in addition the names of the first caliph, Abū Bakr; Anas b. Mālik; ‘Ā’isha bt. Abī Bakr (d. 678); and ‘Abd Allāh b. ‘Umar (d. 693). (The eight Companions named by Gilliot, it may be noted in passing, are only one more than the number of Companions who are conventionally considered to have been responsible for the transmission of the main part of prophetic tradition.) Historically, agreement regarding their

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actual role was not unanimous. Some medieval commentators very forcefully contested the involvement of one or another of these persons in the transmission of the Qur’anic text. AlDhahabī (d. 1348), for example, does not include ‘Umar among those who had memorized the Qur’anic text during Muhammad’s lifetime. Indeed, it may be doubted whether ‘Umar’s duties as caliph left him enough time to teach the Qur’an; for this very reason, the presence of the names of three of the four Rightly Guided Caliphs seems rather curious. According to al-Bukhārī, neither Abū al-Dardā’ nor Abū Mūsā al-Ash‘arī figures in the list of the so-called bearers of the Qur’an—those who had memorized the text in its entirety—which goes back only as far as another Companion, Anas b. Mālik. Finally, it will be recalled, one episode in the making of a written version of the Qur’an mentions a certain Khuzayma, who was said to have been the only person to remember Q. 9:128–29. If this is true, it follows that none of the Companions could have honestly claimed to know the whole of the Qur’an at the time of Muhammad’s death. Whatever the truth may be regarding this or that Companion whose name occurs among the eight on Gilliot’s list, we may be reasonably sure that the initial transmission of the integral text involved a very limited number of persons. If only these few Companions were in fact responsible for the initial transmission of the integral text, one would not expect it to have displayed great diversity. Yet recent scholarship has shown that the number of systems of recitation grew dramatically during the first two centuries of Islam. On a conservative estimate, assuming only ten Readers (the seven selected by Ibn Mujāhid, plus three others whose names were added to the list during the tenth century, but neglecting a later addition of four more that brought the total to fourteen), there were twenty independent systems in all, given that each

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Reader was known by two transmitters. In that case, however, there must have been at least eighty systems, since the text transmitted by each one had to have been transmitted in turn by two other scholars; other assumptions yield a still higher estimate. At all events it is clear that the proliferation of readings during the century and a half following Muhammad’s death presented religious authorities with a potentially unmanageable situation. From at least the eighth century onward, experts began to make a selection (ikhtiyār) from the readings that were known to them. To judge from the very few accounts that are known to us today, this practice seems to have been very largely a matter of personal preference, and subsequently it was prohibited. Nāfī‘ (d. 785), who was later himself to become an authority in this matter, is supposed to have followed the teaching of seventy different masters in learning to recite the Qur’an. Unfortunately, a complete list of their names has not come down to us—to say nothing of the highly symbolic character of the number seventy, which I leave to one side. One source records that Nāfī‘ said, “I retain [a reading] on which two [readers] are in agreement and I set aside [a reading] that is irregular [shadhdha].” Assuming that Nāfī‘ did in fact say this, what are we to understand by it? Did he apply this rule to the teaching of each of his seventy masters? It is highly unlikely that this method would have produced a version consistent with Muhammad’s teaching in every detail. Even if we were to suppose that all such teachings had been faithfully transmitted by a series of readers, circumstances might have caused a perfectly authentic version to be forgotten: the accidental death of a reader, for example, could have terminated a parallel line of transmission, since Nāfī‘, for want of two witnesses, would have had to reject the reading—assuming that he had in fact proceeded in this

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manner. Conversely, nothing prevents us from supposing that an inaccurate recitation may have nonetheless been widely disseminated and, because it had been transmitted by two of Nāfī‘’s teachers, retained by Nāfī‘ himself. The criterion of selection he laid down, which naturally recalled the fashion in which verses were validated in order to qualify for inclusion in the text compiled at the direction of Abū Bakr, was primarily juridical in nature; in law, the testimony of two witnesses was necessary to establish a fact before a judge. The work of the seven transmitters, who, like Nāfī‘, were selected by Ibn Mujāhid for the purpose of constituting a canon of oral transmission (although in this case the adjective is superfluous) is poorly understood on the whole. As we saw earlier, their systems were authorized by virtue of their compatibility with the ‘Uthmānic rasm, their conformity with Arabic grammar, and the approval of the community (umma). With regard to the first point, Ibn Mujāhid took into consideration the second stage in the production of a written version of the Qur’an during ‘Uthmān’s caliphate, the making of the copies that were to be sent to the provinces. These manuscripts, as we will see, included variants that were the result of copying errors; quite obviously it is impossible to associate such variants in any way with Muhammad’s teaching since they were introduced in the text only after his death. One of the copies, meant for Kūfa, served as the basis for the transmission of three canonical readings, due to ‘Ās. im b. abī al-Najūd (d. 745), H.amza al-Zayyāt (d. 772), and al-Kisā’ī (d. 804). This situation has been very ably analyzed by Nasser, who observes in particular that the interpretive abilities of the second authority, H.amza, were held in low regard to begin with, so much so that his competence as an arbiter of textual variants was openly ridiculed. Even so, Nasser observes, “H.amza’s reading was able to move from the status of

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an innovation (bid‘ah) to that of divine revelation in less than a hundred years.” One point of detail also deserves attention. According to medieval experts on readings (qirā’āt), the three Kūfan representatives did not agree among themselves about the proper recitation of two verses (112 and 114) in Q. 23. H.amza and alKisā’ī read qāla, whereas ‘Ās.im read qul. There is no reason not to assume that all these authorities worked from the same copy sent by Uthmān. How, then, are we to explain a discrepancy between readings that were graphically represented in exactly the same form? In classical Arabic, qul is written with two letters, qāf and lām, whereas qāla requires three (qāf, alif, and lām). In the Qur’ans of the oldest textual stratum, however, as we will see again later in studying the manuscript tradition, qāla and qul were written in the same fashion, that is, qāf + lām. A distinction between the two forms did not appear in the rasm until the very end of the seventh century, with the introduction of the alif in qāla, which only gradually became established (see figures 11 and 12). This suggests that the readings came to be differentiated at a moment when the two forms were still written in the same manner, before the very late seventh century but after the making of a written version during ‘Uthmān’s reign. Much later the Cairo edition of the Qur’an, which reproduces ‘Ās.im’s reading (transmitted by his disciple H.afs.), devised an original typographical solution to the problem of maintaining the unity of the Kūfan manuscript while at the same time authorizing each of the Kūfan readings: the alif in qāla is written above the line between qāf and lām (fig. 13). In the case of these two verses, then, the state of the written text in the mid-seventh century gave rise to a variation in oral transmission. This poses an obstacle to attempts to establish a stemma, or genealogical tree, of the garrison Qur’ans (mas.āh.if al-ams.ār), since the later manuscript

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Figure 13. In line 12, at the beginning of Q. 23:112, the verb qāla (third person singular, perfect tense) is written in a different manner than at the beginning of 23:108, in line 8 (the form encountered everywhere else), with the result that it is possible to read qul here as well. The Qur’an (al-Qur’ān al-karīm = ‘Uthmānic recension [the so-called vulgate]) (Cairo, 1347/1928), 455. Q. 23:101–12.

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tradition reflects a situation not earlier than the beginning of the eighth century, and in any case later than the mid-seventh century, when these manuscripts were first copied. The proliferation of readings during the two first centuries of Islam understandably alarmed religious and political authorities alike, and from the eighth century onward scholars did their utmost to limit this proliferation. Beginning in the early tenth century, Ibn Mujāhid’s initiative gradually succeeded in canonizing one set of readings while stigmatizing all others as anomalous (shādhdh). Earlier we encountered the verb shadhdha, which Nāfī‘ used to define readings that had been transmitted by only one reader from among his seventy teachers and that, as a consequence, he excluded from his compendium. In the late eighth century, to judge from his manner of describing the matter, there was nothing negative or pejorative about the term. But because such readings deviated from ‘Uthmān’s recension, which already by this time no doubt had become the dominant version, they began to be inventoried. Mālik, in his Muwattā’, listed a series of six variants of this type, each of which traced its ancestry to one or more altogether irreproachable Companions. Furthermore, in perhaps three cases, reference was explicitly made to Muhammad as the source of the variant, which amounted to granting it the status of revealed truth. In the system of seven Readers established by Ibn Mujāhid, by contrast, shādhdh applies to irregular, noncanonical readings that could not be used in a ritual setting. The most outstanding episodes of his reform, firmly supported by the Abbasid rulers, were the trials of Ibn Shanabūdh (d. 939) and Ibn Miqsam (d. 965). Ibn Shanabūdh had recited passages from the Qur’an during prayers using both the version due to Ibn Mas‘ūd and the canonical text. For this he was flogged and forced publicly to recant. Noncanonical readings continued to be known and employed, however, particularly by scholars for purposes of

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philological analysis. This explains why a certain number of them have come down to us in spite of their prohibition in a liturgical context. Before Ibn Mujāhid intervened, some were actually accepted by religious authorities. The great exegete T.abarī, to name only one such figure, preferred certain anomalous forms to the ones found in the version that is standard still today. Dutton has proposed a typology that I will now briefly recapitulate in order to bring out what such departures from the authorized rendering involved: 1. Replacement of one word by another that generally is synonymous with it. Ibn Mas‘ūd, for example, recited in Q.  101:5 al-s.ūf al-manfūsh instead of the canonical reading al-‘ihn al-manfūsh (carded wool). I have already mentioned Anas b. Mālik’s opinion concerning Q. 73:6 and the variant of Q. 62:9 that ‘Umar was familiar with. 2. Omission or addition of words. In Q. 18:79, instead of ya’khudhu kulla safīnatin ghās.ban ([a king] seizes every vessel by force), Ubayy, Ibn Mas‘ūd, and Ibn ‘Abbās, as well as the Follower Sa‘īd b. Jubayr (d. about 714), recited ya’khudhu kull a safīnat in s.ālih.at in ghās.ban ([a king] seizes every serviceable vessel by force); Ibn ‘Abbās, Sa‘īd b. Jubayr, and another Follower, Qatāda, also knew ya’khudhu kull a safīnat in s.āh.ih.at in ghās.b an ([a king] seizes every sound vessel by force). In Q. 92:3, Ibn Mas‘ūd knew the rendering wa-l-dhakari wa-l-unthā (by male and female), whereas the canonical text reads wa-mā khalaqa l-dhakara wa-l-unthā (by His creation of male and female). Ibn Mas‘ūd was moreover not the only one acquainted with this version of the verse, for Muslim (d. 875), in his S.ah.īh., gives his pupil ‘Alqama as the source of this information. When asked by Abū al-Dardā’ whether he knew how Ibn Mas‘ūd recited the first verses of Q. 92, ‘Alqama recited the anomalous version. Abū al-Dardā’ added: “I myself have also heard the Messenger of God recite in this manner, but these people [the

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religious authorities, upholders of the ‘Uthmānic recension] wished that I recite wa-mā khalaqa [l-dhakara wa-l-unthā]. I would not obey them!” Muhammad’s two wives, ‘Ā’isha and H.afs.a, avowed that they had heard him say, in what is today Q. 2:238, h.āfiz.ū ‘alā al-s.alawāti wa-l-s.alāti al-wus.tā wa-s.alāti al‘asri (take care to do your prayers, including the middle prayer and the afternoon prayer), the last phrase being absent from the ‘Uthmānic text. As the last two examples show (and this remark applies more generally as well), variants considered to be shādhdh by classical tradition could have been known and disseminated within a group, rather than irregular readings transmitted by a single person. 3. Change in the order of words not falling under category 5 in the typology of canonical variants. Tradition records that Ibn Mas‘ūd, Sa‘īd b. Jubayr, Shu’ba, T.alh.a, and other Companions recited the opening of Q. 50:19 as wa-jā’at sakrat u al-h.aqq i bi-lmawti (and the trance of truth will bring death with it) rather than wa-jā’at sakrat u al-mawt i bi-l-h.aqq i (and the trance of death will bring the truth with it), as in the canonical text. 4. Substitution of one phrase for another. This case is illustrated by a famous anecdote, reported in reputable tafsīr (notably those of T.abarī and Ibn ‘Atiyya), about the so-called scribe of the revelation, ‘Abd Allāh b. abī Sarh., whom we encountered in chapter 1. There exist several versions of the story, but all agree that ‘Abd Allāh modified the end of a verse—a place where ready-made formulas are particularly common—substituting for what Muhammad had just proclaimed a phrase of the same nature; some versions mention a double divine epithet. When Muhammad approved the modification at once, doubts began to enter the scribe’s mind, and shortly afterward he committed apostasy. 5. Omission or addition of textual elements ranging from a verse to a whole sura. One example of a noncanonical reading arising from the addition of a textual element not found in the

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vulgate occurs in another version of the story of ‘Abd Allāh b.  abī Sarh.. Commentators do not unanimously agree on which verse is at issue. Among the candidates that have been argued for is Q. 23:14. Muhammad is supposed to have recited this verse as we know it today up to the word ākhara, at which point the scribe suddenly exclaimed fa-tabaraka Llāhu ah.san u al-khāliqīna (glory be to Allāh, the best of creators). Muhammad then instructed the scribe to add this phrase to what he had just dictated. Another well-known example is the verse about stoning that ‘Umar remembered, but which was not included in the vulgate. The text, al-shaykhu wa-l-shaykhatu idhā zaniyā fa-rjumūhumā (the old man and old woman, when they have committed adultery, stone them until they die), is preserved in collections of h.adīth. I leave to one side the sura known to Abū Mūsā al-Ash‘arī. He claimed it was equivalent to the surāt al-Tawba (Q. 9) in respect of both length and content, but he remembered only one verse, which read “of the two wādīs.” This clearly is a case of abrogation that does not fall within the present typology. By contrast, the two additional suras of the Ubayy codex, al-Khal‘ and al-H.afd—whose wording has been preserved—do come under the category of noncanonical verses. The concept of anomalous readings was the result of a sustained and concerted effort on the part of the upholders of orthodoxy to settle the question of authenticity once and for all by limiting variation within the Qur’anic corpus as far as possible. Inevitably this meant relying on a written version as a standard reference. In making the ‘Uthmānic rasm one of the norms to which variants had to conform, Ibn Mujāhid and his successors managed to dramatically reduce their number—so much so that later commentators such as Ibn Rushd were able to say that there were now only a few variants, all of them of-

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ficially authorized. Although attempts to limit discrepancies achieved their full effect only as a consequence of the treatises composed by scholars who came after Ibn Mujāhid, they had begun well before the early tenth century. A revision of the Qur’anic text undertaken in 703 or 704 under the supervision of al-H.ajjāj b. Yūsuf (d. 714), the energetic Umayyad governor of Iraq, shows how far back the origins of the preoccupation with reducing variation may be traced. Al-H.ajjāj’s avowed purpose was to correct the text, nothing more. Nevertheless his insistence on counting the letters of the rasm betrayed an underlying resolve to establish a standard text so that departures from it could be readily detected and eliminated. Inevitably, however, the transmission of a written text, particularly one that is orally communicated in the first instance, is accompanied by variants. The h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, in its various versions, demonstrates in the clearest possible fashion that variation was part and parcel of Qur’anic transmission. But what kind of variation exactly? Because the meaning of the word h.arf was never satisfactorily elucidated by medieval scholars, its scope of application remained unclear. The idea that the text of the Qur’an might exist in different forms was generally understood to derive from the seven canonical readings (qirā’āt)—despite the contempt Suyūtī reserved for those who endorsed this interpretation. The anecdote reported by Nasser that I quoted at the beginning of the book shows to what extent even this very limited form of variation is apt to arouse suspicion even today: the imam of Beirut was expelled from his mosque for having recited in a way that was perfectly acceptable to orthodoxy but different from the one that is the most current today. The situation was quite different during the period when ‘Uthmān’s opponents reproached him on the ground that, although the Qur’an was many, he had made it one. This

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multiform character, though it was consistent with prophetic teaching, was incompatible with the needs of the Islamic state and with the dogma of authenticity. In the event, not even the standard text associated with ‘Uthmān’s name was able to keep variants from multiplying. Many of these variants seem to have sprouted through the cracks of the written version, as it were, from the soil of the rasm itself, which is to say in places where, owing to its defective state in the second half of the seventh century, the rasm was incapable of deciding whether they were to be accepted or rejected. The battle against multiplicity was conducted for many decades, and on two fronts, not only against the variants that were taking root in the ‘Uthmānic rasm but also against competing recensions of the Qur’an. The jurist Mālik b. Anas ruled against the legitimacy of prayers using Ibn Mas‘ūd’s text, and urged the Abbasid caliphate to prevent the spread of deviant practices by prohibiting the sale and copying of the text itself. In this he was seconded by Ibn Mujāhid, who received the full support of the authorities (represented in this case by the vizier, Ibn Muqla) in bringing to trial and punishing Ibn Shanabūdh for the crime of reciting from Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version during prayers, as we saw earlier. In the early eleventh century, as Bergsträsser and Pretzl pointed out, a copy of this recension was officially burned. Ibn Mujāhid also instituted a canon of readings (qirā’āt) based on the ‘Uthmānic rasm while discarding others as shādhdh. Perhaps the most effective strategy, however, was the one devised by T.abarī at about the same time, in the early tenth century. As Gilliot remarks in connection with the seven ah.ruf, “T.abarī claimed that there is only one h.arf in the ‘Uthmānic mus.h.af and that, as a consequence, ‘For Muslims today there is no longer any recitation other than the one retained by their merciful imām, a man of sound judgment [i.e., ‘Uthmān], containing a single h.arf to

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the exclusion of the six others.’ ” Underlying this radical argument, which empties the teaching of the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf of its substance by asserting that only one version of the Qur’an matters, was a desire to eliminate all possible sources of conflict concerning the text of the Qur’an: “The community had no need to know [the other ah.ruf ]; and supposing it still had them, it would not use them in recitation (in order to avoid dissension, as ‘Uthmān had intended).” On this point there is a striking convergence between T.abarī’s position regarding, on the one hand, the seven ah.ruf and, on the other, the making of a written version of the Qur’an. It must nonetheless be kept in mind that, alongside those who preferred one recension of the text to any other, there were others who welcomed diversity. We are told that early in the eighth century, during the month of Ramadān, Sa‘īd b. Jubayr recited Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version one day and ‘Uthmān’s the next. A little later, in Kūfa, al-A‘mash (d. 765), used both as well, and might himself have owned a copy of Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version. Ibn Shanabūdh, as we have seen, was punished for having recited from Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version, but he was also the transmitter (rāwī) of a canonical Reader, Muh.ammad b. ‘Abd al-Rah.mān b. Muh.aysin (d. 740), in the system of fourteen readings. Examining the early stages of oral transmission also allows us to estimate how great the influence of the written version on it may actually have been. In the ancient period, the history of the Qur’anic text was marked by interactions between the written and the oral—a phenomenon that we perceive today almost exclusively through the prism of the ‘Uthmānic version. The deficiencies of its rasm during the first decades of Islam explain the emergence of variants that were a consequence of having to make sense of an ambiguous script and, more important still, of the proliferation of discrepancies

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concerning the dabt. Improvements in notation made it possible to reduce the incidence of variation. But a great deal of editorial labor, undertaken in the major centers of Islam over a considerable period for the purpose of clarifying the status of variants and otherwise regularizing the Qur’anic text, was necessary in order to decide what was canonical and what was not. It was on the basis of this work, at the beginning of the tenth century, that the divine origin of certain readings (qirā’āt) compatible with the ‘Uthmānic rasm was recognized. The extent of variation displayed by these readings was not thought to challenge the authenticity of the Qur’anic text, as this was judged with reference to concepts found in the text itself and subsequently developed by theologians. Even so, as Dutton has pointed out, the scope of the textual differences between the ‘Uthmānic recension and that of Ibn Mas‘ūd aroused a deeply hostile reaction among contemporary Muslim commentators—a state of affairs that cannot help but recall the dispute reported by the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf in the most common version.

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3 Muslim Tradition on the Early Stages of the Written Transmission of the Qur’an

A

fter its obscure beginnings during Muhammad’s apostolate, the use of writing to record the text of the Qur’an very quickly gave rise to a proper manuscript tradition whose scientific examination, curiously enough, has only quite recently begun. It is true—and perhaps this is why such study was so long delayed—that Arabic sources contain a great deal of information concerning the Qur’an in its written form during the earliest years of Islam, which may have encouraged a belief that no further research on the question was necessary. Even so, traditional accounts should not be neglected, for they are a rich source of insight into how variations crept into the text during this initial phase. As Viviane Comerro rightly reminds us, accounts of the circumstances under which a written version of the Qur’an was produced “are not exclusively historical in nature, but eschatological [as well]. They were not meant solely to preserve the memory of a foundational past; they

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were concerned also with the future and the permanence of spoken words.” Let us begin by considering the formal organization of the text. The Qur’an has come down to us today as a sequence of suras, or chapters, whose order is wholly incompatible with a process of composition that unfolded in a linear fashion during Muhammad’s lifetime. The ordering that we know today places the longest suras, chiefly Medinan in origin, at the head of the collection, whereas the brief Meccan suras are put at the end. This arrangement implies that the original collection of chapters that form the ‘Uthmānic recension did not coincide with the chronology of the revelations—and this independently of the question I mentioned earlier of determining how the suras themselves were constituted. As we will see later, the principal accounts of the making of a written version under ‘Uthmān’s caliphate seem to agree that the result of this undertaking was a document designated by a specific term: mus.h.af (pl. mas.āh.if ). The Arabic word does not occur in the Qur’an itself; other words are used there to denote the book or, more generally, its written edition. The term mus.h.af, which subsequently was used exclusively to refer to a copy of the Qur’an, did not have this restricted application to begin with. A report by the historian al-Wāqidī (d. 822) concerning the expedition led by Muhammad against the Jewish population of the oasis of Khaybar in 628, for example, speaks of mas.āh.if (including copies of the Torah) being taken as booty. Here the word clearly designates other scriptures, in addition to the Qur’an. The detail regarding the Torah confirms this, but it also raises a problem because, in principle at least, the Torah was assembled in the form of a volumen (the Latin term for a roll) rather than of a codex (sewn gatherings); either the manner of binding was not specified, or al-Wāqidī was unfamiliar with the distinction between the two. A little

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later, during the ninth century, the word appeared in the colophons of certain Christian Arab manuscripts; in each of these cases it is clear that the copyist meant to designate the copy he had just finished, which is to say a codex. Why did he not employ the more customary kitāb? Was mus.h.af a more technical term? Was its use in Arabic more ancient? According to an account preserved by Suyūtī, the word was Abyssinian in origin. The oldest Qur’anic manuscripts, dating from the second half of the seventh century, consisted of sheets gathered into quires and sewn together; we saw earlier that this format, the codex, had become dominant in the Mediterranean basin by late antiquity. If mus.h.af refers to this type of book, as the colophons of the Christian Arab manuscripts plainly indicate, then it is highly probable that Qur’anic codices similar to ones of slightly later date that have been preserved came into circulation once the collection of the text was complete, and were conserved in private libraries. Does it follow from this that the introduction of the codex was closely associated with the compilation of the Qur’an in written form? The very structure of the text suggests as much. For although a codex could have been used from the outset of Muhammad’s apostolate as a sort of log book—to write down the revelations in the order that Muhammad received them—the arrangement of the suras implies that the Qur’an itself could not have assumed the form of a codex until after the Prophet’s death, when the text had finally been established and the sequence of the chapters definitively ratified. One report, which I will examine in due course, mentions a Qur’anic collection that was arranged in a different fashion than the one we know today. Nevertheless the idea of the Qur’an as a written document had gained currency before its codification was complete. Indeed, the Qur’anic text is notable for its many references to writing, and especially to its own composition. Richard Bell

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long ago pointed out the frequency of the word kitāb (book) in passages written down after the battle of Badr in 624, and chose this same word to characterize the final period of Muhammad’s apostolate. The recent works of Daniel Madigan and Anne-Sylvie Boisliveau on self-reference in the Qur’anic text have qualified Bell’s observation, however, showing that kitāb, in the Qur’an, refers more to holy scripture than to the book as a physical object—which had yet to be produced. I have briefly recalled the few reports known to us, preserved by Muslim tradition, regarding the existence of documents in which certain passages of divine revelation that circulated orally within the community of believers were written down. We saw earlier that the account of ‘Umar’s conversion involved a parchment bearing a Qur’anic passage from the Meccan period. The historical basis of such testimony is not wholly assured, however; at all events it provides no information of any practical value for our purposes, amounting to little more than anecdotal decoration. The traditional description of the makeshift materials used for inscribing the text suggests that it was written down in a fragmented manner that mirrored the revelations themselves. As an aesthetic matter, however, when the codex came to be adopted as a model, putting an oral text into book form meant having to adapt it to a rigidly linear format, so that each folio would be filled with writing to an equal extent. If the chronological order of the suras were strictly continuous, it would have been possible, though difficult, to fill out a codex by working backward, with the oldest suras coming last. But in fact the inverted chronological sequence is irregular, with Medinan suras (for example, sura  24) being interspersed among Meccan suras, and vice versa; moreover, verses from one period sometimes figure within a sura that for the most part involves the other. This presents us once again with the problem of dating the compo-

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sition of suras whose complexity would have required a more or less long period of gestation. These various pieces of evidence have led some modern researchers to suppose, on the one hand, that the idea of a written document began to take shape rather early, and, on the other, that partial compilations, incorporating material that had already acquired a stable form, constituted the earliest scriptural version. Keith Small has given the name “authoritative text-forms” to records that enjoyed a “degree of consensual authority at the local level”—a definition that could be applied to provisional and incomplete collections produced by small groups of believers, particularly those suras that are prefaced by the so-called mysterious letters. Arguments in favor of such partial compilations have a long pedigree; almost a century ago, Hans Bauer observed that chapters preceded by these enigmatic signs occur in groups whose relation to neighboring chapters violates the principle of classification that obtains elsewhere in the Qur’an. The group of suras 29–32, for example, which begin with the three letters alif-lām-mīm and are themselves properly arranged in order of decreasing length, introduce a marked discontinuity between the last of them (32) and the one immediately following (33), the former taking up 44 lines in the Cairo edition as against 157 for the latter. Bauer conjectured that these suras were initially part of collections whose contents had been inserted almost at random in the compilation that was to form the basis of the ‘Uthmānic recension. In Ibn Mas‘ūd’s collection, by contrast, suras headed by the mysterious letters were often kept separate from one another in order to more closely approximate the ideal order according to length. Various accounts transmitted by Muslim scholars during the first centuries of Islam sought to explain how a written Qur’an came to be produced. The best known of these,

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preserved by Bukhārī in his collection of traditions, locates the decisive events under ‘Uthmān’s caliphate. ‘Uthmān was a Muslim of long standing, but his loyalty to the Meccan aristocracy, and more particularly to the Umayyad clan, as well as his methods of governing, made him suspect in the eyes of more than a few. According to Bukhārī’s version, which goes back to Anas b. Malīk, H.udhayfa b. al-Yamān presented himself to ‘Uthmān at the time when he was fighting the people of Syria [Shām], seeking to use Iraqi troops to conquer Armenia and Azerbaijan. He had been alarmed by the different ways in which these people recited [the Qur’an]. He therefore said to ‘Uthmān: “Commander of the faithful, rescue this community [umma] before it disagrees about Holy Scripture as Jews and Christians have disagreed [about their own scriptures].” ‘Uthmān therefore sent someone to say to [his wife] H.afs.a: “Send us the sheets [s.uh.uf], we will copy them in the mas.āh.if, then we will send them back to you.” H.afs.a sent the sheets to ‘Uthmān and he gave orders to Zayd b. Thābit, ‘Abd Allāh b. Zubayr, Sa‘īd b. al-‘As., and ‘Abd al-Rah.man b. al-Hārith b.  Hishām. These men copied the sheets in the mas.āh.if. ‘Uthmān said to the three Qurayshites [of the group]: “If you differ from Zayd b. Thābit over some passage of the Qur’an, copy it in the language of the Quraysh, for the Qur’an has come down in their language.” This they did. When they had copied the sheets in the mas.āh.if, ‘Uthmān sent the sheets back to H.afs.a. And he sent [copies] of the codex that they had made into the various regions

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and he ordered every other collection [s.ah.īfa] and every other codex to be burned. In this telling, the caliph’s sponsorship of a uniform edition was intended to forestall dissension within the Muslim community, following the advice of his general, H.udhayfa b. alYamān, who, while leading an expedition against Armenia, had observed discrepancies in the recitation of the Qur’an among the troops. It should be kept in mind that the theme of discrepancies very seldom reappears in this account of ‘Uthmān’s collection, and then only in connection with dialectal differences that put the Medinan Zayd b. Thābit at odds with a trio of Meccans, ‘Abd Allāh b. Zubayr, Sa‘īd b. al-‘As. (d. 688/699), and ‘Abd al-Rah.man b. al-Hārith b. Hishām, who were charged with preserving the Meccan character of the Qur’an’s language. It would appear that these differences explain the nature of the discrepancies in recitation mentioned at the beginning of Bukhārī’s account; to be sure, the text does not say so explicitly, but the fact that the terms used to designate, first, the divergences observed among the Muslim troops, and, second, the disagreements that were liable to arise among the redactors appointed by ‘Uthmān both derive from the same root, Kh-L-F, argues in favor of such an inference. This explanation turns out not to be as satisfactory as one might be inclined to suppose, however. The problem is that one of the characteristic features of the Qurayshi manner of speaking is the absence of the hamza, which by contrast is quite present in the Qur’an. It may well be that al-Zuhrī, who also transmitted the best known version of the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, deliberately introduced this element with the purpose of minimizing the extent of variation in recitation that existed among the faithful. The pivotal moment, if we accept the traditional account, was the initial collection of revelations, compiled on the basis

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of written records that the first caliph, Abū Bakr, had ordered to be made in order to prevent the Qur’an from disappearing in the event that those who knew the text were to die in combat. This compilation then passed into the safekeeping of his successor, ‘Umar b. al-Khattāb, who left it at his death to his daughter H.afs.a, one of Muhammad’s widows. In the account of this episode that has come down to us from Bukhārī, the task of producing a written version of the Qur’anic text was confided to the same man, Zayd b. Thābit, who had assembled the various chapters from miscellaneous scriptural materials (another indication of the role of writing during Muhammad’s lifetime) together with passages that the faithful had committed to memory, and in this way produced a unique document that eventually came into H.afs.a’s hands. Unlike the situation under ‘Uthmān’s reign, when Zayd was assisted (or perhaps supervised) by a committee composed of Meccans, he alone carried out the task that had been entrusted to him by Abū Bakr. Recourse to written records considerably reduced the chances of divergence by comparison with what might have occurred had human memory been the only available resource. But this was not the sole consideration. The main argument advanced by ‘Umar to convince the caliph to undertake the project of producing a written version of the Qur’an was precisely the idea that this would make it possible to protect God’s revelation against the risk of being forever forgotten: “I very much fear,” he is reported by Bukhārī to have said, “that reciters may die in combat in the future; in that case much of the Qur’an will have been lost. It is therefore my belief that you should order the Qur’an to be collected.” In the version of events that was retained by T.abarī and that also goes back to Zuhrī by another chain of transmission, H.afs.a’s sheets were no longer said to be the result of a gathering made by Zayd at the order of Abū Bakr; instead Zayd

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presented the caliph with a record from oral sources that was written down “on page-size pieces of hide, small pieces of [camel] scapula, and palm leaves.” It was only later, under ‘Umar’s reign, that this text was transcribed “on a single scroll [s.ah.īfa].” Similarly, the mus.h.af commissioned by ‘Uthmān drew upon unspecified sources that—as readers could (or were bound to) deduce—involved collective memory. This much is suggested by the way in which Zayd went about locating verses that were missing when the ‘Uthmānic recension was being collected: I could not find this verse [Q. 33:23] anywhere [in the text]. . . . I sought out the Muhājirūn [= Muslims who had emigrated from Mecca], and asked them about this, but I could find no trace of it with any of them. So I sought out the Ans.ār [= Medinan Muslims], and asked them about it, but I could find no trace of it with any of them. Finally, I found it with Khuzaima b. Thābit, and wrote it down. Another passage was missing as well. Zayd resumed his search: So I sought out the Muhājirūn and asked them about this, but I could find no trace of it with any of them. So I sought out the Ans.ār and asked them about it, but I could find no trace of it with any of them. Finally, I found it with another man called Khuzaima, and I set [these verses] at the end of alBarā’a [sura 9]. Then I made a [third] revision, and found nothing [missing]. In this version, there is no mention of H.afs.a’s sheets until the compilation had been completed: Then ‘Uthmān sent word to H.afs.a asking her to give him the scroll [s.ah.īfa], making a promise to her

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that he would return it. She handed it over to him, and he compared the book [we had compiled] with it. No difference was found between them. On the basis of this compilation, various copies were prepared—the so-called garrison Qur’ans (mas.āh.if al-ams.ār)— for distribution among the provinces. Bukhārī says nothing more about them. It is from later authors that we have lists containing the names of between four and seven towns; among these, Bas.ra, Damascus, Kūfa, and Medina are most commonly referred to by medieval scholars. T.abarī, for his part, does not say that copies of the recension were sent to the provinces, only that ‘Uthmān “ordered people to make copies [mas.āh.if].” The medieval consensus is unsatisfactory because it omits towns (Mecca foremost among them) and regions that are known to have played an important role in the dissemination of the ‘Uthmānic text. Muh.ammad al-A‘z.amī has recently suggested that there were six copies in all, adding to the four just mentioned another one sent to Mecca and a final one made for the caliph’s personal use. By comparing these two accounts of the genesis of a written version of the Qur’an under ‘Uthmān’s reign, the one due to Bukhārī and the other to T.abarī, we are able to form a clearer idea of the tensions within Muslim tradition during the first centuries of Islam. Comerro has drawn up a list of differences between the two accounts. Notwithstanding that they derive from a common source, the discrepancies between them reveal an attempt to reconcile conflicting versions of the same events. The shift of emphasis this entailed is significant for our purposes. T.abarī’s account insists that collecting the various suras depended on oral performance and transmission, with recitation nourishing the text. The episode of the “missing verse,” which occurs twice in T.abarī, had figured earlier in

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Bukhārī, only now it was divided into two parts: Q. 9:128–29, which was recovered by Zayd while helping to collect the text under the reign of Abū Bakr; and Q. 33:23, which was recovered under ‘Uthmān—though the information in this case came from another source. According to Bukhārī, when Zayd set about collecting the text under Abū Bakr, he used whatever was at hand in order to write down what he found; these materials are mentioned by T.abarī only in passing, as an incidental detail. For T.abarī, H.afs.a’s sheets played no role until Zayd’s work was done; the leaves of the finished copy were then—and only then—meticulously checked against H.afs.a’s, thus providing a guarantee of the absolute fidelity of the ‘Uthmānic recension to what was supposed to be the original text. The differences between Bukhārī’s and T.abarī’s versions of the event therefore reflect an ideological disagreement on a number of points; though neither one seems wholly reliable in respect of historical fact, it is nonetheless highly probable that the ‘Uthmānic recension was complete before the end of the caliph’s reign. The two versions agree, by contrast, in one important respect: Bukhārī and T.abarī both acknowledge that a dispute arose concerning the existence of variations among recited texts (both authors employ the word for “reading,” qirā’a). These variations are barely described by T.abarī, and not at all by Bukhārī. Both mention a disagreement between the peoples of Syria and Iraq with regard to the Qur’anic text, but only T.abarī goes further than this, saying that the Syrians professed to follow the reading of Ubayy b. Ka‘b and the Iraqis that of Ibn Mas‘ūd. We have already encountered these two authorities, and later I will take up their readings in greater detail. For the moment it will be helpful to consider a number of technical points. In the first place, the turn to writing grew out of a divergence in manners of reciting the Qur’an. Unlike Bukhārī,

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T.abarī develops at least to some small extent the theme of a dispute over variation (which cannot fail to call to mind the episode reported by the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, in version A of Shady Hekmat Nasser’s typology), saying that partisans of Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version took issue with those who upheld Ubayy’s version. Curiously, as an orthodox scholar of prophetic tradition, T.abarī makes no mention of the compilation involving H.afs.a’s sheets that Zayd made at the order of Abū Bakr, preferring simply to record which party initiated the dispute and leave it at that; yet he does mention ‘Uthmān’s arbitration in the matter of how the word tābūt (meaning “box” or “chest”) should be written, though apparently only to emphasize the trivial character of such differences, and in any case he brings up the matter almost as an afterthought. Even if we grant that the Qur’an was in all probability written down in the way Zuhrī indicated, it is difficult to accurately assess the value of his account because we are unable to examine Zayd’s copy. Nevertheless the earliest Qur’anic manuscripts do allow us to form some idea of scribal practice in the third quarter of the seventh century. We may surmise that it was more developed then than it had been during ‘Uthmān’s time, though not very different in its essentials. I have already briefly sketched the state of written Arabic during this period. Recall that it is necessary to distinguish between a number of constituent elements. The fundamental feature is the rasm, the consonantal skeleton consisting of the basic signs of the alphabet, which are considerably less numerous than the total number of consonants in the language—twenty-eight, not including lām-alif. Three long vowels are indicated with the aid of three basic signs, as a function of their timbre, and for this reason form part of the rasm itself. During the period we are interested in, however, copyists did not consistently mark all of them. The other elements come under the head of the dabt.

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Diacritical dots, placed above or below certain letters, permitted all the consonants of Arabic to be precisely expressed. This meant, in particular, being able to tell the difference between letters having the same form, such as bā’ and yā at the beginning of or within a word, for example. Their earliest known appearance dates to 276 CE on a funerary inscription in the Nabataean alphabet at Mada’in Saleh, in the northwest of the Arabian Peninsula. In the Islamic period, dots are attested very early on papyrus, but they occur very infrequently in Qur’anic manuscripts. If we are to believe Muslim tradition, however, they had to have been invented later. Another aspect of the dabt is the marking of short vowels. They were indicated initially by means of dots written in red ink; according to our sources, this system was devised by Abū al-Aswad al-Du’alī (d. 688), but the oldest manuscripts in which it is employed date from the very end of the seventh century. Finally, to provide readers with all the information they need, Arabic script uses orthoepic signs—for the hamza, for example, and also to mark consonant lengthening (gemination). They are totally absent from the manuscripts of the seventh century, which are characterized by a defective orthography as well, notably with regard to the marking of long /ā/. With regard to the display of words on the lines of a parchment folio, the first copyists borrowed from Greco-Roman antiquity the technique known as scriptio continua, while adapting it to the peculiarities of the Arabic alphabet; they therefore enforced regular spacing between letters and groups of letters, independently of their belonging to a word, but interrupted the ligature when they came to the end of a word. The classification of variants in terms of rasm and dabt is apt to seem somewhat odd to anyone who is accustomed to certain other writing systems. Two forms of one verb—the imperative of the second person singular, qul, and the third

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person singular of the perfect, qāla—come under the head of the former since the difference between them has to do with the presence of an additional letter in the second instance, an alif, which indicates the long vowel (see figures 11 and 12). By contrast, two forms of another verb—the second and third persons of the imperfect plural, ta‘qilūn a and ya‘qilūn a (Q. 36:68)—involve the dabt because the proper reading depends on whether two dots are placed above or beneath the initial letter, yielding tā’ and yā’ respectively (see figures  6 and 7). The distinction between these two types of variants rests, in other words, on a difference between the fundamental graphemes of Arabic and the diacritical markings that are added to some of them in order to specify their value. Let us return now to Zuhrī’s account, and particularly his contention that ‘Uthmān’s purpose in commissioning a written version was to establish a perfectly clear text that would leave no room for disagreement. Plainly this is an anachronism: the system of writing used around the middle of the seventh century was incapable of achieving this result. Writing and scribal practice, as they were known to Zuhrī near the end of his life, had evolved, and were now capable of transcribing the recited text in a much less ambiguous manner than before; it may be that his account, which draws upon information from various sources, was influenced by acquaintance with more accurate Qur’anic manuscripts. Nevertheless it was not until more than two centuries later that the system of notation of the text attained a degree of precision equivalent to what we know today, except for a few details. The account going back to Zuhrī of the collection commissioned by ‘Uthmān is quite obviously a post eventum interpretation contaminated by later material. The accounts of Bukhārī and T.abarī both close with the making of one or several mus.h.afs. As I say, these undoubtedly had the form of a codex. According to Bukhārī, standard cop-

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ies were produced almost immediately, the famous mas.āh.if al-ams.ār, whose number is disputed and that were sent to the great cities of the empire. None of them has been preserved. With regard to ‘Uthmān’s copy, usually said to have remained in Medina, we have very reliable testimony from the scholar Mālik b. Anas, himself a native of this city; asked what had become of the manuscript, he replied that it had disappeared. Mālik’s word can be trusted, for we know that he was very well informed about local developments. It may be objected that a number of Qur’ans said to have belonged to ‘Uthmān are attested in the Islamic world, not only at second hand by later commentators but also directly in the form of surviving Qur’anic manuscripts. It is not always clear, in the traditions concerning this matter, whether reference is being made to the copy that ‘Uthmān had ordered to be made in the first place or to the one that he was reading at the time of his assassination. However this may be, it is possible to form an opinion only on the basis of manuscripts associated with the caliph’s name that are known to us today. In the library of Topkapı Palace in Istanbul alone, there are no fewer than three manuscripts of this type. The oldest ones that have come down to us, including Istanbul TKS 44/32 and the so-called Tashkent Qur’an, date from the eighth century; the majority are still later. Let us come back now to the history of the manuscript text. There was a hiatus between the production of a written Qur’an and the activity of copying that came after. I said earlier that, according to T.abarī, the text established by Zayd b. Thābit was very carefully checked against H.afs.a’s sheets—a comparison that the account preserved by Bukhārī does not mention, probably because, in his narrative, the text that her sheets contained was one of the sources of the ‘Uthmānic compilation. The next stage of the project inaugurated by the caliph was the

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dissemination of his version. The copies made for this purpose were not identical; variant readings, some forty in all, had been introduced into the text. They exclusively involve the rasm, the consonantal skeleton, and are divided into four groups, each of which is associated with one of the mas.āh.if alams.ār—or, according to certain authors who include a copy sent to Mecca, five groups. The latter accounting is subsequent to Bukhārī, for whom the four ‘Uthmānic copies in question are those that the caliph sent to Damascus, Bas. ra, and Kūfa, in addition to the one that was kept in Medina. What was the source of these variants? They could have been the result of copying errors; that is, they might be strictly human in origin. Muslim tradition sheds no real light on this point. At most we might draw a comparison with a h.adīth that is known to us in several versions, in which a Companion affirms that the Qur’an contains errors. The ones mentioned are grammatical inaccuracies that nonetheless have nothing to do with variants of the rasm, since none of them occurs among the forty or so textual peculiarities, which themselves are associated with the readings (qirā’āt) of each of the various schools. The reliance on writing that ‘Uthmān’s undertaking assumed did not fail to surprise subsequent Muslim commentators. Indeed, the very reason given by the caliph for codifying the Qur’an implied that he placed greater trust in written transmission than in oral transmission. A similar observation can be made in connection with traditions reporting the earlier attempt to produce a written version under the first caliph, Abū Bakr. In this case the justification advanced was almost identical: only the existence of a written version would save the Qur’anic text from oblivion in the event that many of the faithful who knew it by heart were to be fatally wounded on the field of battle. Later commentators, because they were unacquainted with the state of the manuscript tradition in the

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seventh century, and particularly because they were unaware that short vowels were not marked in it, sought to make room for an oral component that agreed more closely with traditional teaching and therefore was better suited to emphasizing the continuity of the transmission of the Qur’anic text. A short account for which no source is given, reported by an Egyptian commentator of the nineteenth century, Muh.ammad ‘Abd al‘Az.īm al-Zarqānī, says that each of the mas.āh.if ‘Uthmān sent to the provinces was accompanied by a Reader, which is to say a distinguished reciter who could teach the text orally. This episode has assumed various forms over the centuries. Comerro believes that the oldest is due to H.usayn al-Baghawī (d. 1122), who mentions only five Readers; their readings, he says (without elaborating further), go back to five Companions: Ubayy, ‘Uthmān, ‘Alī, Ibn Mas‘ūd, and Zayd b.  Thābit. Here we can make out a correspondence between the number of such appointments and the number of mas.āh.if al-ams.ār—subsequently increased to five, so as to include Mecca, since it was difficult for later commentators to imagine that this city had not likewise received a copy of the ‘Uthmānic recension. Al-Zarqānī offers a more persuasive version, associating less illustrious Companions with each of the five manuscripts. He says that ‘Uthmān sent ‘Abdallāh b. Sā’ib (d. 689) with the copy intended for Mecca; the one for Damascus was entrusted to al-Mughīra b. Shihāb (d. 710); the one for Kūfa to Abū ‘Abd al-Rah.mān al-Sulamī (d. 693); and the one for Bas.ra to ‘Āmir b. ‘Abd Qays (d. 680). As for the manuscript that remained at Medina, it was said to be in the custody of the very person who had been given responsibility for producing a written version of the Qur’an in the first place, Zayd b. Thābit. Traditional sources cast doubt on the idea that all these Readers, instructed to ensure the faithful transmission of Muhammad’s teaching, would have been able to carry

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out their assignments. According to Ibn al-Jazarī, al-Sulamī recited the Qur’anic text before two caliphs, ‘Uthmān and ‘Alī. But an earlier author, al-Dhahabī (d. 1348), reports the testimony of another Reader, Shu‘ba, who denied that al-Sulamī could have learned anything from ‘Uthmān—a view shared by a still earlier author, al-Dāraqutnī (d. 995). Moreover, these two medieval authors maintain that al-Sulamī heard only a part of the Qur’an. Al-Zarqānī’s version of events seems therefore to have been motivated by a desire to restore oral performance to what he considered to be its rightful place, no doubt relying on specialized biographical dictionaries in order to reconstruct a plausible chain of transmission. The idea that the mas.āh.if al-ams.ār were dispatched in the company of Readers, though altogether without historical foundation, nonetheless enjoyed a certain popularity in the medieval period. It has been revived recently by Muh.ammad al-A‘z.amī, for example, who has shown how deeply, in this case as in others, the primacy of writing testified to by the canonical accounts of Bukharī and, to a lesser degree, T.abarī confounded orthodox opinion. ‘Uthmān’s codex occupies a place of its own. For it is his recension that, in fulfillment of the purposes attributed to the caliph by tradition, came to be established throughout Islam. As Comerro has demonstrated, the upholders of orthodoxy managed to impose this version of events through a combination of editorial selection and exegetical commentary inspired by the success of attempts in other fields to institute a uniquely authoritative text. In the period that interests us here, however, around the mid-seventh century, the situation was quite different. During the years that followed Muhammad’s death, rivalries among various groups of his disciples led all of them to search for ways of obtaining the legitimacy they needed in order to achieve their ambitions. Possessing a manuscript copy of the revelations given to the Prophet therefore became

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a matter of the highest importance, and Muslim tradition preserves a record of a certain number of competing recensions, in addition to the one that, having won official support, was to become the canonical text. Indeed, various accounts attest to the existence of other versions. Recall, for example, that ‘Uthmān is said to have destroyed prior mas.āh.if once the collection undertaken by his order had finally produced a complete text. ‘Uthmān is not the only one of the early caliphs who was reputed to have had a personal copy of the Qur’an. ‘Uthmān’s two predecessors, Abū Bakr and ‘Umar, whose roles in the accounts of Bukharī and T.abarī we considered earlier, were believed to have had their own copies as well, though this tradition has been disputed. The fourth of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, ‘Alī b. abī Tālib, Muh.ammad’s cousin and son-in-law, owes his distinctive place in the history of Islam to the fact that his claim to be Muh.ammad’s rightful successor led to the emergence of Shiism. According to one account, [W]hen the Prophet died, ‘Alī swore that he would never wear a cloak, except on Fridays, until he had finished collecting the Qur’an in a mus.h.af. After a certain time, Abū Bakr sent someone to say to him, Abū H.asan, can it be that you object to my being named leader?” “No, by God,” he replied, “only I have sworn not to wear a cloak, except on Fridays.” He therefore pledged his allegiance to [Abū Bakr] and went away. This passage, which comes from the Kitāb al-mas.āh.if (Book of the Qur’anic Codices) of Ibn abī Dā’ūd (d. 928), is accompanied by a commentary in which it is remarked that its source, one al-Ash‘ath, was not highly regarded as a transmitter of traditions and that another, more common version of

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this account, made no reference to a mus.h.af. The verb jama‘a, found in both versions, means “to collect or assemble from someone who has learned the Qur’an by heart.” The existence of a recension due to ‘Alī must therefore be considered very doubtful. Nevertheless the belief in one persisted among Shiite communities, which were dissatisfied with the edition sponsored by ‘Uthmān. It was reproached, among other things, for having eliminated passages in which ‘Alī (and his descendants, who continued to assert their rights of succession) were mentioned, while retaining other passages in which their enemies (and particularly members of the Umayyad clan) were designated by name. One Shiite author, al-Sayyārī (fl. mid-ninth century), composed a Kitāb al-qirā’āt (Book of Readings) in which he assembled a large number of variants attributed to one or another of the Shiite imams, and in a few cases to Ibn Mas‘ūd, whom I will discuss shortly. Al-Sayyārī’s work makes reference to ‘Alī’s copy; more generally, it draws attention to parts of the revelations that were held to have been deformed or deleted by the adversaries of ‘Alī’s descendants, the Alids. Whether or not ‘Alī’s version of the Qur’an actually existed, one detail of its legend seems to me worth noting: according to Suyūtī, a Sunni author, the text was chronologically organized, beginning with sura 96. Comerro has brought together several accounts concerning a written text alleged to have been in the possession of Muhammad’s favorite wife, ‘Ā’isha. According to Ibn Shabba (d. 876), ‘Uthmān sent her nephew, ‘Abd Allāh b. Zubayr, to borrow from his aunt the leaves “on which God’s Messenger had written the Qur’an.” The two men compared the caliphal recension with these leaves “in order to rectify [qawwama] it; then [‘Uthmān] ordered all [private collections] to be torn up.”

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This tradition therefore lends support to the idea that a written version was composed during Muhammad’s lifetime and under his direction. According to a second tradition, which came from one Abū Muh.ammad al-Qurashī and circulated in Syrian communities, ‘Uthmān sent a letter to the provinces announcing that, in order to prevent disputes about the Qur’anic text, he had asked ‘Ā’isha to send him “the parchment containing the Qur’an, taken down from the mouth of God’s Messenger at the moment when Gabriel, having been inspired by Allāh, inspired Muhammad [in turn] and revealed it to him, when the Qur’an was still completely fresh.” A third and final account, which was included by Bukhārī in his collection of h.adīth, maintains that the contents of the copy belonging to ‘Ā’isha were arranged according to the chronology of the revelations—as they are said to have been in ‘Alī’s collection. It will have been noticed that ‘Ā’isha’s codex, in the first two traditions I have mentioned, is associated with the ‘Uthmānic recension of the Qur’anic text. According to this third account, by contrast, ‘Ā’isha’s personal copy included a version of Q. 2:238, also known to H.afs.a, that differed from the one found in ‘Uthmān’s edition. Is the reference here, then, to another copy, earlier than ‘Uthmān’s? Muslim tradition records that other Companions of the Prophet made compilations of their own. Let us begin with less well-known ones, two of whom are mentioned by Suyūtī, who brings together a vast amount of information, arranged to suit his own view of the matter. The first Companion he mentions is Sālim, a freed slave of Persian origin; according to sources, he died in the battle of Yamāma in 633. Suyūtī remarks: One of the strange narratives about the first person to have the Qur’ān collected was reported by Ibn Ashittah in his Masahif, by way of Kahmas,

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on the authority of Burayda, who claimed that the first collector of the Qur’ān in a complete codex was Sālim, Abū Hudhayfa’s slave, who swore that he would never get dressed until he had collected the Qur’ān; so he did [collect] it. The authorities conferred, and they inquired of this codex’s name. Some said, “Let’s call it ‘the Sifr’ ”; this is what the Jews call it, so they rejected it. Others said they had seen the likes of it in Ethiopia, [where] it is called “the Mas.h.af,” so they agreed to call it by this latter name. The isnād is acceptable because [Sālim] was one of the collectors who acted on Abū Bakr’s orders. A second person to whom a collection is attributed is ‘Abd Allāh b. al-Zubayr al-Ghāfiqī, a partisan of ‘Alī who fought  alongside him in the battle of Siffīn and died around 700: ‘Abd al-Mālik ibn Marwān told [al-Ghāfiqī]: “I know of your love for Abū Turāb—that is, ‘Alī— even though you are an uncouth Bedouin.” AlGhāfiqī answered: “I memorized the Qur’ān before your parents met, and ‘Alī ibn abī T.ālib had taught me two surahs which the [Messenger] of God had taught him and which neither you nor your father know.” Notwithstanding that they are called “suras,” the texts that alGhāfiqī goes on to quote from resemble prayers; the same thing may be said, of course, of the first chapter of the Qur’an and the two last ones. With the exception of the two suras cited by al-Ghāfiqī, tradition has handed down no specific information about the texts that he and Sālim are said to have compiled. Were they written copies or only the results of memorization?

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I will say no more about these two Companions, who are of lesser stature than the three to whom I turn now and of whom our knowledge is more certain. We know enough about Ubayy b. Ka‘b, Abū Mūsā alAsh‘arī, and Ibn Mas‘ūd to be able to assert some historical basis for the recensions to which their names are attached. Apart from accounts that testify to the existence of their collections, we have, for two of the three, lists of passages that differ from the text due to ‘Uthmān. In one account of doubtful authenticity, recorded by Ibn Shabba in the Ta’rīkh al-Madīna (History of Medina), the narrator encounters Abū Mūsā al-Ash‘arī and Ibn Mas‘ūd in conversation with H.udhayfa b. al-Yamān, whose traditional role in urging ‘Uthmān to prepare a standard edition we noted earlier: I arrived at the house of Abū Mūsā al-Ash‘arī. H.udhayfa b. al-Yamān, ‘Abd Allāh b. Mas‘ūd, and Abū Mūsā al-Ash‘arī were [seated] on a terrace. I said: By God! These are the ones whom I wish to see. I began to go up, but there on the step was a young servant who sought to bar my way. I took him to task and one of the three men turned toward me. I went up to them and sat down near them. They had before them a mus.h.af that ‘Uthmān had sent to them, asking that they make their own mus.h.afs conform to it. Abū Mūsā said: What you find in my mus.h.af in addition to what is in this one, do not remove it, but if you find that [my copy] is missing something, add it in writing. H.udhayfa said: And what will become of the work we have accomplished? By God, none of the people of this country wants anything other than the reading of this shaykh—he meant Ibn Mas‘ūd—and none of the people of Yemen wants anything other than the

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reading of the other—he meant Abū Mūsā. For this was H.udhayfa, who had urged ‘Uthmān to make of the mus.h.afs a single mus.h.af. The absence from this account of the third figure I mentioned, Ubayy b. Ka‘b, silently confirms the existence of variations that distinguished competing recensions from one another. Ubayy was one of the copyists of the revelation and appears in certain traditions alongside Zayd during the preparation of a written version under both Abū Bakr and ‘Uthmān. According to a few accounts that have survived, his mus.h.af contained two more suras than the vulgate (or a total of 116) and their sequence was different. His text enjoyed considerable success in Syria, and seems still to have been in circulation during the tenth century since al-Nadīm (d. between 995 and 998) saw a copy in the region of Bas.ra—contradicting the claim made by one of Ubayy’s sons that ‘Uthmān had seized his father’s mus.h.af. More precise information was preserved by Ibn abī Dā’ūd, who devotes a section of the Kitāb al-mas.āh.if to variants specific to Ubayy’s codex, without, however, giving the text of the two additional suras. Let us come back now to the two other figures. It will have been noticed that each of them possessed his own copy of the Qur’an (mus.h.af), as did H.udhayfa b. al-Yamān, the instigator and subsequently a promoter of the ‘Uthmānic recension. We know very little about the text belonging to Abū Mūsā alAsh‘arī, a native of Yemen and at one time governor of Bas.ra. Tradition records that he recited the text of the Qur’an in a particularly beautiful manner, without telling us whether the text in question differed from that of the vulgate. Moreover, he lived for a certain time far from Medina when Muhammad was still alive, which has caused some scholars to doubt whether he could have memorized the whole of the revelation.

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I have left until last the case of Ibn Mas‘ūd in view of the altogether exceptional place he occupies in the history of the Qur’anic text. In Kūfa, where Shiism was predominant and where Ibn Mas‘ūd exerted a profound influence, his mus.h.af was well received, whereas ‘Uthmān’s recension ran up against lasting opposition. The circumstances under which Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version was given written form remain confused. A point of departure is furnished by a set of traditions I mentioned earlier, which say that Muhammad met with the angel Gabriel every year to review and amend the record of the revelations he had received. This procedure is said to have been instituted toward the end of Muhammad’s apostolate; according to Q. 2:185, it always took place during the month of Ramadān. Near the very end of Muhammad’s life there was a final conference. Two traditions going back to Ibn ‘Abbās, one related by Ibn al-D.urays and the other by Ibn abī Shayba, describe what the annual revision involved. The first one says: Allāh sent down the Qur’an throughout the year. When the month of Ramadān arrived, Gabriel compared the revelations with the Prophet and Allāh then abrogated what needed to be abrogated, wrote what needed to be written, decided what needed to be decided, and caused to be abandoned what needed to be abandoned. The second tradition says that the definitive version of the Qur’an was fixed in the course of the final session: The Prophet recited the book before Gabriel each year during the month of Ramadān, and, in the month of his death, he recited it twice before [Gabriel].

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If we are to believe this telling, which gave rise to a way of teaching the Qur’anic text that was carried on by orthodox methods of transmission in the centuries following Muhammad’s death, the ultimate recension of the Qur’an (and indeed its canonization) occurred during Muhammad’s lifetime— without writing having in any way been involved. The final version mentioned in this second tradition going back to Ibn ‘Abbās, though it obviously enjoyed the benefit of divine sanction, is not the one found in ‘Uthmān’s codex; both its preservation and transmission are due to ‘Abd Allāh ibn Mas‘ūd. Kūfan traditions maintain that Ibn Mas‘ūd was present during the final process of review. Following the passage just quoted from Ibn abī Shayba, one reads: [The Qur’an] was recited twice before [Gabriel], in the presence of Abd Allāh [ibn Mas‘ūd] who witnessed the abrogations and changes that were made to it. Another Kūfan tradition went further, explicitly stating that the version of the Qur’an transmitted by Ibn Mas‘ūd was the authoritative version and that it could not be replaced by ‘Uthmān’s, which did not record the revelation in its final form: “Which of the two versions do you consider to be the first?” asked Ibn ‘Abbās. His interlocutor replied that it was Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version. “No,” replied Ibn ‘Abbās, “this [version] is actually the last.” The author goes on to recall that Ibn Mas‘ūd was a witness to the abrogations and changes that were made to the revelation in the last month of the Prophet’s life. In another formulation of this account, the other version alluded to in the passage I have just quoted is identified as being due to Zayd b. Thābit, which is to say that it was ‘Uthmān’s version:

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“Which of the two versions do you consider to be the last?” asked Ibn ‘Abbās. “That of Zayd,” replied his interlocutor. “No,” replied Ibn ‘Abbās, “the Prophet recited the Qur’an before Gabriel each year, and the year of his death he recited it before him two times. For this reason, Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version is the last.” The intention of these traditions is clearly to assert the authority of Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version of the Qur’an, which, considering its manner of transmission, must be regarded as the most authentic—since the circumstances under which ‘Uthmān’s compilation was made necessarily imply an additional link in the chain of transmission. Lending further support for this view, still another tradition records that Muhammad himself approved Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version: He who wishes to recite / read a Qur’an as pure as when it was revealed, let him recite / read the version of Ibn Umm ‘Abd [i.e., Ibn Mas‘ūd]. The claim of Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version to superior authenticity is supported by other information that emphasizes the fact that Ibn Mas‘ūd was at Muhammad’s side from the Meccan period of his apostolate onward, often being present during the announcement of God’s revelations—something the architect of ‘Uthmān’s recension, Zayd b. Thābit, who was not only a native of Medina but also much younger, could not boast of. Thus Ibn Mas‘ūd thought he had settled the matter when he said: I learned from the mouth of the Prophet some seventy suras while Zayd b. Thābit was still a little boy with two locks of hair who played with [other] children.

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At bottom, these various traditions are agreed in laying stress on one thing: the priority—and therefore the greater reliability—of Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version, which did not suffer from the chronological discontinuity that marked the ‘Uthmānic vulgate. Indeed, it is striking to note how many chains of transmission (isnāds) of the various readings (qirā’āt) that were canonized by Ibn Mujāhid had Ibn Mas‘ūd as their initial link. This is all the more surprising when one recalls, on the one hand, that his version did not include three suras found in the standard edition (the first one [Fātīh.a] and the two last), and, on the other, that it diverges in quite a few respects from the ‘Uthmānic version, among them the sequence of suras. Moreover, as we have seen, the religious authorities, with the backing of the government, made several attempts to prohibit the use of this recension for liturgical purposes, leading to Mālik b. Anas’s condemnation of Ibn Mas‘ūd in the second half of the eighth century and then, a century later, Ibn Mujāhid’s role in the trial and punishment of Ibn Shanabūdh, who was still using Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version during prayers. Muslim tradition has preserved very brief passages from Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version where his text disagrees with ‘Uthmān’s. We have no unified list of these variants; they are scattered among the works of several authors who seem to have selected from among them, probably as a matter of personal interest. Al-Farrā’, for example, felt no need to explicate the same passages as Ibn abī Dā’ūd, who composed a work very narrowly concerned with certain aspects of Qur’anic manuscripts. Furthermore, as Bergsträsser and Pretzl observed, not all of the variants have come down to us. Of the passages that have survived, not all occur in each of the various treatises that reproduce them, and their wording varies slightly from one treatise to another. In the case of Q. 3:7, for example, al-Farrā’ and Ibn abī Dā’ūd give distinct renderings. The text of the vulgate reads:

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Wa mā ya‘lamu ta’wīlahu illā Allāhu wa al-rāsikhūna fī al-‘ilmi yakulūna . . . The meaning [of these aya] is known only to Allāh, and those firmly grounded in knowledge say . . . In the text due to al-Farrā’, the variants are underlined: Inna ta’wīlahu illā ‘ind Allāh u wa al-rāsikhūna fī al‘ilmi yakulūna. In Ibn abī Dā’ūd, by contrast, one finds this: Wa in haqīqat a ta’wīlahi illā ‘ind Allāhu wa alrāsikhūna Fī al-‘ilmi yakulūna. In addition to these slightly discrepant versions of the same verse, a third version occurs in al-Sayyārī, though there it is not attributed to Ibn Mas‘ūd. Another verse in the same sura, Q. 3:39, presents a similar state of affairs. The vulgate reads: Fa-nādathu al-malā’ikat u wa huwa qā‘imun yus.allī fi-l-mih.rāb i anna Allāh a yubashshiruka bi-Yah.yā. The angels called out to him, while he stood praying in the sanctuary, “God gives you the news of John[’s birth].” The verse recorded by al-Farrā’ is identical but for one word: Fa-nādathu al-malā’ikat u wa huwa qā‘im un yus.allī fi-l-mih.rāb i inna Allāh a yubashshiruka bi-Yah.yā. The angels called out to him, while he stood praying in the sanctuary, “And now God gives you the news of John[’s birth].” Two other versions differ more markedly from the vulgate, one transmitted by Ibn abī Dā’ūd:

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Wa-nādāhu al-malā’ikat u yā Zakariyya inna Allāh a yubashiruka bi-Yah.yā. The angels called out to him, “O Zacharia! God gives you the news of John[’s birth].” The other is transmitted by Abū Hayyān: Fa-nādāhu Ğibrīl wa huwa qā‘im un. . . Gabriel called out, while he stood . . . . Al-Sayyārī, for his part, once more preserves the memory of a variant, though this time it is attributed to Ibn Mas‘ūd. These two examples are typical of the sort of variability that is found fairly often among the various transmissions of Ibn Mas‘ūd’s text. What might account for this? We have no information about the circumstances under which it was written down and which might have affected its state to one degree or another. Explicit references to a mus.h.af of Ibn Mas‘ūd are rare in the ancient period and often imprecise. The account transmitted by Ibn Shabba that I quoted from earlier does not appear to be very reliable. Al-Farrā’ mentions having seen a copy of this version that belonged to one of Ibn Mas‘ūd’s followers and that had been buried when al-H.ajjāj b. Yūsuf was governor of Iraq, apparently in response to his order that copies of the Qur’an made prior to his revision of the ‘Uthmānic text be destroyed. From a legal opinion of Mālik b. Anas we may deduce that written versions of Ibn Mas‘ūd’s recension circulated during the second half of the eighth century. It is possible that orality played a larger role in this version of the Qur’an, whose transmitters may have approved the use of synonyms; if so, this could help to explain the differences observed among transmissions. Moreover, in the absence of the sort of editorial supervision that the vulgate benefited from, variants

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might have proliferated more easily. In spite of efforts on the part of the authorities to suppress it, Ibn Mas‘ūd’s recension— and, in particular, written copies of it (mas.āh.if )—continued to circulate for a certain time; as late as the tenth century, alNadīm claimed to have seen several manuscripts that were attested  by  their copyists to contain Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version, and that differed in places from one another. Bergsträsser and Pretzl, examining variants in Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version that were known to scholars of their day, judged its manner of expression to be clearer than that of the ‘Uthmānic recension, noting also that it showed a preference for words that were widely known. This brief review of the many kinds of variation that accompanied the written transmission of the Qur’an would not be complete without saying a word about the modifications that were made to the text during the Umayyad period. It is usually thought that Caliph ‘Abd al-Malik (d. 705) had himself ordered a compilation to be made, but it seems to me that, in the text that is cited in support of this view, one finds evidence only of certain passages that had been learned by heart (the other sense of the verb jama‘a, as we saw earlier). The two figures most closely involved in the reform of the Qur’anic text carried out during this period were both forceful personalities; one of them, ‘Ubayd Allāh b. Ziyād (d. 686), was a member of the Umayyad family. In 675 he succeeded his father as governor of Iraq, where he was remembered particularly for having directed the campaign that culminated in the battle of Karbala five years later. In an account preserved by Ibn abī Dā’ūd in the Kitāb al-mas.āh.if, a secretary, Yazīd al-Fārisī, obliquely describes the circumstances surrounding the modifications to the text he made on the governor’s orders: ‘Ubayd Allāh b. Ziyād added two thousand h.arf to the mus.h.af. When al-H.ajjāj b. Yūsuf came, he

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learned of this. He asked: “Who was instructed to do that for ‘Ubayd Allāh?” He was told: “Yazīd alFārisī was given responsibility.” Al-H.ajjāj sent for me. I obeyed the summons, sure that he was going to put me to death. When I came into his presence, he said to me: “What came over Ibn Ziyād to cause two thousand h.arf to be added to the mus.h.af?” I answered him: “Allāh having protected the emir from being born in the Kallā’ [district] of Bas.ra, the task was confided to me.” “You are right,” he said to me; and he let me go. At this point the transmitter adds a gloss of his own, explaining that the additions were the result of introducing alifs in the verbs kāna and qāla, which in turn caused the rasm to be altered. Al-H.ajjāj b. Yūsuf, another outstanding figure of the period and subsequently himself the governor of Iraq, played a leading part in an editorial intervention that was to have more far-reaching consequences than the one made at the command of ‘Ubayd Allāh b. Ziyād, whose initiative he seems to criticize in the account I have just quoted. Omar Hamdan has sketched the main features of the “mas.āh.if-Projekt” supervised by al-H.ajjāj. The project seems to have been undertaken for the purpose of inspecting the state of the text. Al-H.ajjāj is credited, for example, with the decision to count the number of letters in the Qur’an, which then made it possible to divide it into halves, thirds, quarters, fifths, and so on. A similar form of textual scrutiny is attested in the Jewish manuscript tradition, where the letters of the Torah were counted by copyists in order to check the accuracy of their work. But al-H.ajjāj also undertook to correct the text, while at the same time separating suras by a dash (or perhaps a linear decorative flourish).

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Working in concert with al-H.ajjāj was a less controversial figure, H.asan al-Bas.rī, who is remembered mainly as the transmitter of a qirā’a that was not to be officially recognized by Ibn Mujāhid and his successors. An entry in the biographical dictionary of Ibn Khallikān (d. 1282) gives some insight into al-H.ajjāj’s motivation: For about forty years, until the time of ‘Abd alMālik b. Marwān, people recited the codex of ‘Uthmān. Then, incorrect readings began to multiply and spread in Iraq. Al-H.ajjāj b. Yūsuf al-Thaqfī turned to his secretaries and asked them to place signs above the ambiguous letters. It is said that ‘Asr b. ‘Ās.im carried out this task, putting single or doubled dots in different positions. For a certain time, then, the text was read only with his diacritical markings. In spite of the use of dots, however, defective readings still occurred. It was at this time that vocalization [i‘jam] was created. Henceforth reading was done in conformity with a system of dots and vowels. When this system was disregarded and very careful attention was not paid to a word, defective readings continued to occur. A means of averting this state of affairs was sought and no other means was found but to abide by the instructions of experts in oral recitation. On this view, then, al-H.ajjāj promoted writing as a way of more precisely preserving the Qur’anic text by means of technical innovation. In an account that goes back to Mālik b.  Anas, however, al-H.ajjāj’s enterprise assumes an entirely different aspect. This testimony has come down to us through the Egyptian scholar al-Samhūdī (d. 1506), whose work preserves more ancient materials. He reports that

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al-H.ajjāj b. Yūsuf was the first to send mas.āh.if to the major cities. He sent a large one to Medina. He was the first to send mas.āh.if to the cities. The one he sent to Medina was in a chest to the right of the porch that had been built to indicate the place where the Prophet sat. It was opened Fridays and Thursdays and the dawn prayer was read from it. Information from Mālik concerning episodes of Medinan history is generally trustworthy, as I say, since he himself lived there. In this account we encounter once more the theme of officially sponsored copies of the Qur’an being sent to the major cities of the empire. Here, however, Samhūdī attributes to al-H.ajjāj, rather than to ‘Uthmān, the decision to send copies to these cities. Furthermore, the purpose of the copy sent to Medina is plain: both the place where it was kept (the mosque) and its use (in public readings) are clearly indicated. This testimony is corroborated by a parallel account concerning Egypt, according to which al-H.ajjāj ordered a copy of the revised text to be sent to Fustāt, infuriating the governor, a member of the Umayyad clan, who caused a codex to be made that would counteract its influence. Another account, though this time one with a polemical cast, is due to the author of a defense of Christianity and of a refutation of Islam named ‘Abd al-Masīh. b. Ish.āq al-Kindī. A Nestorian Christian who served in the Abbasid administration during the reign of Caliph al-Ma’mūn (813–33), al-Kindī appears to have been very well informed about the events that surrounded the making of a written version of the Qur’an: Then there was the intervention of al-H.ajjāj b. Yūsuf, who left his mark on every compilation he touched. He dropped many verses and added others that, according to some [sources], concerned

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the men of the Banū Umayya and the Banū al‘Abbās, designated by their personal names. One edition, conforming to the recension desired by al-H.ajjāj, was made in six copies: one was sent to Egypt, another to Damascus, the third to Medina, the fourth to Mecca, the fifth to Kūfa, and the last to Bas.ra. As for earlier collections, he put them in boiling oil and destroyed them, in this imitating ‘Uthmān. Hamdan, working from various sources, has carefully analyzed the modifications of the Qur’anic text made by al-H.ajjāj. Their scope seems to have been less expansive than al-Kindī suggests. Hamdan stays as close as possible to the description contained in Muslim tradition, limiting the changes made to the text to eleven cases. Even if we accept this much lower figure, the fact remains that al-H.ajjāj adopted a relatively liberal approach to the transmission of the sacred text, and did not hesitate either to alter the wording or to improve the notation. Still today, the arrangements that he made for the public reading of the text are the earliest ones of which we have any record. The evidence preserved by Muslim tradition about the making of a written version of the revelations and the first copies of a Qur’anic codex pay rather little attention, everything considered, to their material character. Ibn abī Dā’ūd’s account of the addition of letters by ‘Ubayd Allāh b. Ziyād, together with the results of Hamdan’s analysis of the revision commissioned by al-H.ajjāj, are exceptions to this tendency. But it is true that both these episodes are situated in the Umayyad period and both involve an already constituted canon. The Qur’an itself and the sources collected by tradition furnish clues to the classification of suras that will throw

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light on a prior phase in the codification of the sacred text. I recalled earlier Bauer’s remarks on the existence of partial collections, characterized by the presence of mysterious letters at their beginning, that circulated with Muhammad’s approval. Tradition, for its part, records various principles of classification. The earliest of these involved the copies belonging to ‘Ā’isha and ‘Alī, where the suras were arranged in chronological order. Later authors preserved lists of the sequence of suras as they appear in rival recensions of the vulgate, established by various Companions in the early seventh century. They exhibit a limited degree of variation, but it is not clear whether they obey the same principle of classification (that is, by length), and whether a given sura in one or another of these noncanonical recensions may contain some number of verses other than the number we find in the vulgate. Suyūtī indicates that, in Ubayy’s recension, the first ten suras were ordered in the following fashion: 2, 4, 3, 7, 6, 5, 10, 9, 16, 11. In the vulgate, sura 3 consists of 200 verses, as against 175 for sura 4; conversely, the succession of sura 6 by sura 5 in Ubayy seems more logical than the sequence found in the vulgate, where sura 5, which contains 120 verses, precedes sura 6, with 165 verses. It will have been remarked, moreover, that sura 1 (al-Fātih.a) is missing; indeed, as we noted earlier, Ibn Mas‘ūd’s copy of the Qur’an includes neither the first nor the final two suras (113 and 114). Ubayy’s copy, by contrast, is said to have numbered 116. As Bauer observed long ago, the sequence of suras in Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version more nearly respects the ordering principle of decreasing length than the ‘Uthmanic recension. According to the orthodox definition given by Muh.ammad al-A‘zami, of course, the versions of Ibn Mas‘ūd and Ubayy are not mas.āh.if because neither one contains 114 suras. Al-Sayyārī, for his part, cites verses in his Kitāb al-qirā’āt in an order that departs from that of the vulgate as well. Does this mean that not only

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did the text of the copies recognized by Shiite tradition exhibit variants, but also that their verses were arranged in a distinctive sequence? Significantly, accounts of the making of a written Qur’an often conclude by mentioning the destruction of earlier codices. ‘Uthmān is said to have ordered them to be burned, torn apart, or even buried. For this he was rebuked by those who objected to the replacement of a multiform record of Muhammad’s preaching by a uniquely authorized collection. ‘Alī, according to an account preserved in the Kitāb al-mas.āh.if of Ibn abī Dā’ūd, had expressed support for ‘Uthmān’s decision. Yet the caliph gave back to H.afs.a the sheets she had loaned him so that the text could be established, and they remained in her possession until her death in 665, under the reign of the first Umayyad caliph, Mu‘āwiya (661–680). Ibn abī Dā’ūd tells us that her brother ‘Abd Allāh inherited them and that Marwān, father of the Umayyad caliph ‘Abd al-Malik, immediately demanded he hand them over and then destroyed them. At this point the story told by the Kitāb al-mas.āh.if—a sort of template for the history of Zayd b. Thābit’s making of a written version of the Qur’an—comes to an end. The destruction of H.afs.a’s copy, attested by an independent account preserved by Ibn abī Dā’ūd, is passed over in silence by Bukhārī; T.abarī says that her copy was washed with water in order to erase the text. In more than one case a commentary has come down to us in which this and other such suppressed copies are said to have been destroyed, not because they displayed any deviation from the true Qur’anic text, but in order to forestall even the least suspicion from taking root that they harbored variants. The same behavior is attributed to al-H.ajjāj, whose labors were likewise crowned by the destruction of prior copies, in this case by immersing them in boiling oil—though not without compensating the owners of these manuscripts for their loss.

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In spite of these repressive measures, nonconforming recensions continued to circulate. Al-Tirmidhī (d. 892) transmits an account in which Ibn Mas‘ūd, angrily rejecting the compilation made under ‘Uthmān, cried out: “People of Iraq, hide the mas.āh.if you possess and save them [from falling into the hands of ‘Uthmān’s agents]! . . . Meet Allāh with the [true] mas.āh.if ! ” In Iraq, where ‘Alī’s followers were well established, notably at Kūfa, discrepant versions—particularly that of Ibn Mas‘ūd—had long been preferred; in fact, according to Ibn Mujāhid, few of the faithful in Kūfa adhered to the readings of the ‘Uthmānic text. During the Umayyad period, when Ziyād b. Abū Sufyān was the governor of Iraq, his deputy in Bas.ra carried out the execution in 670–71 of men who had attempted to make a new “collation” of the Qur’anic text. Later, it will be recalled, in the second half of the eighth century, in Medina, Mālik b. Anas urged the authorities to prohibit the recopying and the sale of Ibn Mas‘ūd’s text. Al-Nadīm, writing in the tenth century, reported that he had seen several of them, and in the early eleventh century a manuscript containing this version was burned. Even so, considering all that Muslim tradition records about the history of Qur’anic transmission, one cannot help but be struck by how successful the enterprise that ‘Uthmān set into motion was in the end. The version to which the caliph’s name is attached is the only one current today; what is more, one reading in particular—based on the teaching of ‘Ās. im b. abī al-Najūd and transmitted by his pupil H.afs. b. Sulaymān (H.afs. ‘an ‘Ās.im [H.afs. from ‘Ās.im], as it is known)—has very largely superseded all others in recent decades. The traditional view, according to which ‘Uthmān was the first to prepare a unified written text of the Qur’an, probably contains a very large element of truth. The Umayyads, to whom he was related, gave his work greater and more long-lasting influence by

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improving its notation and carrying on the effort to impose a unique version throughout the Islamic world. As Yasin Dutton rightly says, [T]he Qur’ān, which of course means literally “recitation,” was a typically “multiform” phenomenon at the beginning of its life, reflected in the h.adīth about the seven ah.ruf and in the multiplicity of variants recorded from the Companions and others in the qirā’āt and tafsīr literature, and was then “reduced” to one dominant written form in the time of ‘Uthmān. Variants of the rasm—the fundamental graphic component of the ‘Uthmānic recension in its written form—are very few in number, certainly by comparison with the proliferation of readings (qirā’āt). These variants do not reflect the state of the text in 655 or so, just after it had been written down; they were the result of a process of selection and revision that must have extended over a longer period, since a considerable number of them could not have been recognized as variants before the late seventh century. The concern with establishing beyond all doubt the authenticity of the revelation given to Muhammad—openly challenged by unbelievers during his lifetime, as the Qur’anic text itself acknowledges—did not readily accommodate differences of wording; and, in the turbulent years of rivalry and discord that followed Muhammad’s death, the detection of variants aroused a sense of unease among the faithful that is echoed in traditional sources. Religious and political authorities took great pains to eliminate all possible sources of disagreement. With the dissemination of the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, which no doubt occurred during the first years of Islam and which appeared to show that Muhammad himself endorsed the

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principle of diversity in recitation, they very quickly perceived that the coexistence of different versions of the revelations posed a grave danger to the unity of Islam, and moved at once to bring about the general acceptance of a single recension. This was a decisive step. In the following decades, under both the Umayyads and the Abbasids, the government’s determination was constant and unwavering. Closer scrutiny of the growing sophistication of the notation introduced to capture certain subtleties of recitation, while it would allow us to appreciate more fully the immense intellectual effort expended by medieval scholars in creating more powerful methods of exegesis and their resolve to limit the scope for variation as far as possible by written means, initially on parchment and later on paper, would lead us too far astray from our present purpose. According to Muslim tradition, a relatively developed scriptural technique had been devised before Muhammad’s death. The constitution and circulation of partial Qur’anic texts, apparently with the Prophet’s approval, must not be neglected, although the little evidence we have in this connection does not permit any firm conclusions to be drawn. In a society that lacked a manuscript tradition, authoritative textforms (to recall Small’s phrase) made it possible to experiment in ways that facilitated a compilation of all the revelations shortly after Muhammad’s death. These fragmentary transcriptions, probably formulated by members of rival groups, adopted particular features of the oral versions that were current within them. This would explain the distinctive character of the versions collected by various Companions that we have examined, notably with regard to the sequence of the suras. The teaching of the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf takes on its full meaning in just such a context. All the collections associated with prominent figures were faced with the problem of dis-

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pelling doubts about their authenticity. The sheets (s.uh.uf ) belonging to H.afs.a and ‘Ā’isha suggested a possible solution, in which the importance of written records was paramount; one account concerning ‘Ā’isha went so far as to identify Muhammad as the ultimate guarantor of their genuineness. Traditions concerning Ibn Mas‘ūd, by contrast, seem to have insisted on the bond of direct oral instruction that obtained between Muhammad and his faithful servant. Each of these two methods of transmission enjoyed a specific advantage: the one, making use of the ‘Uthmānic rasm, allowed the Qur’anic text to be given permanent expression; the other was more in keeping with oral practice and more tolerant of variation (in the event, recourse to synonymous expressions), which would explain the enduring textual diversity that al-Nadīm remarked upon three centuries later. Plainly we are dealing here with a crucial aspect of the early history of the written transmission of the Qur’an as it is known to us from ancient sources. The manner in which a written text was established was still strongly influenced by oral performance, just as oral performance was very shortly to be influenced in turn by writing. The survival of variation soon became more problematic once the spoken message was written down and pressures to recognize a standard recension grew. Conformity to a single written text was also more readily monitored, as the authorities of the young Islamic state well understood. In the seventh century, however, this habit had not yet been systematically enforced, and strict obedience to the Qur’an in its ‘Uthmānic transcription was not yet obligatory. ‘Ā’isha and H.afs.a were not in the least surprised to learn that their personal copies of the Qur’an contained a different version of a verse than that of ‘Uthmān. Anas b. Mālik, a Companion, claimed the right to use synonymns, and al-Zuhrī,

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hardly a partisan of Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version, admitted their use in recitation and proposed this model for h.adīth. In the late seventh century, the continuing flexibility of attitudes toward the Qur’anic text enabled al-H.ajjāj to undertake his revision without arousing general disapproval (probably he risked nothing more than criticism from the staunchest enemies of the Umayyads). Only a half-century later, however, the grammarian and Qur’anic reader Abū ‘Amr al-‘Alā’ was limited to correcting a known error in Q. 20:63 as part of his recitation; the text of the mus.h.af itself was to remain unchanged. Even so, this sort of variation was still widely accepted by those who subscribed to Ibn Mas‘ūd’s transmission.

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4 The Lesson of the Manuscripts

W

e noted earlier the importance of orality in the initial phase of the history of the Qur’anic text, notwithstanding the fact, as I have had occasion to emphasize more than once, that our information in this regard is meager, very uneven in value, and difficult to interpret. Literary sources associated with the manuscript tradition of the Qur’an, for their part, preserve suggestive details about the variations to which the text was subject during the ancient period, but they are often exceedingly vague. Scholars had long believed that codices of the Qur’an from the earliest years of Islam had not survived, or that, if manuscripts dating from this period did exist, the material they contained was only of limited usefulness for research. For this reason, the manuscript transmission of the Qur’an has not been explored in detail until fairly recently. The circumstances under which ancient copies have been conserved in the Islamic world vary. Some manuscripts that were no longer serviceable on account of physical deterioration (broken bindings, for example) or difficulties in reading an obscure script (not unlike the ones we encounter today reading Gothic calligraphy, for example) were stored

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rather carelessly and in a disordered manner in depositories; some were later removed, either wholly or in part, in order to repair or preserve other Qur’anic manuscripts, or, if they were of some value, to be sold. The second case includes partial or integral copies that were said to have belonged to Caliph ‘Uthmān himself, or else were made under his direction, and that thus became relics; also individual leaves that both Muslim and European bibliophiles and bookdealers collected as curiosa. In the seventeenth century, for example, a Danish naval captain and merchant named Frederik Bockwold (or Buchwald) brought back a number of ancient Qur’anic manuscripts that eventually came into the possession of the royal library in Copenhagen. For quite a long time such objects remained very rare in Europe. A Danish scholar and Lutheran divine named Jacob Georg Christian Adler, one of the few orientalists of the late eighteenth century who showed an interest in them, had attempted, with the very modest bibliographical resources at his disposal, to make a careful examination of the parchment manuscripts conserved in Copenhagen. He compiled a brief catalogue, accompanied by a study of the script and commentary on the variants that he had detected upon comparing the texts with the edition of the Qur’an published in Hamburg almost a century earlier (1686) by Abraham Hinckelmann. Adler’s approach no doubt derived in part from his training and interests as a biblical scholar. His observations were of rather little importance, however, because he did not have access to sufficient information regarding qirā’āt in particular, and, more generally, traditional Qur’anic sciences. In spite of a certain dismissiveness (like Nöldeke later, he worked with manuscripts that were too recent to cast light on the earliest stages in the evolution of the Qur’anic text, and so underestimated their value), his work nonetheless represented the first

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attempt anywhere, in either Europe or the Islamic world, to make use of ancient manuscripts. Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign in 1798 presented an exceptional opportunity for the West to become better acquainted with the Islamic world. As it happened, a few members of the scientific mission attached to the military campaign, particularly the engineer Jean-Joseph Marcel, had an interest in ancient manuscripts. Marcel, who was also trained as a printer, had heard rumors of the existence of a cache of old Qur’ans in poor condition at the Mosque of ‘Amr in Fustāt. The details are not completely clear, but somehow he managed to acquire a relatively large number of parchment leaves, which he then brought back to Paris after the capitulation of the French expeditionary corps in 1801. In the years that followed he showed the collection privately to scholars, but never published it; in 1864, ten years after his death, it was purchased by the Imperial Public Library (now the National Library of Russia) in St. Petersburg. Shortly after Marcel’s return from Egypt, Jean-Louis Asselin de Cherville, a student of the French orientalist Antoine Sylvestre de Sacy, set out to create a place for the oldest copies of the Qur’an in the nascent field of Qur’anic studies. Asselin de Cherville had been sent to Cairo in 1806 as a dragoman, or interpreter, and subsequently became vice consul there, a post he held until his death in 1822. Alongside his administrative duties, he undertook scholarly research on various topics related to Arabic linguistics while also collecting manuscripts. From the same source as Marcel he succeeded in obtaining several hundred parchment leaves that came almost exclusively from copies of the Qur’an that had been discarded in a room giving onto the courtyard of the Mosque of ‘Amr. The little we know of his intentions suggests that he planned to study the paleography of these manuscripts; he mentions

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possessing “several leaves of the most ancient manuscript of this kind that is known [to exist].” He died before being able to set to work, and ten years after his death, in 1832, his collection was purchased by the Bibliothèque Royale in Paris. Before Asselin de Cherville had moved to Alexandria, in 1816, a German traveler passing through Cairo named Ulrich Jasper Seetzen sought his advice. Seetzen, acting on behalf of the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, was a newcomer to the market there for antiquities and curiosities. With the guidance of the French vice consul he was able to acquire a certain number of leaves from early Qur’anic codices. These soon found their way to the ducal library in Gotha, where they were studied initially from a paleographic standpoint with a view to producing a facsimile edition of the finest specimens. Asselin de Cherville’s much larger collection, by contrast, was slow to be put into order, and it was only in 1851 that its contents began to be catalogued. Responsibility for oriental manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Impériale (as the former royal library was now called) in Paris resided with Joseph Reinaud, a leading authority. Reinaud confided this task to an Italian scholar on his staff named Michele Amari, who rapidly completed his assignment and went on to analyze the state of the text found in the oldest manuscripts. Reinaud, having followed Amari’s work closely, recognized the innovative character of his approach to studying the manuscript tradition; with the support of Ernest Renan, he introduced the history of the Qur’an as a topic in the competition set by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres for 1857, explicitly mentioning written transmission as an aspect of the topic candidates were expected to address. The prize was intended to reward Amari for his research. But the academicians had not anticipated that the topic would attract not one but several candidates: in addition to

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Amari, Aloys Sprenger and Theodor Nöldeke submitted essays whose high quality the jury at once appreciated; in the event, there were three winners. Nöldeke, who had written in Latin, was then invited to translate his text into German. The book that appeared three years later under the title Geschichte des Qorāns immediately became a standard reference in the field of Qur’anic studies. It is unclear whether Sprenger really meant to publish his essay in book form; at all events his Leben und Lehre des Moh.ammad, which came out a few years later, bears little resemblance to the manuscript he sent to Paris. Amari’s essay, for its part, was to remain unknown except for an extract that was published after his death, in a privately printed centennial volume. And as for the inventory of Asselin de Cherville’s collection that Amari had prepared, it was incorporated later by William de Slane in a catalogue of Arabic manuscripts he had been commissioned to edit on behalf of the department of manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (as the old imperial library was now known); in the absence of illustrations, however, its entries were too concise for readers to be able to have any clear idea of what the manuscripts contained. The competition held by the Académie, and its aftermath, weighed upon further development of research on the manuscript tradition. Although Nöldeke, while he was preparing his essay, did not have access to manuscripts of the most ancient stratum, comparable to the ones that Amari had studied in Paris, he had tried to satisfy Reinaud’s requirement by consulting the fragments that the Prussian consul Johann Gottfried Wetzstein had acquired in Damascus and later sold to the Royal Library in Berlin (today the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin). The oldest of them, no doubt the Wetzstein II 1913 at the Staatsbibliotek, must be dated to the beginning of the eighth century, however. Despite a certain number of archaic

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features, the copy preserves a state of the text that is a bit more sophisticated from the orthographical point of view than the Paris fragments and belongs to a set of copies whose writing and page layout reflect a more advanced stage of development. Unsurprisingly, Nöldeke was led to conclude in his 1860 publication that these manuscripts contributed nothing very substantial to scholarly understanding of the history of the text, which therefore had to be studied on the basis of the information transmitted by Muslim tradition—an approach that recalled the one adopted by Adler in analyzing, not the text, but the writing of the Qur’anic manuscripts in Copenhagen. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, European public collections possessed quite a few fragments of ancient copies of the Qur’an. The folios acquired at Fustāt by Seetzen were conserved in Gotha, and those acquired by Asselin de Cherville in Paris, along with another set of Qur’anic fragments of the same origin, the pages that Marcel had brought back from the Egyptian campaign and permitted scholars to examine privately; after his death, in 1864, they migrated from Paris to a public collection in St. Petersburg. All these fragments came from a room in the Mosque of ‘Amr—the Arab equivalent of a geniza (the room used as a depository in a synagogue)— where older copies of the Qur’an in poor condition were kept in accordance with Islamic law. To these may be added a very large number of unbound pages (and indeed a few volumes) that came from the same source and were dispersed in museums and libraries throughout the world, from the Vatican to institutions in North America, to say nothing of those that remained in Egypt and that are now found in the Egyptian National Library in Cairo. During the second half of the nineteenth century, steps were taken to conserve existing collections of ancient Qur’anic fragments in European libraries on a more systematic basis

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and, in a few cases, to add to their holdings. Other deposits, similar to the one in Fustāt, were subsequently discovered, beginning with a collection in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. Several accessions of varying size came in the wake of this, the largest of them due to Wetzstein, who sold his collection to libraries in Berlin and Tübingen. In England, the Cambridge University Library subsequently purchased fragments acquired by Edward Henry Palmer and Charles Tyrwhitt Drake in Damascus in 1870, and a few folios from the collection of Charles Schefer were purchased by the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Except for a few others, now dispersed, the remainder of the Damascus corpus was transported during World War I to Istanbul, where it is currently held by the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum. In the late nineteenth century, a traveler reported having come across a similar deposit in the Great Mosque of Kairouan, in Tunisia. Almost all of the materials are now conserved in Raqqada, just outside Kairouan, in the National Museum of Islamic Art; a few loose folios were sold on the international antiquities market and are found today in private and public collections, mostly abroad. The most recent discovery was made almost fifty years ago in Yemen, at Sanaa, in 1972. Once again manuscripts that had fallen into disuse were kept in the Great Mosque, only this time in a concealed space between the roof and a false ceiling above the prayer room. Virtually the whole of the deposit, with the exception of a very few fragments that have surfaced since on the antiquities market, has remained in Sanaa, in the collection of Dar al-Makhtūtat. Gaining access to these manuscripts has long been a complicated business. Apart from the volatile political climate in both Tunisia and Yemen, the materials themselves have not yet been properly catalogued—in some cases because their physical condition has made this impossible. At all

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events progress in regrouping folios dispersed among various collections throughout the world has been slow and intermittent, and still today is far from complete. But the difficulties of access that scholars have faced are only one of the reasons for the delay in making a comprehensive study of ancient Qur’anic manuscripts. As we have seen, a good many important documents have been available in European public libraries for well more than a century. Yet research on them remained limited for many years, mainly for want of a satisfactory method of classifying them. The second edition of Geschichte des Qorāns, revised by Friedrich Schwally, Gotthelf Bergsträsser, and Otto Pretzl under Nöldeke’s supervision, considerably enlarged the initial work without substantially modifying its approach. In the first two volumes, due to Schwally and published in 1909 and 1919, Muslim tradition is systematically analyzed; the third volume, due to Bergsträsser and Pretzl and published in 1938, is concerned with the information collected by Muslim tradition about the Qur’anic text as well, but it also discusses in some detail ancient manuscripts and their distinguishing features. Bergsträsser’s belief in the importance of publishing and studying the text of these manuscripts was already evident in an article he had written in 1930 urging the preparation of a critical apparatus, drawing from information on Qur’anic readings (qirā’āt) found in traditional literature, that would complete the edition that scholars at al-Azhar in Cairo had brought out a few years earlier, based on the H.afs. ‘an ‘Ās.im reading. Bergsträsser had already begun photographing ancient copies of the Qur’an, with a view to assembling a body of material for comparative purposes, but this project was interrupted by his premature death in 1933, and then came to an end with Pretzl’s death, also untimely, eight years later. Once again the attempt to come to terms with the manuscript tradition itself was set aside—this

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time for purely circumstantial reasons, however, rather than as a consequence of any principled objection. Ancient manuscripts continued to be an object of inquiry, though mainly with regard to their paleographic aspect and then only in a desultory and haphazard fashion. Nabia Abbott’s 1939 volume is a notable example, followed three decades later by S.alāh. al-Dīn al-Munajjid’s major study. The state of research was nonetheless still so uncertain that until quite recently the idea that any extant Qur’anic manuscript might be prior to the ninth century was still opposed with considerable vigor in some quarters. In the meantime, however, the situation had gradually changed, and the importance of the earliest copies for Qur’anic research in general came to be more widely appreciated. Systematic study of the holdings of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (the Asselin de Cherville collection and other manuscripts of various provenances) was undertaken between 1979 and 1983 in connection with the preparation of a new catalogue of Arabic manuscripts. This made it possible to clarify the paleography of a period extending from the second half of the seventh century until the tenth, while laying the basis for a more general approach to codicology (the historical study of manuscripts as cultural artifacts) and typology in this field. The new and fundamental points of reference that emerged from this study allowed other researchers to make progress more quickly than had been anticipated. As a result, a number of papers and books, particularly on the Qur’anic text itself, appeared in rapid succession. In the interval the Sanaa discovery acted as a stimulus to further investigation, leading to the discovery of copies that, like the famous palimpsest found there (Codex S.an‘ā’ 1), deviate from the text of the vulgate. Since then scholarly attention has been concentrated largely on the oldest copies, and this in parallel with a deeper exploration of Muslim tradition

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regarding readings (qirā’āt) and, more generally, of Qur’anic sciences as a whole. But is equally significant that many Muslim scholars today take into account the rich manuscript heritage of Islam in its early years and incorporate it as an element in their own researches. Not all Qur’anic manuscripts have the same interest from the scholarly point of view; the ones that are most suited to our purposes belong to the earliest phase. None of them is complete, but a few contain several dozen leaves. The word “fragment” is sometimes used to describe them. By this it must be understood that we are dealing not with small scraps of parchment on which a few graphic signs can be made out (as is apt to be the case in other fields where materials have been recovered during archeological excavations, for example), but with leaves that have survived more or less intact. The main part of what we possess in the way of early Qur’anic manuscripts was preserved under conditions that, while certainly not optimal, afforded some measure of protection to folios, bound sheets, even whole volumes found inside a building; no doubt the fact that texts were copied on parchment further improved their chances of survival. These conditions did not always obtain, however, and various holdings contain fragments in the usual sense, that is, partial remains of the original leaves; one thinks, for example, of the Seymour Ricci collection at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, or of certain items now at the Oriental Institute in the University of Chicago that were first published by Abbott. But in the great majority of cases it is possible to work out how the book to which a group of leaves initially belonged was made and, by sequentially ordering them, to identify a particular codex structure. The risk that confusion may also arise from the use of the same term to designate, on the one hand, the fragmentary form in which the revelations were given to Muhammad, as relatively independent segments, and, on the other, the fragmentary

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state of certain physical manuscripts, owing to a more or less advanced process of decomposition, needs to be kept in mind as well. The manuscripts discovered at Sanaa and elsewhere do not contain any mention of when they were made. If colophons existed during the ancient period, they must have disappeared. New techniques of analysis have been brought to bear in order to establish the chronology of these manuscripts; paleography, in particular, has played an important role in identifying distinct sets of copies, known as h.ijāzī manuscripts after the style of their script. This first attempt at classification was made more precise by various means. Codicological and orthographical analysis, supplemented by carbon-14 dating, made it possible to locate the origin of these copies in the second half of the seventh century, which is to say that they supply evidence very near in time to Muhammad’s apostolate—the period when Muslim tradition maintains that the Qur’an was first put into written form. It may be objected that written transmission could only have been a secondary element by comparison with oral transmission, as Muslim tradition also maintains. I have already discussed at some length the growing dependence of orality on literacy. The surviving record makes it clear that there was a deliberate effort by the authorities, beginning in the seventh century, to produce enormous quantities of copies of the sacred text. To have some idea of the scale of this commitment, which involved not only the highest levels of the state, in the person of the caliphs, but also Muslims of much humbler station, consider that some 250 copies of the Qur’an from the seventh to the tenth centuries were found in the Mosque of ‘Amr in Fustāt; now held by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, they include deluxe editions containing hundreds of leaves—proof of the great expense their production entailed. The collection found in Sanaa, according to one estimate, comprised 926

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parchment copies. In Carolingian Europe, by contrast, the library of the abbey of St. Gall at about the same time counted thirty-nine copies of the Christian scriptures among its holdings, only one of which contained both the Old and New Testaments; even adding to this number contemporary copies of these same texts presently conserved in the national library in Paris, the total figure comes to about seventy at most. The very circumstances under which the Qur’an was written down, as they are reported by Muslim tradition, leave no doubt that the various factions that grew up within the Muslim community following Muhammad’s death attached the greatest importance to literacy and the possession of manuscript copies. Three documents from this period will make it possible to appreciate the value of studying the manuscript tradition in trying to understand how the Qur’anic text circulated within the Muslim communities of the second half of the seventh century and what kind of status it enjoyed. The text of the first of these manuscripts, the Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus, agrees very largely with the ‘Uthmānic recension. It is a perfect example of the kind of material that specialists in the manuscript transmission of the Qur’an in early Islam typically work with. Almost all of what survives of this copy, found at Fustāt, is divided between public collections in Paris, with 70 folios (BnF Arabe 328, fols. 1–70), and in St. Petersburg, with 26 folios (Marcel 18, fols. 1–24 and 45–46). Two other leaves are known, one presently at the Vatican Library (Vat. Ar. 1605/1), the other in the N. D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art in London (KFQ 60). In all we are able to study ninety-eight leaves of the original manuscript today, a bit less than half of the text. This copy was a rather large quarto volume whose leaves are roughly 33 centimeters high and 25 centimeters wide, or about 13 × 10 inches (fig. 14). Differences between the flesh and hair sides of the parchment are relatively clear; on many leaves,

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Figure 14. Q. 4:125–32, copied by Hand A. Verse divisions are marked by two horizontal rows, superimposed, of three dots each. Qur’anic manuscript Paris, BnF Arabe 328, fol. 18r (Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus, third quarter of the seventh century).

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the natural edges of the parchment, as well as the chines, are visible in the margins. Paleographic analysis shows that five copyists were involved in the transcription of the text, which is almost wholly consistent with the ‘Uthmānic rasm, apart from a few instances that I will discuss later, some of which are connected with the state of orthography in the ancient period. Because there were no signs at that time for marking short vowels and certain peculiarities of pronunciation, it is not possible to determine which particular reading (qirā’a) this copy reproduces. One may nonetheless suppose that it reflects a Syrian tradition, since the canonical variants of the rasm are those of one of the mas.āh.if al-ams.ār—the one that, according to tradition, was sent to Damascus on the orders of ‘Uthmān. A striking feature of the Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus is the very individual character of the five hands that transcribed the text (conventionally designated by the letters A to E). The separations between verses vary depending on the copyist, almost to the point of constituting each one’s signature. All of the separations consist of a set of four to six dots; marking these would have required a certain degree of attention on the part of the copyist. The ones entered by Hand A—two horizontal rows, superimposed, of three dots each— are readily distinguished from those introduced by Hand B, who preferred two parallel columns of three dots. Hand C, by contrast, marked the end of verses by clusters of four dots arranged in the shape of a square, whereas Hand D signaled it with three or four dots arranged vertically. Hand E adopted the same form of verse separation as A. Contrary to what some scholars maintain, the graphic identification of verse endings is a distinctive feature of the oldest manuscripts of the Qur’an. Parisino-Petropolitanus is far from being a unique case: in both the London manuscript BL Or. 2165 (fig. 15) and a manuscript from Sanaa (DAM 01–25.1),

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Figure 15. Q. 6:39–53. Qur’anic manuscript Paris, BnF Arabe 328, fol. 93r (part of the same manuscript as London, BL Or. 2165, second half of the seventh century).

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for example, verses are clearly separated. What was the origin of this practice? In the Jewish manuscript tradition, in the second or first century before our era, isolated instances of the use of a dicolon—one dot placed above another (:)—to separate verses are found in an Aramaic manuscript from the Dead Sea, whereas a blank space was used for the same purpose in copies of Greek translations. After this came a long period, from the second to the eighth century, in which scribal practice is obscure; with the Masoretic manuscripts of the ninth to eleventh centuries, verse endings began once more to be precisely indicated. In the great uncial codices of the Christian Bible in Greek—the Codex Sinaiticus, for example, which dates from the mid-fourth century—the dicolon is sometimes employed along with other symbols to separate verses from one another. A tradition therefore existed in this connection that may well have been known to the first Qur’anic copyists; nonetheless it did not extend to copies of the Torah—where the marking of verse endings was prohibited—and it was not systematically applied. Emanuel Tov has speculated about the oral origins of the practice of marking off verses, which may date as far back as the mid-second century BCE. In the Qur’an, the fragmented character of the revelations themselves no doubt gave rise in part to the habit of specifying the beginning and end of verses, which took root when the first signs were introduced for this purpose—markings that may have been more akin to the ones that Richard Bell had in mind than what Small calls “authoritative text-forms.” The importance of rhyme in the Qur’anic text probably reinforced this tendency. Exactly when such signs, apparently inspired by the customary practice of other manuscript traditions, were introduced remains an open question. Traditional accounts of the making of a written version of the Qur’an are silent on this point, and tell us nothing about the precise form they as-

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sumed. References to verse separations, mostly in legal writings, first appeared in the eighth century; in traditional literature, mention was initially made only of devices used to mark off groups of five or ten verses. From the earliest manuscripts we know that meticulous care was taken to indicate verse endings, though the verses themselves remained unnumbered; later copies, mainly from the ninth century, ceased to indicate endings, while yet still marking off verses in groups of five or ten. After the ninth century, indicating where each verse ended became the rule. In the classical Qur’anic sciences, this aspect constituted a separate topic, and different traditions, roughly associated with the mas.āh.if al-ams.ār, were occasionally distinguished from one another by their manner of dividing up the rasm into verses. The ancient manuscripts as a whole, it should be emphasized, do not exactly correspond to any particular tradition. To come back to the Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus, it is chiefly the style of writing that distinguishes one copyist from another. There is a great difference between the most skillful of them, Hand D, and the least experienced, Hand E, from whom (as in the case of Hand D as well) only two pages have come down to us. The principal copyist is A, followed by C (a professional scribe) and then B. The differences of style were evidently so obvious that the copyists (or whoever had commissioned their work) were careful to minimize the disconcerting effect that two facing or consecutive pages visibly due to two different hands might create (as a rule, one hand wrote a recto and another continued the text on the verso; on a later folio, if the second hand had written the recto, the first took over on the verso, even if the break occurs in the middle of a sentence). The transition is so seamlessly managed that the reader never has the impression of two hands at work.

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Marks of verse endings and styles of writing represent a visually detectable but ultimately superficial aspect of the contribution made by each copyist. Orthographic variations, by contrast, give much deeper insight into the ways in which they differ from one another. By comparing how each of them writes five words that occur very frequently in the Qur’anic text, even in the shortest passages, it is possible to describe rather precisely the various alternatives that are encountered within a single manuscript. By examining Hand A, responsible for the copying of sixty-seven leaves (or about 68 percent of the surviving manuscript), we can judge which choices were available in a great variety of situations. His practice, though not completely consistent from our point of view, may therefore serve as a point of reference in evaluating the work of his colleagues. One notes the great regularity with which A writes the words shay’ (thing)—always with a medial alif, except for the indefinite accusative case—and ‘adhāb (torment)—which, conversely, never contains an alif to signal the presence of the long vowel /ā/. The same is true for the three persons of the masculine singular and plural of the perfect form of the verb qāla, always written defectively. For the third person feminine singular, however, Hand A betrays a certain hesitation; most of the time, his orthography agrees with that of the two other forms I have just mentioned, but there are a few striking exceptions. The word āyāt (signs), which appears on ninety occasions in A’s hand, is another revealing example: when it is introduced by the preposition bi- and followed by a possessive suffix, it is almost invariably written with three denticles, a characteristic feature of ancient spelling. A fifth word that is instructive in analyzing the orthography of the copyists of Parisino-Petropolitanus is ‘ibād, the plural of ‘abd (servant, slave); of twenty-five occurrences in the text copied by A, four exhibit the full written form (scriptio plena) that is used today.

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Hand C, who contributed 16 percent of the manuscript in its current state, is distinguished from A by his manner of writing the words shay’ and ‘adhāb, similar to standard form today. With regard to the other words, C’s treatment of them does not perceptibly differ from what is found in the material due to A. Indeed, the three forms of the verb qāla, mentioned above, and the plural ‘ibād are treated in a still more consistent fashion; in what we possess of the copy made by C, no exception to the defective orthography characteristic of the ancient phase of Qur’anic manuscript transmission can be discerned. Hand B, who accounts for 7 percent of the copy as it has come down to us, ranks as the third largest contributor (fig. 16). He departs sometimes from the dominant tendency, defined with reference to A’s practice, though without going so far as to systematically adopt a modernized spelling, except for one or two words—as in the case of C. The situation here is intermediate between A and C, with isolated anomalies that may indicate the development of a more elaborate and precise orthography. Everything considered, however, B is nearer to A than to C. Hand E, for his part, resembles B to the extent that his style can also be described as intermediate, but this may be because, more generally, he seems unsure how to spell certain words. As for the fifth hand, D, he did not transcribe enough of the text to have encountered all the words used to evaluate the other copyists’ work; the most we can say is that he seems on the whole to conform to the prevailing practice of his colleagues. This first approximation of the distinctive orthographic characteristics of Parisino-Petropolitanus justifies the observation, with regard to writing styles, that the five copyists were content either to devise ad hoc solutions to problems of spelling or to follow their own habitual practice in this regard, rather than jointly attempt to work out a uniform style that

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Figure 16. Q. 6:148–54, copied by Hand B. Qur’anic manuscript Paris, BnF Arabe 328, fol. 29r (Codex ParisinoPetropolitanus, third quarter of the seventh century).

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could have been sustained from the beginning to the end of the Qur’anic text. Particularly in the case of A, B, and E, when they show a preference for this or that form, we find inconsistencies that betray the personal—and no doubt independent—nature of their motivations. This state of affairs could nonetheless be explained as the result of copying from dictation, or indeed from memory; in the absence of a visual referent, the copyists would have had no choice but to use their own judgment in arriving at a decision about spelling. Yet this turns out not to be the case. Despite the seriousness with which they evidently approached their work, the copyists all committed errors of a sort that leaves no doubt they had a model before their eyes. Hands A and C, for example, begin to write Allāh before going back and correcting it to read li-Llāh—a mistake that would not have occurred had the text been dictated to them. Parisino-Petropolitanus cannot have been the result simply of copying an original, however. The variations observed among the five hands suggest that the act of reproduction was not performed, or at least not always, by strictly transcribing a model. We noted a moment ago that the determination of each of the contributors to cultivate a personal style prevented a consistent form from being imposed throughout the Qur’anic text. The suggestion that they worked from a model due to a single copyist who somehow was undecided about how very common words should be written does not withstand scrutiny; in that case the relative degree of consistency that is in fact observed could be explained only on the assumption that the copyists had divided up the task among themselves after having first made a careful study of the orthography of their model, something for which there is no evidence. A variant of this hypothesis, which supposes a close correspondence between distinct styles in both Parisino-Petropolitanus and an exemplar—here again as the result of joint consultation—is no

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more convincing: unless we are to imagine a virtually photographic fidelity to the original, each copyist would have had to insert, at the end of his contribution, either a compressed or an expanded final section of script in order to fit the remaining text into the space left at the bottom of a recto, or otherwise to fill it out, before giving way on the verso to the next copyist—a challenge that would have been all more daunting since the copyists worked on double rather than single folios. One notes also C’s preference for a more modern spelling of certain words, as well as the indecisiveness shown by B and E. These are signs of a desire to improve the orthography, perhaps on the basis of nothing more than personal taste. But the most conclusive example, to my mind, is found at fol. 36 of the manuscript. In four places the copyist initially transcribed a verbal form, the third person plural of the jussive form of the verb ra’ā (to see), without the final alif. Further on he encountered the third person plural of the past tense of the same verb, and again wrote this without the final alif. At first sight, this consistency appears to suggest that the copyist faithfully followed a model in which these five verbal forms were so written. But in copying this last one, in the past tense, it is plain that the copyist must then have realized that he had forgotten to improve the orthography of the jussive forms and therefore went back and added the smaller alifs that we see in the surviving manuscript. Is he likelier to have acted in accordance with his customary practice in such matters or in response to instructions given to all of the copyists? I believe that careful examination of the manuscript as a whole, and of the way in which each of the copyists went about his work, argues in favor of the first explanation. Working from a model whose scriptio defectiva was probably still more defective than that of Parisino-Petropolitanus itself, the copyists made whatever improvements they thought

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necessary, each one obeying his own instincts. No more than in the case of the writing itself, no common standard of orthography is found in this manuscript; and even if, by contrast, there was a consensus about fitting of the text to the page, the balance of the evidence suggests it is highly unlikely that the copyists had been given specific guidelines by a sponsoring authority. Instead the manuscript reflects a fairly flexible attitude toward the text, this at a moment in the history of the Qur’an when editorial supervision was not yet mandatory and personal initiative still had an important place. Another point of divergence among the various copyists of Parisino-Petropolitanus has to do with the opening phrase of the suras, the basmala. Hand A, after copying it, inscribes the mark of a verse ending on the manuscript. Hands B, C, and D, by contrast, continue without interruption to copy the Qur’anic text that follows; their practice, which subsequently came to be standard, amounted to saying that the basmala was not to be considered as a verse in its own right, except in the case of the first sura. We do not know E’s position on this point, since he did not have to copy the beginning of a sura in the two pages he was assigned that have come down to us. The caesura entered after the basmala by A is probably a vanishing trace of additions freely made to the text while the suras were being given written form, whether final or not. For the most part, as I say, the Qur’anic text in its ‘Uthmānic version and the one that appears in ParisinoPetropolitanus coincide, but closer comparison of the two brings out certain differences between them. Several of these discrepancies are quite obviously the result of an error on the part of the copyist; despite the great care taken to make a faithful transcription of the text, mistakes were bound to occur, and traditional accounts concerning this period leave no doubt that contemporaries were aware of this. Moreover, in

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a few places in Parisino-Petropolitanus, the copyist seems to have been aware of making a mistake, which he then hastened to correct at once. In most cases, however, what one finds are signs of later editorial intervention, probably spread out over time and generally involving passages where what had been written originally was scratched out and sometimes replaced by new text. Some of these corrections may have been prompted by the distinctive orthographical practice that characterized the earliest stages of manuscript transmission or, in a certain number of very specific cases, by variants of the rasm that subsequently were recognized as canonical by tradition. At the end of this process of revision, a dozen variants survived that could not be elucidated; most of these can be grouped together typologically along with a nonnegligible number of orthodox variants. The erasure on fol. 10v of two elements of the initial text, of which only a personal pronoun—third person feminine, instead of the canonical masculine—can be deciphered, raises by contrast the possibility that a different legal arrangement than the one referred to in Q. 4:12 is at issue; reading the part that was erased, with the aid of modern imaging methods, may make it possible to determine whether or not we are dealing here with a clearly discrepant formulation. At all events we may provisionally assume that the variants found in Parisino-Petropolitanus are remnants of a now forgotten tradition that flourished during an ancient phase of the manuscript transmission of the ‘Uthmānic recension. These variants raise two further questions: when did the attempt to categorize them in relation to other variants take place, and what criteria were applied? Included among the canonical variants, tradition tells us, are ones that occur in the mas.āh.if al-ams.ār, the copies sent by Caliph ‘Uthmān to the great cities of his empire, which differ from one another in respect of the readings qāla and qul. This is what one finds in

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Q. 21:4, 21:112, and 23:114, where the manuscripts associated with one tradition have qāf + alif + lām, whereas those associated with another tradition have qāf + lām (see figure 13). Now, considering that the copyists of Parisino-Petropolitanus, like others active during this period, were scarcely familiar with this difference and wrote qāf + lām for both the past qāla (he said) and the imperative qul (say!) (see figure 11), one may wonder whether the lists that were drawn up to catalogue variants of the rasm had their origin in events that unfolded in the mid-seventh century, under the reign of ‘Uthmān, or whether they were not instead part of an initiative that was undertaken only when the graphic distinction between the two forms had been definitively established. If the latter, the flexibility that characterizes Parisino-Petropolitanus, with regard both to the additional variants that it originally contained and the orthographic changes that were entered subsequently, suggests that corrections to the consonantal skeleton of the ‘Uthmānic text may have continued to be made as late as the end of the seventh century, and perhaps even the early eighth century. These modifications were not unanimously approved. In the late eighth century, the Medinan jurist Mālik b. Anas expressed his dismay at the modernization of Qur’anic spelling—further proof, if any more were needed, of the controversies to which the written transmission of the text lastingly gave rise. The manuscript probably can be dated to the third quarter of the seventh century on the basis of its archaic orthography and its script; with respect to the latter, the custom of several or more different hands working on a single codex gradually disappeared as scribal practice became more sophisticated. It shows that a copy belonging to the same strain of transmission as the official version might nonetheless exhibit a certain number of variations. Some are synchronic and show that different attitudes toward orthography and

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so forth coexisted within the same mus.h.af. Others are diachronic; though the points at issue may seem to us minor, the care with which certain variants were erased and corrected by later editors indicates that they had ceased to be acceptable at a time when other Qur’anic manuscripts displaying a more developed system of notation had come into circulation and that a doctrinal corpus setting set stricter limits on permissible transmission had begun to emerge. Two slightly later manuscripts, both discovered in Fustāt, provide us with reason to believe that the ‘Uthmānic canon had not yet been completely fixed in the eighth century and that copyists and their sponsors were still allowed a certain freedom of opinion, preferring one formulation of the Qur’anic text rather than another without fear of official censure. The first of these manuscripts is known as the ‘Uthmān Qur’an, the largest part of which (eighty-one leaves) is held by the Institute of Oriental Studies in St. Petersburg (manuscript E 20); the remainder, sixteen leaves, has long been conserved in Uzbekistan, twelve of them in an isolated sanctuary in Katta Langar, the rest in collections in Tashkent and Bukhara. Efim Rezvan has made a close study of the manuscript and dates it to the late eighth century or the early ninth. Myself, I am inclined to favor a slightly earlier date during the eighth century. To be sure, Rezvan’s judgment is based on a carbon-14 analysis of the parchment, but the type of writing and the vertical format are more in keeping with the style of manuscript production current in the first half of the eighth century; at the latest, I would date this copy to the beginning of the second half. The manuscript, which measures 52.5 × 34 centimeters (20.5 × 13.25 inches), was originally bound in two volumes. Two copyists transcribed the text, Hand A completing a little less than the first half and Hand B finishing the job. As in the

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case of the Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus, the number of lines per page varies, in this case between twenty-four and thirtyone. The text is everywhere identical with the ‘Uthmānic vulgate, except for four variants identified by Rezvan that tradition associates with Ibn Mas‘ūd: 1. Q. 4:34 (fol. 4r): al-madja’  2. Q. 26:42 (fol. 32v): omitting idhā 3. Q. 33:68 (fol. 47r): kathir an 4. Q. 48:15 (fol. 65v): kalima An editor later corrected these variants, so that the text would completely agree with the ‘Uthmānic vulgate, while at the same time making the spelling uniform throughout the whole of the copy. A similar situation is found in another manuscript discovered in Fustāt. Its eighty-four leaves are dispersed among Paris (BnF Arabe 331, 56 leaves), St. Petersburg (NLR Marcel 3, 26 leaves), Leiden (UL Or. 14.545b/c, one leaf), and Chicago (Oriental Institute 1 [= A 6959], one leaf). This is a copy in large folio format whose dimensions (41 × 35 centimeters [16 × 13.75 inches]) are comparable to those of the deluxe copy found at Sanaa (44 × 46.5 centimeters [17.25 × 18.25 inches]), which fits twenty lines to the page, as against nineteen in the one we are concerned with here. The writing in the Fustāt manuscript places it among those of group B 1a in my classification, of which we possess many specimens—proof of its success; but this script is generally found in copies exhibiting the austerity associated with the h.ijāzī style, such as the Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus. The orthography is more developed than in Parisino-Petropolitanus, but signs for noting short vowels are still lacking. Paleographic and codicological examination justifies us in dating it to the first half of the eighth

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century; carbon-14 analysis of the parchment yields an interval more than twice as great, extending from 652 to 763, with a 2σ confidence level of 95.4 percent. The manuscript, which presents a text conforming in almost every detail to the vulgate, would not be of interest were it not for a word missing from verse Q. 2:137 (fig. 17). Here one reads fa-in amanū bi-mā amantum bi-hi whereas the canonical text is fa-in amanū bi-mithl i mā amantum bi-hi If they believe as you do . . . If the copyist had omitted to copy bi-mithl i (an uninterrupted sequence of letters in the canonical text), and had inadvertently skipped from amanū to mā, we would find fa-in amanū mā amantum bi-hi a grammatically incorrect construction; yet the reading of the manuscript, bi-mā, is perfectly idiomatic. What does this textual divergence signify? Again, the care taken in producing the manuscript, its size, the quality of the parchment and the writing itself all indicate that we are dealing with an expensive edition, though not, owing to its lack of illumination, a sumptuous one. The variant could not be the result of inattention; nor is it likely to be due to the copyist’s own initiative, for this formulation is attested in the specialized literature and attributed to Ibn Mas‘ūd. Along with Ibn ‘Abbās, Ibn Mas‘ūd felt that the use of the term mithl could not be countenanced in this context, because God has no equal. In the early eighth century, then, a time when the authorities sought to prohibit the production and distribution of copies transcribing discrepant

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Figure 17. Q. 2:132–40. In 2:137 (line 14), the text exhibits a variant attributed to Ibn Mas‘ūd. Qur’anic manuscript Paris, BnF Arabe 331, fol. 1v (first half of the eighth century).

recensions, it was nonetheless still possible to incorporate a reading from an unauthorized version in an otherwise canonical copy. Tradition mentions two cases in which a disciple of Muhammad chose to preserve a variant that had been removed

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from the ‘Uthmānic recension. The first one case exhibits a notable similarity with the manuscripts we have just looked at, namely, that the variant in question is attributed to Ibn Mas‘ūd. Abū al-Dardā’, discussing Ibn Mas‘ūd’s reading of Q. 92:1 with another Companion, is reported to have said that he too had heard it spoken by Muhammad and declared his intention to go on reciting the sura in this fashion, notwithstanding the official prejudice against it. The situation is a bit different in the second case, which we considered earlier, though this time it is the manuscript tradition, rather than the manner of recitation, that interests us. According to certain accounts, ‘Ā’isha’s personal copy of the Qur’an included this version of Q. 2:238, which she claimed to have heard Muhammad pronounce: h.āfiz.ū ‘alā al-s.alawāt i wa-l-s.alāt i al-wus.t.ā wa-s.alāt i al-‘asr i (take care to do your prayers, including the middle prayer and the afternoon prayer). Muhammad’s other wife, H.afs.a, testified to the same effect. In both these instances one finds a practice that we have already encountered in connection with oral transmission: choice, or selection (ikhtiyār). Here, however, the rasm itself has been altered. Like the Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus, but in a different manner, manuscripts E 20 and Arabe 331 allow us to appreciate the malleability of the Qur’anic text in the mid-eighth century. Notations in Arabe 331 indicate that it was bequeathed in perpetuity to an undesignated mosque, perhaps that of ‘Amr in Fustāt. This folio edition is unlikely to have been made for someone’s personal use; it is far more probable that it was originally meant to be deposited in a particular place of worship, in keeping with a practice that is attested during this period, and therefore perfectly acceptable by contemporary standards, notwithstanding the textual peculiarities that Arabe 331 exhibits. The missing word was entered later, exactly when it is impossible to say. It is reasonable to suppose that

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what we observe in both cases came about when a copyist, seeking to satisfy either the wishes of a sponsor or those of a part of the Muslim community, occasionally preferred the text of a different version than the one he usually followed in making his transcription—in the event, the one that came to be considered canonical. Further exploration of the Qur’anic manuscript tradition during the seventh century and the first half of the eighth may be expected to uncover similar cases, strengthening the evidence we presently have of a quite different approach to the text than the literalism that later came to be strictly enforced. We have now examined three manuscripts, the first of which belongs to the tradition of the ‘Uthmānic rasm but displays discrepancies that represent a stage on the road to a canonical version, and then two others in which the rasm is modified by readings borrowed from another textual tradition. We have now to consider a fourth example, which will bring out more clearly the value of studying ancient manuscripts of the Qur’an in order to better understand the history of the text and the attitudes toward it of early Muslim communities. The manuscript in this case is a palimpsest—a text copied on leaves of parchment that were reused after an initial layer of writing had been erased—that is now generally referred to as Codex S.an‘ā’ 1 (or else by its call number, DAM 01–27.1). The forty or so leaves that are presently known to us were among the many Qur’anic fragments discovered in a space above the prayer room of the Great Mosque of Sanaa in 1973 (fig. 18). Radiocarbon analysis of the parchment by the C method has yielded a date of composition falling somewhere between 606 and 649. This result, while it confirms the antiquity of the manuscript, assigns it much too early a date in my view. Examination of the orthography and stylistic features of the manuscript, particularly the decorative elements used to mark off

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Figure 18. Q. 6:159 to 7:11. The upper layer, S 1(b), is clearly visible, whereas the text originally copied on the parchment and then erased, S 1(a), appears in a few places beneath. See also figure 19. Qur’anic manuscript Sanaa, Dār al-Makhtūtāt 01.27–1, fol. 2v (Codex S. an‘ā’ 1, second half of the seventh century).

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the suras from one another, as well as comparison with related specimens, such as the Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus, lead me to date it instead to the second half of the seventh century. The first scholars to study the palimpsest, Elisabeth Puin, Behnam Sadeghi, and Mohsen Goudarzi, were persuaded from the outset that they were dealing with remnants of a dismembered codex—a point on which another researcher, Alba Fedeli, did not commit herself. Asma Hilali has recently challenged this view, arguing that the leaves on which the upper text was copied did not constitute a book (she expressly uses the term mus.h.af in this connection), but instead “a collection of Qur’anic passages written on disparate leaves” of parchment of poor quality for teaching purposes. Here what is in dispute is much more than a mere question of codicology. Whereas Puin, Sadeghi, and Goudarzi concluded that these pages formed part of a copy of a Qur’anic text belonging to a different tradition than that of the ‘Uthmānic vulgate, Hilali thinks they are the notes of a student. Observing that “fragmentation is a common characteristic of first / seventh century texts,” she maintains that the fragments are as much the product of deliberate disaggregation as of erasure and reuse. Considering the process of writing itself, she says that “the scribe, and perhaps the readers of the text, used the leaves as disconnected passsages, written, corrected, and annotated,” while nonetheless recognizing that the fragments were part of a larger set, now lost—what she calls a “missing totality.” Her hypothesis is important because it implies that the lower layer of writing enjoys a different status than that of a Qur’anic codex (or mus.h.af), which contains the whole of the sacred text, not extracts, and in which nothing has been changed. Consequently, if Hilali is right, the lower layer cannot be treated on an equal basis with the ‘Uthmānic recension for purposes of comparison. It will therefore be necessary to

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reevaluate all the information that is available to us in order to determine whether in fact the Sanaa Palimpsest was a Qur’anic codex or not. No systematic account of this manuscript has yet been published. Let us begin, then, by briefly setting forth everything that is presently known. The manuscript is, as I say, a palimpsest. This means that a text was initially copied on parchment leaves, then rubbed out, and a second text was transcribed over the first. To distinguish the two stages of its history and to designate them precisely, I shall call the first stratum, associated with the lower layer of writing, S 1(a), and the other S 1(b), where S 1 refers to Codex S.an‘ā’ 1, the name for the document used by Sadeghi and Goudarzi. The two strata of text share a single material support, leaves of parchment that were selected by the copyist of S 1(a) and reused by the copyist of S 1(b). Tears and small holes caused in the process of preparing the parchment are visible on certain leaves; the natural edges of the leaf constituting fol. 9, one corner of which is missing, are visible as well. Both the total number of leaves and their numbering are subject to dispute. Thirty-eight leaves are presently conserved under the call number MS 01–27.1 at the Dār al-Makhtūtāt (House of Manuscripts [DAM]) in Sanaa. Four leaves that might have belonged to the same manuscript are found in collections outside Yemen; it is possible that they came to be separated from the others, either shortly after their discovery almost fifty years ago or at some prior time. The numbering of the leaves was done in accordance with the textual sequence of S 1(b), which explains the disordered numbering of S 1(a), since the copyist of the upper layer seems to have worked on the folios at random. Nevertheless there are discrepancies in numbering among the various studies of the manuscript that have so far been published. The size of the leaves varies greatly. The largest folios, corresponding to an entire leaf,

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measure as much as 36.5 × 28.5 centimeters (14.25 × 11 inches); others, amounting only to a few square centimeters, are the remnants of a single leaf (as in the case of fol. 28) or of a bifolio. Only one bifolio figures among this group, fols. 23–24: a point that Hilali fails to mention, even though she had seen the manuscript (unlike Puin and Sadeghi and Goudarzi, all of whom had access only to photographs). Moreover, the two sides of a piece of parchment, hair and flesh, normally have a different appearance. Hilali is silent on this point as well, and so we are unable to say whether she had simply overlooked the bifolio or whether the erasure of the initial text made it impossible to distinguish the two sides. This is not an unimportant detail, since one would like to know what DAM 01–27.1 looked like in its original state. The dimensions of the lower level of writing, S 1(a), perceptibly vary, as in the case of other copies of the Qur’an from this period. Fol. 19v, for example, which contains Q. 15:33–74 in S 1(a), is much more densely covered with text than fol. 30v, where Q. 20:122–33 is shown (the shorter number of lines is due to the fact that this leaf has lost its lower part). The number of lines ranges from twenty-four to (in the case of the leaf sold by Christie’s) thirty-five. The writing of S 1(b) follows the lines of S 1(a) on all the leaves except for three (fols. 17, 20, and 32), which the copyist had turned upside down; the text on these leaves is therefore head to foot, with the first line of S 1(b) coinciding with the last line of S 1(a). S 1(b), for its part, was copied at the rate of twenty-eight to thirty lines per page. The writing of S 1(a) is in the h.ijāzī style and conforms to the scriptural conventions I mentioned earlier: scriptio continua, limited use of diacritical marks, absence of short vowels, indication of verse endings by clusters of dots, and so on (fig. 19). Hilali identifies three divisions among the suras, but there are in fact five, not counting others that appear on the

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Figure 19. Q. 2:96–105; reconstruction of S 1(a) by Hadiye Gurtmann. Qur’anic manuscript Sanaa, Dār al-Makhtūtāt 01.27–1, fol. 2v (Codex S. an‘ā’ 1, second half of the seventh century).

folio sold by Christie’s in 2008. In most cases, ornamental elements are used to mark off the suras from one another. Hilali thinks that they were spontaneously designed and drawn during the course of the dictation sessions that she claims produced the Sanaa manuscript. Some of them are indeed very

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simple, as in the case of fol. 5r, where one finds a single line; in others, by contrast, such as fol. 23r, somewhat more elaborate devices are found. There follows a phrase that is treated like the text itself, placed at its head and introduced by the word khātima (a reading argued for by Sadeghi and Goudarzi that must be preferred to the one proposed by Hilali [nihāya]). The word khātima, which comes before the title of the sura belongs to a nomenclature that is well attested in ancient Qur’anic manuscripts. This manner of presentation is uniformly observed in S 1(a), contrary to what Hilali claims, saying wrongly that the title is found sometimes at the beginning of suras, sometimes at the end. The copyist(s) use the following titles: al-Anfāl (sura 8, fol. 5r), tawba (s. 9, fol.  23r), Yūsuf (s.  12, fol. 32r), al-Juma‘a (s. 62, Christie’s, recto), and al-[Muna]fiqūn (s. 63, Christie’s, verso). The title of sura 89 (Christie’s, recto), deciphered by Sadeghi and Goudarzi, seems to be wa-l-fajr wa-layāl ‘ashr. The titles of sura 15 and one other (unidentified) sura, on fols. 20v and 10r, respectively, cannot be made out. This sampling is consistent with the titles most commonly used not only in modern editions but also in medieval Qur’anic manuscripts and in the exegetical literature. The manuscripts of the first centuries of Islam, by contrast, display a considerable degree of variation in this regard; indeed, the number of alternatives recorded during the ancient period is greater than what Suyūtī counted in the fifteenth century. The beginning of sura 9 (fol. 9r) presents a notable peculiarity. After the final punctuation mark at the end of sura 8, on line 7, and a long horizontal stroke separating it from what follows, one encounters on the following line (8) a basmala, followed by a phrase that only now gives the title of the preceding sura: hādhidhi khātima sūra al-an[fāl] (This is the end of the sura al-Anfāl). At the beginning of the next line  (9), one reads: la taqul basmala (Do not utter the basmala!); and then, without any further delay, the first verse of

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Figure 20. Q. 8:75–9:2. The phrase at the end of the sura is on line 8; at the beginning of line 9, underlined, are the words la taqul basmala. Reconstruction of S 1(a) by Hadiye Gurtmann. Qur’anic manuscript Sanaa, Dār al-Makhtūtāt 01.27–1, fol. 5r (Codex S. an‘ā’ 1, second half of the seventh century).

sura 9 begins (fig. 20). Sura 9 is the only one in the vulgate that is not prefaced by a basmala. Nevertheless the copyist of the Sanaa Palimpsest wrote it down first, and then thought to add this instruction to the reader. Reconstruction of S 1(a) makes it clear that the sequence of suras does not correspond to that of the ‘Uthmānic recension. Sura 11 of the canonical version comes before sura 8 in the Sanaa manuscript; after 9 comes 19. Sura 12 in the canonical ordering is followed here by 18, 15 by 25, and 34 by 13; owing to many gaps in the text, we do not know which was the actual sequence, since we are far from having all the leaves on which a transition from one sura to another occurs. Toward the end of the surviving text of S 1(a) we encounter four suras in the following order: 63, 62, 89, and 110. Within the suras themselves, however, the verses are very largely arranged according to the same sequence as the vulgate. Clusters of dots indicate the end of each verse. The text itself, although it shows great similarities with that of the Cairo edition, nonetheless displays a certain number of differences to which I shall return further on.

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Hilali, as I mentioned earlier, sees the Sanaa Palimpsest as a collection of Qur’anic passages on loose folios of various dimensions, while accepting that they were once part of an integral manuscript that is now lost to us. Her hypothesis—which, it must be kept in mind, rules out the possibility that DAM 01–27.1 had the form of a codex—has two aspects. The first concerns the physical appearance of the leaves and is closely related to the second, which asserts that the manuscript was made by a student (or students) taking down a dictated version of the Qur’anic text. Regrettably, Hilali did not consider it necessary to adduce evidence in favor of the first aspect of her hypothesis. The distinctive characteristics of the manuscript itself nonetheless call for some comment. The presence of holes on certain leaves, associated with the preparation of the parchment, does not necessarily mean, as Hilali seems to suppose, that the text was inscribed on a material of inferior quality, good for making a rough draft and nothing more. The Kairouan collection of juridical manuscripts in Tunisia, which were intended for educational use, contains copies consisting of bound parchment remnants, irregular in form—the result of the parchment having been partly damaged, either before the manufacturing process had even begun or during the course of production. The parchment in this case clearly was of inferior quality, unsuitable for making a fair copy. The leaves of the Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus, by contrast, an expensive manuscript from about the same time as S 1(A), exhibit analogous defects: holes in some places (fol. 54, for example), truncated edges in others (fol. 67, for example). It therefore cannot be assumed that the writing medium of Codex S.an‘ā’ 1 was a material of mediocre or poor quality. Nor does it seem that the leaves were of noticeably variable dimensions, at least so far as can be judged from examination of the surviving sheets, whose present state of preservation shows

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relatively few signs of degradation, while making allowance for whatever damage may have been sustained on account of unfavorable storage conditions in the interval. Hilali thinks that the leaves were separate, rather than bound, because a student used individual sheets, one after another, to write down a dictated text. It is far from clear, however, that this was the case. In educational settings, the use of wooden tablets (lawh.), which were no doubt more economical, is well attested in the Muslim world. On the other hand, sewn quires—the constituent elements of a codex—are known to have circulated among students. This was true, for example, in the case of the Kairouan manuscripts. Furthermore, Hilali goes on to say, doubtfully again, that “the very function of a teaching-circle copy could explain the reuse of the parchment in order to write another text.” If so, the selection of this particular material as a writing medium, with the intention of recycling it, would surely have been accompanied by the use of a carbon-based ink, easy to wipe clean with a damp cloth or wash off with water, for inscribing S 1(a). Why, then, was an iron gall ink, valued for its permanence, used instead? A text written on parchment with an ink of this kind could be erased only with great effort, and even then imperfectly. Another detail that Hilali does not consider is the relation between S 1(a) and S 1(b). If the palimpsest did in fact consist of loose pieces of parchment, as she supposes, it would have been possible to reuse them in many different ways; one thinks of a well-known manuscript, the Mingana-Lewis Palimpsest at Cambridge (UL MS Or.1287), where detached leaves bearing a Qur’anic text were repurposed to accommodate a collection of miscellaneous Arabic Christian texts, their initial quarto format having been converted into octavo by folding the sheets in two and then cutting them along the fold. Yet this does not alter the fact that the original Qur’anic

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manuscript itself was in all probability a codex, which is to say a bound set of bifolios gathered in quires; indeed, no one has ever suggested that any Qur’an has assumed the form of loose sheets! As for the writing, the lines of the upper (Christian) text run perpendicularly to those of the lower (Qur’anic) text owing to the change of format. In the case of the Sanaa Palimpsest, by contrast, because whoever commissioned the copying of S 1(b) chose to retain the quarto format, rather than adopt an oblong page layout, the range of possibilities was reduced, but by no means exhausted. For if, as Hilali maintains, S 1(a) consisted of detached leaves, the copyist of S 1(b) could have begun on the recto of a leaf of S 1(a), so that his first line coincided with that of S 1(a), or else, having turned the leaf upside down, with the last line; had he chosen to begin on a verso, the same two options would have presented themselves. Strikingly, however, in the overwhelming majority of cases I have been able to examine, the lines of S 1(b) have the same orientation as those of S 1(a): of thirty-one leaves, only three had been stood on their head by the copyist of S 1(b). What is more, the side of the parchment that the copyist of S 1(a) used as his recto remained the recto for the copyist of S 1(b), except for the three leaves that the latter placed head to foot, where the situation was opposite, the recto of S 1(a) having become the verso of S 1(b). On the sole surviving bifolio (fols. 23–24), each of the texts of S 1(a) and S 1(b) is continuous, the first covering Q. 9:121–29 followed by 19:1–70, the second Q. 32:20–30 followed by 33:1–37; both begin at the top of fol. 23r and end at the bottom of fol. 24v. How are we to account for this? Quite simply—S 1(a) was a codex. The folding of its leaves was therefore the same in the case of S 1(b), whose copyist systematically followed the same procedure as that of his predecessor: he was working from bifolios in which the initial text, S 1(a), had been scratched out and the presence of a sharp central

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fold could not help but be taken into account. The only choice available to the copyist of S 1(b), then, once he had decided to retain the original format, was either to keep each bifolio in the same position it occupied in S 1(a)—in which case the arrangement of the two texts would coincide—or to turn it upside down, in which case the writing of the two layers would be head to foot and the rectos of S 1(a) would become the versos of S 1(b). The relationship between the two layers of the text shows that S 1(a) was a codex and not, as Hilali supposes, a set of loose sheets. Elisabeth Puin had pointed out earlier that some sequences of leaves on which the lower script was written are preserved in the case of the upper script. She argued that there was a purely technical reason for this: the erasure of the lower script was done little by little, over a period of time, which suggests that bound sections of at least some sheets had survived. This, too, would lead us to believe that S 1(a) was a codex. What are we to make of Hilali’s claim that DAM 01–27.1 was a sort of textbook? Its folios are roughly the same size, a rather large quarto, as those of several contemporary Qur’anic manuscripts: the Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus, the London manuscript BL Or. 2165, and the St. Petersburg manuscript NLR Marcel 17. The existence of other manuscripts copied in the same style but smaller in size shows that it was possible to produce parchment leaves at a lower cost—a solution that would be more compatible with the scenario imagined by Hilali, of copies made for teaching purposes. The compactness of the script, despite certain irregularities, is nonetheless, everything considered, rather close to what one finds in Parisino-Petropolitanus, where the text is copied at a rate of between twenty-one and twenty-eight lines per page (see figures 14 and 16). If we compare a passage from suras 8 and

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9 that occurs in both manuscripts, we find that the quantity of text copied on each side of the leaves in the two cases is nearly equal: fols. 3v–5r of the St. Petersburg fragment (Marcel 18) contain Q. 8:72–9:36, whereas fols. 5r–6v of S 1(a) contain Q. 8:73–9:34; in both cases the text covers four pages. On balance, then, the size of the writing in S 1(a) is very close to what one encounters in a contemporary Qur’anic manuscript that in all probability was meant for public use. Why should it have been necessary to resort to a large-scale format for teaching purposes? By the logic of Hilali’s own argument, which associates religious instruction with the use of a writing material she considers to have been of mediocre quality, and therefore less expensive, it would have made little sense to waste valuable space by employing large characters—and still less since we know from contemporary manuscripts of smaller size that the h.ijāzī style was readily adapted to reduced formats. The similarities between S 1(a) and contemporary Qur’anic manuscripts do not end there. The titles marked by the copyist(s) of S 1(a) reveal a familiarity with the prevailing practice in this regard, attested by two fragments in Paris, for example, BnF Arabe 331 (which we have already come across) and Arabe 333b. The very use of the formula “khātima sūra  .  .  .” indicates, moreover, that what came before was in fact the integral text of the sura in question; otherwise the formula would not have been used. This is evidently inconsistent with Hilali’s suggestion that the copyist might have failed to write down all the text that he heard. In that case the formula would have made no sense, since the copyist, on arriving at the end of a section, knew perfectly well whether the text was complete, and therefore whether it was a sura or not. The presence in DAM 01–27.1 of decorative elements separating the suras from one another is noteworthy as well. HansCaspar von Bothmer, in his study of illuminations in the Sanaa

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collection, reckoned that copies of the Qur’an ornamented in this manner constituted 12.5 percent of the total number of copies from all periods. So far as we are able to tell from the ancient Qur’anic manuscripts that have come down to us, contemporary practice on the whole was to leave a blank space between suras. The Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus is an outstanding example. A small number of copies in the h.ijāzī style—for example, the St. Petersburg manuscript BNR Marcel 19—exhibit such decorations; this may have been a slightly later practice. The Sanaa Palimpsest therefore represents an exception to the dominant tendency of its time, manifesting a taste for elegance that is not in keeping with what we know about dictation sessions in particular, and instructional practice in general—and still less since alongside simple decorative devices such as horizontal or wavy lines, which were quickly drawn, we find others that are more elaborate and would have taken longer to execute, such as the one on fol. 23r. Two objections may therefore be raised against Hilali’s hypothesis: on the one hand, it is hard to see how student copyists could have found the time to design ornate headbands during the course of a dictation session; on the other, it seems surprising that the chapter separations of a rough draft should have been ornamented, however modestly, when contemporary mas.āh.if bear no such decoration. Hilali’s major argument in favor of the proposition that DAM 01–27.1 was intended for teaching purposes is what she calls the “reading instruction” placed at the beginning of sura 9, directing the reader not to utter the basmala (see figure 20). In addition to circumstances such as the ones Hilali contemplates, it is nonetheless possible to imagine other uses to which Qur’anic manuscripts may have been put in this period that would explain the presence of this phrase. Moreover, as she admits, we have no evidence of the Qur’an being taught be-

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fore the second half of the eighth century—though she misunderstands the relevant source. During the second half of the seventh century, according to traditional authorities, Qur’anic manuscripts were used in various contexts, none of which had anything to do with teaching. Some copies no doubt were meant for private use; Mālik b. Anas, for example, tells us that his grandfather possessed a personal copy of the sacred text. But probably more copies were meant for public use. One thinks in the first place of the ones that were prepared on ‘Uthmān’s orders to be sent to the different regions of the empire; also of the revision of the ‘Uthmānic version made by al-H.ajjāj b. Yūsuf under the reign of the Umayyad caliph ‘Abd al-Malik. Now, the account reported by al-Samhūdī specifically says that the Medinan copy was used for readings that took place on both Thursdays and Fridays. S 1(a), whose public nature is strongly suggested by its size, may have been used in a similar ritual setting, and the notice that appears at the head of sura 9 may have been intended for the reader, a sort of didascalia naturally inserted at just the place where he had to remember not to utter the basmala. Far from being a surprising intrusion of orality, this instruction was wholly appropriate at a time when the use of the basmala continued to be an object of dispute. Some copies of the Qur’an from the Umayyad period, for example, contained a final basmala. S 1(a), for its part, may have been made for liturgical use in a community accustomed to reading from Qur’ans in which the basmala was systematically written at the head of the suras, with a reminder being inserted in the text, where necessary, as in the case of sura 9, that it was not to be spoken aloud. All these considerations lend support to Puin’s intuitive conviction, shared by Sadeghi and Goudarzi, that S 1(a) was in fact a mus.h.af. The copyist(s) of S 1(a), though they belonged to a different community from the one in which the ‘Uthmānic

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version was produced, were nonetheless quite familiar with the conventions that governed the copying of the Qur’anic text during this period. It is true that Hilali mentions a “missing totality” of which the fragments of DAM 01–27.1 formed a part, but it does not occur to her to inquire into the nature of this vanished collection; indeed, she takes S 1(a) in its current state to be identical with what it was originally. Her insistence on treating it as a set of disjointed fragments leads her to subscribe implicitly to the definition of the Qur’an that was elaborated by medieval scholars and that, as Shady Hekmat Nasser points out, lays emphasis on its material aspect: “The Qur’an is that which is written in the mas.āh.if, transmitted by tawātur, and recited during the Muslims’ liturgical practices. It begins with sūrat al-fātih.a and ends with sūrat al-nās.” According to this definition, which really is very close to the one al-A‘z.amī gives, by far the largest part of the manuscripts that have survived from the earliest years of Islam—DAM 01–27.1 prominently among them—cannot be considered to contain the Qur’an, and in any case cannot be regarded as being mas.āh.if, so long as one confines oneself strictly to their present condition without trying to discover what form they originally assumed. Misled by her mistaken conception of S 1(a), Hilali has the greatest difficulty working out what the copyist(s) of S 1(b) were up to. The best she can do is to surmise that it was (in the words of the subtitle she places at the head of the only paragraph devoted to this question) “a work in progress.” And yet the fact that the separations between the suras are marked by polychrome geometric devices of relatively simple but nonetheless elegant design is proof of the very considerable care that was taken in the making of a finished manuscript. In the meantime, the discovery of another set of folios that in all probability belonged originally to this same copy of the

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Qur’an, but in which a codex structure has been preserved, has cast further doubt on the idea that S 1(b) was ever a series of loose sheets to begin with. How did the two sets come to be separated from one another? By far the likeliest explanation is that leaves whose fold was broken, and that therefore could no longer be collected in bound gatherings, were detached from the rest of the codex and deposited, along with dozens of damaged copies of the Qur’an, above the prayer room of the Great Mosque in Sanaa—this in keeping with a practice that was, as I say, common throughout the Muslim world. It was sheets of this sort, and not those of S 1(a), that were placed in the geniza of Sanaa. Accordingly, it is difficult to join Hilali in concluding that the storage of the leaves in the false ceiling of the Great Mosque in Sanaa is an additional sign of the specific status of the manuscript as an unfinished text destined to be destroyed. The destiny of the Sanaa palimpsest to be symbolically destroyed twice, first by its erasure and second by being placed in the false ceiling of the Great Mosque of Sanaa, falls within the metaphor of the “dead end” of the manuscript used by Stefan Leder. The leaves that had been discarded along with so many other perfectly canonical Qur’anic copies were those of S 1(b), whose text was legible but whose degraded condition prevented them any longer from being used; the fact that what was very probably a remnant of the same copy as S 1(b) has been conserved by the library in Sanaa demonstrates that the superior physical condition of these leaves was the sole consideration in deciding whether or not to discard them, with no thought being given to S 1(a), which in any case was almost illegible at this point. The “dead end” Hilali speaks of is an

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empty phrase; as a practical matter, the chain of transmission had already been disrupted when the text of S 1(a) had been erased. The text that initially was inscribed on the parchment, S 1(a), is difficult to make out since words were rubbed out and in many places covered over by the text of S 1(b). From the various attempts at deciphering made by Goudarzi and Sadeghi, Puin, Fedeli, and Hilali herself, it emerges that S 1(a) agrees very largely with the Qur’anic text as we know it from the standard Cairo edition. Nevertheless it exhibits a number of nontrivial differences that may be grouped in six major categories: 1. Replacement of one word by another of equivalent meaning. Examples of this type are illustrated by a passage from sura 9 that coincides with verse 24 of the vulgate. In S 1(a) one finds takhafūna, which is synonymous with the canonical takhshawna (to be afraid). 2. Words are omitted or added. At the beginning of sura 9, S 1(a) adds the phrase wa-rasūlihi to verse 2 in the standard version, so that it refers to “God and His Messenger,” rather than to God alone. In this way the wording of verse 1, in which Allah and Muhammad are said to have acted jointly (in annulling the treaty with the idolaters), is brought over into the following verse in S 1(a), slightly modifying its meaning. Further on in the same sura, an addition is found within a passage. The canonical text of verse 24 reads: lā tattakhidhū abā’akum wa-ikwānakum (do not take your fathers or your brothers . . .), whereas S 1(a) introduces sons: lā tattakhidhū abā’akum wa-lā abnā’akum wa-lā ikhwānakum (do not take your fathers, your sons, or your brothers . . .). This formulation strongly resembles Q. 58:22.

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3. The word order is modified. Modification of this kind occurs in sura 24, for example, in a passage that corresponds to Q. 24:26. Here it involves an enumeration that in the canonical version reads: wa-lkhabīthūna li-l-khabīthāt i wa-l-tayyibāt u li-l-tayyibīn a wa-l-tayyibūna li-l-tayyibāt i (corrupt women are for corrupt men and corrupt men are for corrupt women; good women are for good men and good men are for good women). S 1(a), by contrast, inverts the last two elements. Thus one reads: wa-l-khabīthūna li-lkhabīthāt i wa-l-tayyibūna li-l-tayyibāt i wa-l-tayyibāt u li-l-tayyibīn a ( . . . good men are for good women and good women are for good men). 4. Substitution of one phrase for another. In S 1(a), the most striking example appears in sura 24 and involves one of the most famous passages of the Qur’an, the socalled Verse of Light. The body of the verse is identical to the ‘Uthmānic version, but the last part is different. In Q. 24:35, instead of the phrase wa-Llāhu bi-kull i shay’ in ‘alīmun (God has full knowledge of everything), one finds another that begins with la‘allahum and finishes with a verb ending in -ūn. Even if the text is mutilated here, what remains of it is sufficient to identify a formula encountered many times in the Qur’an, la‘allahum yatadhakkarūna (so that they may mend their ways), as for example in Q. 14:25. 5. The omission of textual elements, generally individual words or parts of a phrase. In S 1(a), this occurs in the equivalent of verse 80 of the canonical text of sura 9. Here the second part of the verse is completely missing, but comprehension of the meaning of the passage is not affected since the lost text constitutes a restatement of the preceding verse. More surprising is the total

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absence of Q. 9:85 from S 1(a). Sadeghi and Goudarzi, in their edition of the text, suggest that, owing to a copyist’s error, a passage repeating the one previous to it may inadvertently have been skipped over. It is true that verses 84 and 85 both begin in the same manner, by wa-lā, but the verb that follows the two initial letters of these verses is quite different, tus.alli in the one case, tu‘jibka in the other. This conjecture is therefore not very persuasive. At another place in S 1(a), where a passage belonging to sura 19 occurs in the canonical version, one finds a formulation completely different from two-thirds of the verse at lines 19–20. 6. The addition of textual elements. In Q. 24:10 we have a fine example of language that was added in S 1(a). The verse has the form of a conditional sentence, but the apodosis—the independent or principal clause—is absent in the ‘Uthmānic version. In S 1(a), by contrast, the apodosis is clearly expressed. Whereas in the Cairo edition we read wa-law lā fadl u Llāhi ‘alaykum wa rah.matu-hu wa-inna Allāha tawwāb un h.akīmun (If it were not for God’s mercy and bounty toward you, if it were not that God accepts repentance and is wise . . . !), in S 1(a) we read wa-law lā fadl u Llāh i ‘alaykum wa rah.matu-hu mā zakā min-kum min ah.ad in abad an wa-lakinn a Allāh a tawwāb un h.akīm un (If it were not for God’s mercy and bounty toward you, none of you would ever have been pure; but God accepts repentance and is wise). The two versions coincide at the end of the verse except for a single discrepancy, namely, that the final phrase is introduced in the canonical version by wa-inna and in S 1(a) by wa-lakinna. What are we to make of the text of S 1(a)? All those who have examined it, including Hilali, agree that it displays a broad

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similarity to the vulgate. Hilali, as we have already seen, believes that it was probably written as part of a “school-type exercise that requires didactic techniques that guide writing and reading,” while dismissing out of hand any suggestion of a striking resemblance to alternate versions of the Qur’an, such as the ones due to Ibn Mas‘ūd and Ubayy. No one else competent to judge in this matter agrees with her, however. Fedeli suspects a connection with Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version on the basis of an analysis of two leaves. Puin, who consulted a photographic reproduction of almost the entire set of leaves, admits that parts of the manuscript coincide with Ibn Mas‘ūd and Ubayy, but nonetheless feels that the Sanaa Palimpsest must constitute “another Qur’an.” Sadeghi and Goudarzi, for their part, arrive at a similar conclusion: “The lower writing of S.an‘ā’ 1 clearly falls outside the standard text type. It belongs to a different text type, which we call C-I.” But, as they rightly emphasize, the date of the manuscript must not be confused with that of the text itself. The variants found in this copy have aroused the most varied speculations as to its date. As with all ancient Qur’anic manuscripts known to us today, the Sanaa Palimpsest contains no direct indication. A first dating on the basis of the parchment’s carbon-14 content was made using a sample taken from the Stanford ’07 folio, conserved in the United States. This analysis concluded with a very high degree of confidence (95 percent) that the parchment had been fabricated between 578 and 699 CE, or, with somewhat less accuracy (68 percent), between 614 and 656. These results are very close to ones obtained for the leaves of the Birmingham Qur’an, and appeared to strengthen the case for an early dating of the upper layer of the text, S 1(b), thought to have been inscribed shortly after S 1(a) had been completed. This claim, first advanced in the catalogue for a 1985 exhibition of manuscripts discovered at Sanaa, rested largely on the identification of its writing as

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an example of the h.ijāzī style and led to S 1(a) being assigned an even earlier date in the seventh century. Twenty-five years later, Puin still felt justified in saying that the two layers of writing “are close to one another in time; both are written in the same [hand] that was commonly used in the first century of the hegira.” The radiocarbon dating of the Stanford parchment seemed to support this view. The editor of the 1985 sales catalogue went so far as to suggest that it was part of a copy executed at Medina during Muhammad’s lifetime. Fedeli, by contrast, urged caution: “The non-standard lectio found on the palimpsest is not to be considered as proof of the pre‘Ūt mānic period, because it was just in the [Islamic] fourth ¯ century that Abū Bakr b. Mujāhid [ . . . ] accepted only the readings based on a fairly consonantal text.” Close scrutiny of S 1(b) shows that the writing is probably not as old as had first been thought. Indeed, some of its characteristic features are typically associated with the eighth century, with regard not only to the decorative devices but also to certain textual elements, such as spelling (notably in connection with the preposition ‘alā, written with a lām-alif and not with a terminal yā’, which as far as we know appears only in manuscripts later than 700). The dating and the history of S 1(a) therefore turn out to be subject to fewer constraints than initially assumed. The lower layer of the Sanaa Palimpsest is roughly contemporaneous with the Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus and other such copies, possibly even slightly later than these, for the suras are not separated by a blank space, as in Parisino-Petropolitanus and the London manuscript, BL Or. 2465, but by a relatively unsophisticated decorative element that would appear to have been devised at the time of writing since it fills out the end of a line or occupies the beginning of one, and is then

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immediately followed by the basmala. The use of ornamental devices between suras is also attested in the St. Petersburg manuscript Marcel 19. Furthermore, the phrase containing the title of a sura that has just concluded, “khātima sūra . . . [Here ends the sura .  .  .],” also represents a departure from the form of both Parisino-Petropolitanus and BL Or. 2465: it was written by the copyist himself, whereas the one that precedes the title of the sura in the two other manuscripts, where it comes at the beginning—“fātih.a sūra . . . [Here begins the sura . . .]”—was added afterward. Not only the use of decorative elements, then, but also the indication of the title of the suras argues in favor of a slightly later date for the palimpsest. (Note, too, that the very presence of the word sūra clearly indicates that we are dealing here not with extracts, but with complete chapters.) Finally, the orthography of S 1(a) is not wholly defective; indeed, certain forms suggest that improvements in spelling had already begun to be made. It seems to me, therefore, that this copy might have been made sometime during the last third of the seventh century. In that case it would very probably have derived from a prior version of the particular recension of the Qur’an that it reproduces—a situation analogous to what we find in the case of Parisino-Petropolitanus. I believe that the lower layer of the Sanaa Palimpsest, S 1(a), was copied by members of a community loyal to a version of the Qur’anic text that differed not only from that of the canonical version but also from those of Ibn Mas‘ūd and Ubayy. In spite of the awkward character of the writing and its irregular layout, the person (or persons) who commissioned this manuscript, or who produced it themselves, must have paid roughly as much for the parchment as had been paid in the case of Parisino-Petropolitanus. And while the material used in copying S 1(a) was perhaps not of quite the same

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quality as that of the Fustāt manuscript, the very format of the copy leaves little doubt that it was meant for public use. The fact that the manuscript is a palimpsest deserves further comment as well. Whereas palimpsests were rather common in the medieval West, they remained a rarity within the Muslim manuscript tradition. With the exception of one instance, where the Qur’anic text was copied above a Coptic version of the Old Testament, the Arabic palimpsests that are known to us, most notably the famous Cambridge palimpsest, belong to the Christian Arabic tradition. Other palimpsests are found in the Sanaa collection, of course, as I noted earlier, but until they have been very carefully analyzed, it will be impossible to say exactly what they contain. At all events, in the three other comparable deposits of ancient Qur’anic manuscripts—Fustāt, Damascus, and Kairouan—there is no trace of a palimpsest. The question remains why the text of S 1(a) should have been erased in order to produce another codex. Sadeghi and Goudarzi have proposed several explanations. The first, which naturally springs to mind, is that the manuscript was in disrepair. Nevertheless many leaves are in relatively good condition still today, so it is hard to see what would have justified recycling the entire volume. If some leaves had been damaged, they would have been replaced—a procedure for which we have evidence in more than one other case. Erasing an entire text is unarguably exceptional. After all, Islamic authorities had another way of dealing with older copies of the Qur’an transmitting a noncanonical version: the approach favored by ‘Uthmān and al-H.ajjāj, namely, destroying them. The Sanaa Palimpsest may be of particular interest for illustrating an economic aspect of the history of the book. Rather than forfeit so great a quantity of valuable writing material, the owner(s) of the copy elected to recycle the parchment and make a new

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copy, this one conforming to the Qur’anic text that had become standard in the meantime. The manuscript was probably detached from its binding, but it must be admitted that we have no evidence of the prior existence of such a binding. The bifolios were then scraped clean, removing as far as possible all trace of the initial text. A copyist took them out of order, usually right side up, as they had been in the first place, but occasionally upside down, and began to transcribe the upper text while respecting the line of the original fold. Finally, the manuscript was rebound and the outer edges trimmed, though without wholly obscuring the contours of the old text. The most numerous remnants of Qur’anic manuscripts produced during the first centuries of Islam have particular importance for the historian of the text, for they preserve visible evidence of the practice of the earliest Muslim communities with regard to the transmission of the Qur’an, beginning in the second half of the seventh century, before even the time of the first canonical Readers. The copies we have examined are similar in one important respect: they are large-format editions, ranging from quarto—Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus (see figures 14 and 16), E 20, and S 1(a) (see figure 19)—to folio (Arabe 331; see figure 17), produced for the use of a particular community; in other words, they were in all probability meant to be kept in mosques, where they could be read out for the benefit of everyone who came there to worship. It cannot be supposed that any of these copies was produced in a clandestine or unlawful manner, even if their text does not conform to the version that the caliphal authorities sought to impose. Moreover, these manuscripts permit us to have some idea of how the Qur’anic text was regarded in the early years of Islam. Not only do they furnish firsthand evidence of the transmission of the consonantal skeleton, which is to say of a partially vocalized text, they also cast light on the process of

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selection (ikhtiyār) employed by the first reciters, an oral practice that we know little about apart from some rather vague clues. It may be that E 20 and Arabe 331 record versions of this practice that were soon to disappear. S 1(a), for its part, the only Qur’anic copy thought to belong to a plainly distinct tradition, does not represent a radical departure from situations known to us from traditional accounts in which noncanonical variants affect the rasm; indeed, the typology elaborated on the basis of examples preserved by the exegetical literature is readily applied to it. S 1(a) nonetheless exhibits, on the one hand, a large number of variants that were not known to the authors of the various medieval works in which such variants were collected, and, on the other, it allows us to see them as they originally appeared, rather than in the form of extracts that are always open to the suspicion of having undergone alteration in the course of transmission and of having been selected by later commentators in such a way as to conceal the discrepancies that such variants imply. What is more, S 1(a) is notable for the distinctive sequence of suras found in it, and in this respect resembles the recensions due to Ubayy and Ibn Mas‘ūd. At all events it supports the view that several versions of the Qur’anic text whose wording does not coincide with the ‘Uthmānic codex were more or less widely circulated in the first decades of Islam. More generally, the ancient copies of the Qur’an that have come down to us provide evidence of an extensive manuscript tradition. From the four deposits that are the main source of our information, we know that hundreds of manuscripts were produced during the first four centuries of Islam—a sign of the great importance that was attached to writing within Muslim communities. The copies we have considered confirm first of all that the rasm of the dominant tradition, transmitted by the vulgate, was to a great extent fixed at an early date. The text of

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the oldest copies in circulation was already in a nearly finished state, close to the form that we know today, but there is also evidence of a not inconsiderable degree of fluidity, manifested by variation of several kinds: different practices with regard to orthography and the manner of marking off verses; the incorporation of words and phrases borrowed from other textual traditions (as in E 20 and Arabe 331); and variants of the rasm, typologically similar to ones that were retained by tradition, that disappeared from later Qur’anic scholarship for unknown reasons (Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus). The massive character of manuscript production in ancient Islam raises in turn a number of questions about its purpose. Although individual copies of the Qur’an were not yet commonly distributed among the faithful, public readings from it were introduced in the liturgy at a very early date. This does not satisfactorily explain the scale of manufacture, however. It may instead have had a symbolic value, possibly associated with the attempt to impose a uniform text on the community of believers as a whole. The lower layer of the Sanaa Palimpsest, S 1(a), lends support for the view that the Qur’anic suras had already been mostly constituted before the death of Muhammad and the first efforts to compile them. The fact that the text of S 1(a) very largely coincides with that of the vulgate suggests that the two versions derived from collections in which Muhammad’s teachings, arranged more or less in accordance with his instructions, were recorded on the basis of what the custodians of these writings remembered of them. The exact sequence of the suras seems not yet to have been fixed; and the evidence of Muslim tradition may indicate that the organizing principle of the Qur’anic text—the relative length of the suras—had not been established either, at least to judge from the account concerning ‘Ā’isha’s s.uh.uf. The titles of the suras are no doubt very

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old as well, and perhaps oral in origin, as the variations I mentioned earlier seem to indicate. Unfortunately the beginning of sura 13 in S 1(a) is mutilated, to such an extent that it is not possible to determine whether the mysterious letters that appear at the head of this chapter in the ‘Uthmānic version were also present there. In order to test the hypothesis that both versions are descended from partial collections, one would like to know whether or not these letters appear in a version of the Qur’an in which the suras were arranged in a different order. Their absence would confirm the hypothesis, for it would mean that the mysterious letters were specific to a particular line of transmission.

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5 Clausulae and the H.adīth of the Seven Ah.ruf

M

uslim tradition was well acquainted with the kinds of variation in the wording and the presentation of the Qur’anic text that we have examined so far. Some variants were considered, at least in part, to belong to the revelation itself; others (due, for example, to the freedom to make synonymous substitutions) were gradually anathematized, but their memory survived in a specialized literature. With the modern study of written transmission in the early centuries of Islam, other evidence of variant forms came to be added to the ones that were already known. Combining this information with what medieval scholars had piously recorded made it possible to show that the Qur’anic text was much more fluid during the first decades of Islam than orthodox Muslims are prepared to accept. We have already noted a few cases in which a difference in wording is found in the final part of a verse in various early Qur’anic manuscripts. In view of the stylistic importance of this phenomenon, I would like now to examine in greater detail a certain number of examples that will stimulate further

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reflection about variation and the forms it assumed in the ancient period. The Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus, which transmitted a text that very largely agrees with that of the vulgate, preserves a few traces of slight discrepancies with regard to the marking of verse endings in the canonical text. An abiding characteristic of the ancient manuscript tradition, as we saw earlier, is the care copyists took to indicate the end of each verse with the aid of specific signs. In the case of ParisinoPetropolitanus, this manner of punctuation coincides in the main with the one that we know today. Even if it does not reproduce any of the systems associated with the various traditions of Qur’anic readings (qirā’āt), whose oldest attestations—and no doubt original formulations as well—are later than the time when this copy was made, the majority of verse endings correspond to the ones mentioned in the specialized traditional literature catalogued long ago by Anton Spitaler. A small number of markings nonetheless occur in a few places in Parisino-Petropolitanus where, according to tradition, no break between verses is indicated. The separations peculiar to this manuscript divide the following canonical verses in two: Q. 4:34, 4:79, 5:3, 9:115, 10:10, 14:27, and 25:4. In this way, seven relatively brief passages are isolated that consist of the material falling between the sign indicating the end of the preceding segment and the one that indicates their own end; they are represented graphically, in other words, in the same manner as the other verses of this copy. In none of these cases has any text been added, nor is there any noticeable difference by comparison with the vulgate. The clusters of dots used to form the supplementary elements of punctuation were subsequently erased, which might indicate that they were thought to have been entered in error; it is puzzling to observe, however, that the sequence of words marked off in this fashion— between a punctuation mark unknown to tradition, peculiar

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to Parisino-Petropolitanus, and one that is common to both the manuscript and the vulgate—is semantically coherent. In only one case, Q: 9:115, is it possible to plausibly conjecture that the copyist’s eye returned to a similar word or phrase in the wrong location of the original text, a rather common error: the following verse, Q. 9:116, does in fact begin with the same words (inna Allāh), which may well account for the mistaken verse division. Although the text itself has in no way been modified, these novel breaks nonetheless produce a slight but not insignificant stylistic disruption, because the word or phrase before the new punctuation mark does not agree with the sequence of rhymes carried on by the endings of adjacent verses. Thus, for example, the canonical verse Q. 4:79 is interrupted in Parisino-Petropolitanus after the word rasūl (the two boldfaced asterisks indicate the new and canonical verse endings, respectively): mā as.ābaka min h.asanat in fa-min Allāh i wa-mā as.ābaka min sayyi’āt in fa-min nafsika wa-arsalnāka li-l-nāsi rasūl an * wa-kafā bi-Llāhi shahīd an * Anything good that happens to you [Prophet] is from God; anything bad is [ultimately] from yourself. We have sent you as a messenger to people.* God is sufficient witness. * The final -ū + consonant + an contrasts with the final words of surrounding verses that end in -ī + consonant + an: fatīl an (v.  77), h.adīth an (v. 78), shahīd an (v. 79), h.afīz. an (v. 80), and wakīlan (v. 81). For a summary, see table 1. Similarly, in Q. 9:115, yattaqūn is the last word of the segment marked off by an additional element of punctuation (fig. 21) and occurs in the middle of a series of verses ending in

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Table 1. Sequence of Rhymes Q. 4:77–81 The noncanonical verse ending, 79(a), is boldfaced.

77 78 79(a) 79(b) 80 81

fatīl an hadīth an rasūl an shahīd an hafīz an wakīl an

Figure 21. Q. 9:115. The mark of the verse ending in this copy, at line 5, has been erased. Qur’anic manuscript Paris, BnF Arabe 328, fol. 44r (Hand A of Codex ParisinoPetropolitanus, third quarter of the seventh century).

-īm: al-jah.īm (v. 113), h.alīm (v. 114), ‘alīm (v. 115), rah.īm (v. 117); or, in the case of v. 116, in -īr (nas.īr). In Q. 14:27, al-z.ālamīn stands in contrast to neighboring rhymes in -ār or a final syllable containing an ā: qarār (v. 26), yashā’ (v. 27), al-bawār (v. 28), al-qarār (v. 29), al-nār (v. 30), and jilāl (v. 31). Finally, in Q. 25:4, the segment ending with the word akharūn inter-

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Table 2. Sequence of Rhymes Q. 25:2–7 The noncanonical verse ending, 4(a), is boldfaced.

2 3 4(a) 4(b) 5 6 7

taqdīr an nushūr an akharūn wazūr an wa-‘as.īl an rah.īm an nadhīr an

rupts a sequence dominated by word endings in -r an and -l an: taqdīran (v. 2), nushūr an (v. 3), wazūr an (v. 4), wa-‘as.īl an (v. 5), rah.īm an (v. 6), and nadhīran (v. 7). This last case may again be more readily visualized in tabular form; see table 2. In verse Q. 4:34, by contrast, the break introduced after sabīlan happens to be incorporated in a sequence of rhymes ending similarly in -ī + consonant + an: karīman (v. 31), ‘alīm an (v. 32), shahīd an (v. 33), kabīr an (v. 34), and khabīr an (v. 35). The lone exception to this general schema is Q. 10:10, where neither salām, which precedes the break within this verse found in Parisino-Petropolitanus, nor al-‘ālamīn, which marks the canonical verse ending, really agrees with the rhymes in -ūn that come before and after (10:7, 10:8, 10:11, and 10:12); in 10:9, the last word is al-na‘īm. As I mentioned earlier, the verse ending indicated in these various places in the text by the copyist of ParisinoPetropolitanus marks off a passage that is shorter in length but nonetheless perfectly meaningful. There is only one exception to this: Q. 5:3, a verse that in the standard Cairo edition takes up three and a half lines, running from h.urrimat ‘alaykum to bi-l-azlām. The composite nature of the beginning of sura 5 has long been recognized, and various dates for its composition have been proposed. As it is divided in

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Parisino-Petropolitanus, the verse does not match the fifth verse of Gustav Flügel’s edition, which has served for many years as a basis for European Qur’anic studies. It also includes the immediately preceding phrase, which both Schwally and Bell had thought to be related to it. Parisino-Petropolitanus, which deviates on this point from the various schools, therefore preserves the trace of a verse division associated with a semantic discontinuity, detected long ago, that gave a specific identity to the end of Q. 5:3, recognized by some medieval authorities as the last revealed verse. In the other six places, the text is as follows: Q. Q. Q. Q.

: : : :

Q. Q.

: :

Inna Allāh a kāna ‘aliyy an kabīr an Wa-kafā bi-Llāh i shahīd an Inna Allāh a bi-kull i shay’ in ‘alīm un Wa-ākhir u da‘wāhum an i al-h.amd u li-Llāhi rabbi al-‘alāmin a Wa yaf ‘al u Allāhu mā yashā’ u Fa-qad ja’ū z.ulman wa-zūr an

Two cases need to be distinguished, it seems to me. In the first case, involving Q. 10:10 and Q. 25:4, the verse indicated in Parisino-Petropolitanus directly contributes to the meaning of the larger passage in which it is incorporated. Q. 10:10 is divided in the manuscript thus: Their prayer in [the Gardens of Bliss] will be, “Glory be to You, God!” the greeting [they will receive], “Peace.” * And the last part of their prayer [will be], “Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds.” * This last segment is therefore part of the account of the welcome reserved for the elect in heaven. It had moreover been recognized as a verse in its own right by Flügel, who made it no. 11 in his edition of the Qur’an, though without explaining

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his reasons for doing so. Bell, for his part, presented it in his translation as something added to the sura, as in the case of 10:9. The interest of this segment from the stylistic point of view is limited, however, since it carries on no rhyme. The last part of the verse corresponding to Q. 25:4 that is marked off by Parisino-Petropolitanus does not occur as part of an account, as in Q. 10:10. In the manuscript it appears to be an interpolated clause, preceded by a line of quoted discourse that is famous, like the line immediately following, for recalling the accusations brought against Muhammad by his opponents: The disbelievers say, “This can only be a lie he has forged with the help of others.” * They themselves [in speaking thus] have done great wrong and told lies. * [Q. 25:4] They also say, “[These are just] ancient fables, which he has had written down; they are dictated to him morning and evening.” [Q. 25:5] This segment may have been a later addition, a rhyming parenthetical comment intended to refute the two charges challenging the authenticity of the revelations announced by Muhammad that bracket it. The second case concerns the four other short passages whose status as separate verses is specific to ParisinoPetropolitanus (Q. 4:34, 4:79, 9:115, and 14:27). As in the two previous examples, they contain an utterance that, like what comes before it, is grammatically independent: Q. 4:34 God is most high and great. Q. 4:79 God is sufficient witness. Q. 9:115 God has knowledge of everything. Q. 14:27 God does whatever He will.

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In each of these four instances, the supplementary division involves a phrase that occurs several or more times in the Qur’an. The one found at the end of 9:115 in the standard edition appears a total of sixteen times; shahīd an (4:79) occurs six times in sura 4; and a formulation similar to that of 4:79, only with wakīl an, is found in 4:81. There are many occurrences of mā / man yasha’, but only two of them, in 3:40 and 22:18, contribute a final rhyme, and these exactly match 14:27. Many variations exhibit the same pattern as 4:34: the pair ‘alīy / kabīr itself occurs only five times in the Qur’an, but, as we have seen, the stylistic figure of doubled divine epithets (particularly of the form fa‘īl), placed at the end of a verse, is a recurrent feature in later suras. The same is true for the three other phrases. The presence of a verse divider (subsequently eliminated) in Parisino-Petropolitanus makes the four clauses that are separated in this manner from 4:34, 4:79, 9:115, and 14:27 autonomous textual elements. Their meaning is of a very general nature and does not modify the sense of the passage as a whole. Régis Blachère, in his translation, introduced a space break in those places where the beginning of the supplementary verse is marked in the manuscript (in my notation by a boldfaced asterisk, as below and elsewhere). We have already seen an example of this in 4:79; similarly, in 9:115, one finds: Wa-mā kāna Allāhu li-yudill a qawma ba‘da idh hadāhum h.attā yubayyina la-hum mā yattaqūna * inna Allāha bi-kulli shay’ in ‘alīmun * God would not condemn for going astray those He has already guided [to the faith] before making entirely clear to them what they should avoid. * God has knowledge of everything. * Blachère recognized that the contextualization of these freestanding clauses depended not on meaning, but on rhyme.

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The break that precedes them, and that is peculiar to the manuscript, creates by contrast a discordance at the end of the first segment that it marks off; although this segment faithfully conveys the sense of the Qur’anic message, its concluding syllables introduce a rupture in the rhyme scheme. In the system of versification authorized by tradition, where the brief supplementary verses are completely subsumed within a longer verse, the fact that their meaning is relatively neutral goes unnoticed, for it is the sequence of rhymes alone that causes the passage to hang together. What accounts, then, for the alternate verse markings found in Parisino-Petropolitanus? It seems to me that in these four instances the manuscript preserves the trace of a reworking of the text when the suras were being put into final form. In order to include a revelation in a particular passage while equipping the text with an acceptable rhyme, a brief and semantically rather neutral clause was added in the requisite place. This explanation was first advanced long ago by Friedrich Schwally in the second edition of Nöldeke’s Geschichte des Qorāns: Uniformity of rhyme . . . is to be understood only as a product of internal circumstances. One must always take into consideration the possibility that distinct passages having the same rhyme were subsequently inserted, either by Muh.ammad himself or in a later recension. From time to time the Prophet might also have deliberately composed text that was then added to an already existing revelation, in the [same] rhyme as the original. It may be, then, that the manuscript gives us a more precise idea of the editing process: a neutral element—a ready-made and familiar formula—was introduced after the revelation

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proper in order to incorporate the revelation in a sura that was in the process of being given its final form or that was already in large part constituted. The formulas that appear in the four cases found in Parisino-Petropolitanus contain rhymes whose importance in the Qur’an is well known, but which also have a rather mechanical character; the externally formed plural endings -ūn and -īn are among the most frequent. Additionally, rhythmic considerations aside, verses often conclude with a formula that recalls the clausula of Latin rhetoric, a similarity pointed out earlier by Blachère. W. Montgomery Watt, for his part, spoke in this connection of “detachable rhyme-phrases,” noting not only the frequency of their occurrence in the Qur’an but also their somewhat artificial insertion in verses of which they are grammatically independent and to which they bear a fairly loose semantic relationship. By way of example he cites the phrase Allāh u ‘alā kull i shay’ in qadīr u, which appears thirtytwo times in the Qur’an, as for instance at the end of Q. 2:20: “If God so willed, he could take away their hearing and sight. God has power over everything.” Here again, the full stop added in Bell’s translation between “sight” and “God” affords us a glimpse of how the relationship between the two constitutive elements of the concluding passage was originally perceived. Interest in this aspect of Qur’anic style has grown in recent years. Devin Stewart has pointed out that the rhythmic effect achieved by the introduction of a final formula reinforces the cadence of the first part of the canonical verse, which contains the semantically primary element. The clausula itself may take the form either of a doubled divine epithet or of a general phrase referring to some aspect of God’s relationship to man. The first case involves formulas similar to the one that closes 28:16, inna-hu huwa al-ghafūr u al-rah.īmu (He is truly the Most Forgiving, the

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Most Merciful); the second involves ones similar to the formula that closes 6:141, inna-hu lā yuh.ibbu al-musrifīna (God does not like wasteful people). Angelika Neuwirth, for her part, sees the clausula as enriching the meaning of the verse as a whole: The phrase that ends the verse, and that, in many cases, does not partake semantically in the principal thrust of the [previous] statement, adds to this statement a layer of meaning that refers metatextually to the spiritual world beyond the terrestrial one, often invoking divine omnipotence as a reason for what happens on earth. In Neuwirth’s view, in other words, the clausula has a mnemotechnic purpose, quite apart from its relation to the prevailing rhyme scheme, aimed at giving added coherence and emphasis to the message delivered by the body of the verse. The manuscript tradition of the ‘Uthmānic version has preserved a variety of clues to the role played by clausulae in shaping the text in the second half of the seventh century. Parisino-Petropolitanus, for example, made quite deliberate use of these elements, inserted graphically in various places as independent verses, with a view to strengthening the unity of the Qur’an from the stylistic point of view. The caesuras—indicated by clusters of dots—that framed them were evidently not meant to be retained in future copies. Why, then, did they survive in the manuscript that has come down to us? Probably because they appeared in the model from which the copyists worked and, as a consequence of the liberties that copyists were accustomed to take, as we have seen, they mistakenly reproduced them. Unfortunately it is not possible to say exactly when such supplementary verse markings were excised from the manuscript by erasure. Schwally, as I mentioned earlier,

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was the first to argue for the existence of such alterations, and Bell later identified additional signs of editorial intervention in the text. It may be objected that, because the text of ParisinoPetropolitanus is roughly the same as that of the vulgate, it offers no proof that general phrases of this kind actually gave rise to variations. And indeed it does not. In order to discover how clausulae were incorporated in the Qur’anic text, we have to look beyond the ‘Uthmānic textual tradition. Among the variants found in Ibn Mas‘ūd’s codex that were preserved in the Kitāb al-mas.āh.if of Ibn abī Dā’ūd, for example, one encounters a good many instances not only of supplementary verse endings but also of clausulae. In this comprehensive study of the state and history of the Qur’anic text in the early years of Islam, Ibn abī Dā’ūd compiled an exhaustive list, sura by sura, of the variants that distinguish Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version from others. The important point for our purposes (leaving to one side the actual order of the suras, which we now know was different), is that Ibn abī Dā’ūd noted seventeen cases involving the final part of a verse. Some of these—Q. 37:130, for example—do not involve a clausula. On eight occasions the difference concerns the rhyme itself, which may occur within a clausula; of these eight instances, only one, Q. 3:1, is thought to involve a clausula (instead of al-h.ayy al-qayyūm, Ibn Mas‘ūd’s codex had al-h.ayy al-qayyām—the last a word that does not appear in the vulgate), though this interpretation has been disputed. There exists only one verse ending in which a clausula is modified by transposition: in Q. 3:156, Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version reads wa-Allāhu bas.īr un bi-mā ta‘malūn a (God sees everything you do) instead of wa-Allāhu bi-mā ta‘malūna bas.īr un, the canonical reading. The first formulation yields a rhyme with 3:157 and 3:158, the second with 3:155 (h.alīm).

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The lower layer of the Sanaa Palimpsest, S 1(a), provides us with a much more promising lead. The state of the text differs from that of the vulgate, and the most qualified scholars who have studied it (Elisabeth Puin, Behnam Sadeghi, and Mohsen Goudarzi) have drawn attention to different types of variants, some of which involve clausulae. In what follows I will restrict my attention to verse endings in which a variant occurs. For reasons of convenience, I will retain the verse numbering that is used in the vulgate while following the standard text as closely as possible. 1. Fol. 2r, line 13: Verse Q. 2:90 of the vulgate ends with the words ‘adhāb muhīn (humiliating torment), whereas in S 1(a) one finds the more classic ‘adhāb alīm (painful torment), which is attested in the vulgate by 52 occurrences at the end of a verse, as against only 10 for muhīn. 2. Fol. Bonhams 2000 verso, line 13: In the passage corresponding to the end of Q. 5:50, the manuscript reads li-qawmin yu’minūna (toward those who believe), as against li-qawmin yuqinūna (toward those who are convinced) in the vulgate. 3. Fol. 5v, line 11: Q. 9:11 ends with la‘allakum ta‘qilūna (perhaps you will be reasonable) in the manuscript, whereas the vulgate reads li-qawmin ya‘lamūna (for people who know). In the vulgate, moreover, the formula employed by S 1(a) accounts for 8 of 24 occurrences of ta‘qilūn, which is commonly (in 13 cases) introduced by a-falā. 4. Fol. 6r, line 6: The end of verse Q. 9:18 is an yakunū min al-muhtadīna (such people [believers] may hope to be among the rightly guided), a slightly different formulation than the one that appears in S 1(a), an yakunū min al-muflih.īna (such people may hope to be among those who will prosper), and that is met with only once in the vulgate, at the end of

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28:67, where the verb is in the singular; it is principally used in the direct case, muflih.ūn, and in that form occurs on 12 occasions. As for the correlative forms muhtadūn and muhtadīn, they are equally represented, 9 times each. 5. Fol. 6v, lines 3–4: At the end of line 3, the final phrase begins with the words wa-Allāhu ‘alīmun and continues with h.ak[īm] (the manuscript is slightly damaged at the beginning of line 4), meaning “God is omniscient and wise”—a clear departure from the corresponding verse in the vulgate, 9:27, which ends with ghafūr rah.īm (God is most forgiving and merciful). This divine double epithet is more frequently attested (71 times) in the vulgate than ‘alīm h.akīm, of which we possess 29 examples. 6. Fol. 20r, line 5: The end of the verse corresponding to 9:71 of the vulgate is damaged in the manuscript. Nevertheless it is possible to distinguish the beginning of one phrase, waAllāhu ‘al [ . . . ], from the orthodox version, inna Allāha ‘azīz un h.akīmun (God is almighty and wise). The two last visible letters are ‘ayn and lām, followed by the beginning of the connecting stroke with the next letter, which allows us to discard ‘azīz as a possible reading, since in that case the first zay is not attached to the following letter. Since only limited space is available for the missing text, we are justified in ruling out longer phrases such as wa-Allāhu ‘al[ā kull i shay’ in qadīr un] and preferring the double epithet ‘al[īm h.akīm]. 7. Fol. 20v, line 6: Verse 9:82 of the vulgate concludes with the phrase bi-mā kānū yaksibūna (in return for what they have gotten for themselves), attested 13 times in the Qur’an as a whole. S 1(a), by contrast, exhibits a formulation whose final verb is ya‘malūn; there are 9 passages in the vulgate ending with bi-mā kānū ya‘malūna (in return for what they have done).

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8. Fol. 22r, line 13: In the manuscript, the last word of the verse corresponding to 9:25 of the vulgate is fāsiqūn (immoral persons) rather than kāfirūn (unbelievers). The latter noun occurs more frequently (3 cases) than the former in this construction (wa-hum kāfirūn / fāsiqūn), but all such occurrences are concentrated in sura 9. 9. Fol. 31r, line 7: In the vulgate, 12:19 ends with the words wa-Allāhu ‘alīmun bi-mā ya‘malūna (God was well aware of what they did), which constitutes a unique occurrence; everywhere else the adjective bas.īr is employed. In S 1(a)—which slightly departs from this by employing another verb, yaf ‘alūn—one reads wa-Allāhu ‘alīmun bi-mā yaf ‘alūna (God has full knowledge of what they do), as in 24:41 in the vulgate; a similar formulation is also found in 10:36. 10. Fol. 33v, line 5: The last word of Q. 34:25 is ta‘malūn (you do), whereas it is clear that S 1(a) reads tujrimūn (you commit a crime), a verb that is attested only once in the vulgate, at 11:35, whereas ta‘malūn is extremely common, occurring 83 times. 11. Fol. 33v, line 9: A few lines below on the same folio, the text of S 1(a) was damaged at the end of verse 34:28 in the vulgate; one can make out walākinn a akthar a al-nās i lā [ . . . ] rūn (but most people do not [ . . . ])—clearly a variation on the canonical walākinna akthar a al-nās i lā ya‘lamūna (but most people do not know anything). The three final letters in the manuscript lead us to reconstruct the verb as either yashkurūn (to be grateful, to give thanks) or yatafakkarūn (to think, to reflect). The latter form has no parallel in a similar context, whereas the former is attested in three places, for example in the passage corresponding to Q. 40:61 (but most people  do not give thanks). The wording found in 34:28, by contrast, is well attested in the vulgate, occurring 11 times (for

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example, at 7:187), and elsewhere in a similar form (for example, at 7:131). 12. Fol. 18r, line 25: The final word of 15:30 in the vulgate, ajma‘ūn (all, the whole), is replaced by ajma‘īn in S 1(a). The change bears upon the case ending and therefore entails a modification of the rhyme. 13. Fol. 18v, lines 21–22: Another change in case ending affects the last part of two verses in the manuscript corresponding respectively to 15:61, al-mursilūn (the messengers), and 15:64, la-s.ādiqūn (most truly) of the vulgate. In S 1(a) one clearly reads al-mursilīn at the beginning of line 21 (the lām of the article has been mutilated), and then, on line 22, la-s.ādiqīn. As in the preceding case, the rhyme has been modified. 14. Fol. 10v, line 12: S 1(a) presents two discrepancies in the passage corresponding to 24:19 of the vulgate. In the first instance, the manuscript text reads ‘adhāb ‘az.īm (immense torment) rather than ‘adhāb alīm (cruel torment); the latter adjective, alīm, qualifies the noun ‘adhāb more often in the vulgate (51 occurrences) than the former (22 occurrences). And unlike the vulgate, S 1(a) indicates a verse ending immediately after the two words. 15. Fol. 11r, line 3: The last word of 24:24 is ya‘malūn (they do / have done) in the vulgate, but S 1(a) plainly reads yaksibūn (they have gotten for themselves), a verb that is attested 8 times in the vulgate in the same construction (bi-mā kānū . . . ), whereas ya‘malūn occurs 10 times. 16. Fol. 11r, lines 11–12: The end of line 11, where the formula in question begins, is less legible in S 1(a) than the beginning of the following line, but legible enough that we can make out two discrepancies by comparison with 24:28 of the vulgate. In line 11 we can read . . . inna Allāha kha-[bīr un], and then, in line 12, bi-mā ta‘malūna (God is well aware of what you do), whereas the text of the vulgate reads wa-Allāhu bi-mā

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ta‘malūna ‘alīmun (God, of what you do, is well aware). Again, the transposition modifies the rhyme of the verse. 17. Fol. 11v, lines 16–17: The ‘Uthmānic version of the end of Q. 24:35 is wa-Allāhu bi-kull i shay’ in ‘alīmun (God, of everything, has full knowledge). In the corresponding passage of S 1(a), the second line is less legible than the first—the opposite of the preceding example. The text matches that of the ‘Uthmānic version up through li-l-nās, leading on at the end of line 16 to la‘alla-hum; at the beginning of line 17 traces of several letters can be made out, perhaps dāl / dhāl and then kāf, after which one clearly reads “[ . . . ] ūn” before the sign indicating the end of the verse. The vulgate records a series of phrases introduced by la‘alla-hum that might be suitable here. With regard to the verb, since the letter waw is visibly separate from the one that comes before it in the manuscript, the leading candidates appear to be ones containing a rā’ or a dāl, such as the very frequently encountered yatadhakkarūn (perhaps they will be mindful), or yatafakkarūn (perhaps they will reflect), or else yashkurūn (perhaps they will be grateful). Once more the rhyme of the verse is modified by comparison with the vulgate. 18. Fol. 16v, line 21: The verse corresponding to Q. 28:21 in the vulgate ends with the word [a]l-khāti’īn (people who are in error) in S 1(a) rather than al-z.ālimīn (people who do wrong). In the vulgate, this word is preceded by al-qawm, which owing to the loss of a part of the manuscript folio does not appear there. The verse endings that differ from the vulgate, so far as we can tell from the surviving leaves of S 1(a), allow us to form some idea of how much flexibility was still permitted with regard to the Qur’anic text in the seventh century. Rhyme is at issue in every case. Typically only the last word of the verse is

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involved, the one used in the vulgate being replaced in S 1(a) by a synonym. A first group of examples shows us that the use of synonyms, which contemporary accounts (such as the one due to Anas b. Mālik) attest was practiced in the course of recitation, is quite naturally reflected in a manuscript that preserves a different text from that of the ‘Uthmānic recension, or, to put the point another way, a text that was still a rival to the officially approved version of the Qur’an. In S 1(a), ‘adhāb alīm replaces ‘adhāb muhīn, yu’minūn is found in place of yuqinūn, al-muflih.īn instead of al-muhtadīn, ya‘malūn rather than yaksibūn, fāsiqūn for kāfirūn, tujrimūn for ta‘malūn. Further on, the ya‘malūn of the vulgate gives way to yaksibūn, and al-z.ālimīn to al-khāti’īn. The change, as we have seen, is slight: the meaning is not modified and the rhyme remains the same. But this is not always the case. In Q. 15:30 (no. 12 in the list above) and 15:61 and 15:64 (no. 13), the text remains unchanged except for the rhymes, which in the vulgate end in -ūn but in S 1(a) are replaced by ones ending in -īn. In the immediately surrounding verses, the sequence of rhymes is ordered in a different fashion: in S 1(a), the rhyme in 15:30 agrees with 15:29 and 15:31–32, whereas the rhyme in 15:61 accords with 15:58– 60 rather than with 15:62–63 and 15:65; in 15:64, by contrast, la-s.ādiqīn departs from the neighboring pattern. And whereas the end of the verse that in S 1(a) occurs within 24:19 (no. 14) is compatible with adjacent rhymes in -īm and -īn, the textual segment that follows, between the separation there and the verse divider marking the end of 24:19 in the vulgate, remains unresolved for want of a rhyming final syllable. On seven occasions, however, what is at issue is more than a single word, rhyming or otherwise. Two of these instances resemble the ones we have just considered. In Q. 12:19 (no. 9) and 34:28 (no. 11), S 1(a) presents a phrasing close to that of the vulgate, which reads wa-Allāh ‘alīm bi-mā ya‘malūn

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(God was well aware of what they did) and walākin akthar alnās lā ya‘lamūn (God knows well what you do), respectively. The standard text is slightly modified in S 1(a) by the use of a synonymous verb, in the first instance yaf ‘alūn and, in the second, probably yashkurūn, as I have suggested. In the case of final verbs of this sort, Arabic allows one root to be exchanged for another of similar meaning (F-‘-L instead of ‘-M-L in the one case, and Sh-K-R instead of ‘-L-M in the other), while preserving the rhythmic pattern and especially the ending—which after all is the element that matters. In 24:28 (no. 16), again as a result of a transposition, the verb ta‘malūn replaces the last word of the verse, ‘alīm in the vulgate. The version found in S 1(a) has therefore made the sequence of rhymes in this part of the sura more consistent, although here the change was a little more complicated. The clausula retained in the manuscript, while it possesses a meaning very similar to the one found in the vulgate, orders the words in a different fashion. Introducing these modifications and substitutions was nonetheless made easier by being able to draw upon a repertoire of textual elements that provided the flexibility needed to integrate these ready-made phrases into the very body of the Qur’anic revelations, using them to make a distinct but equivalent version. Q. 9:11 (no. 3) is a somewhat special case. In the version preserved by S 1(a), the last two words, la‘allakum ta‘qilūn (perhaps you will be reasonable), represent a departure from the rest of the verse, which, despite the obvious differences it displays by comparison with the text of the vulgate, nonetheless follows it in the main. At the end, by contrast, the editor inserted a very well-known clausula, as we saw earlier. The two following examples, Q. 9:27 (no. 5) and 9:71 (no. 6), are particularly interesting for the light they cast on variation in the Qur’anic text during the ancient period. In both cases we find a pair of divine epithets: ‘alīm h.akīm in S 1(a)

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replaces successively ghafūr rah.īm and ‘azīz h.akīm in the vulgate. These substitutions bring us back to the problem of the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf. Different versions from the one that has come down to us from Zuhrī are known. Shady Hekmat Nasser, as we saw earlier, has proposed a typology based on the various formulations (matn)—from A to G in his classification. The version due to ‘Umar and subsequently transmitted by Zuhrī has no doubt been the most influential. Owing to Zuhrī’s great artistry, it compelled belief by means of a lively narrative that gives the impression of conveying historical information. The characters are clearly identified, and one of them is none other than ‘Umar himself, which gives the scene added credibility. It must be kept in mind, however, that Zuhrī’s trustworthiness is questionable. Hassan Chahdi has pointed out the reservations expressed by certain medieval Muslim scholars in this connection, and I myself have emphasized several anachronistic details that are found in his account of how the Qur’an came to be written down. In the case of the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, it seems to me that its false precision is twofold: on the one hand, as Claude Gilliot has observed, Zuhrī does not say exactly which verse is meant when he reports an account where a specific verse is being recited, and, on the other, such references as he does give may be no more than a skillful evasion, a way of dodging the basic question. Thus, for example, one of the names by which the Qur’an is known is al-Furqān (The book that distinguishes [right from wrong]). This also happens to be the title of sura 25. It could be, then, that instead of referring to this particular chapter, Zuhrī meant simply a “sura of the Qur’an”—a detail that tells us nothing at all. Nevertheless Zuhrī surely did not invent everything he recounts. As we saw earlier, the theme of the seven ah.ruf occupies a substantial place within Muslim tradition, and Zuhrī’s version may well be

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a retelling of an earlier primary account. Zuhrī’s well-known association with the Umayyads might explain the composition of an account that in its main outlines was familiar at the time, but which avoided mentioning any detail that risked calling into question the version of the Qur’anic text that the dynasty was determined to make prevail—namely, the ‘Uthmānic recension—as al-H.ajjāj’s efforts in this connection make clear. Gilliot has examined the various versions of the famous h.adīth, as we saw earlier, while passing more quickly over what he calls unframed traditions; where they are accompanied by brief explanatory remarks, he says, the referential function constitutes the point of the account, in the form of a rough explanation. Ultimately, it is among these traditions that we find enough information about the Qur’an, however vague it may be, to formulate a hypothesis regarding what, at least in part, the variations coming under the head of the seven manners of recitation might have amounted to. In the various versions of the h.adīth and other traditions dealing with the same topic, reference to the Qur’anic text seems to me to be fairly definite. A first case consists of several traditions that bear directly upon this question, since the word h.arf figures in them in both the singular and the plural. Famously, as we saw earlier, the reader is instructed not to substitute “mercy” where “punishment” is meant or “punishment” for “mercy.” The formulation is elliptical, but the basic idea—that it was permissible to make synonymous substitutions—is readily grasped; in other words, variants of this kind were not prohibited in principle, but not all were acceptable. In the first decades of Islam, then, the principle of recitation bi-l-ma‘nā (according to sense) enjoyed a certain legitimacy; eventually—when exactly it is impossible to say—it was supplanted by recitation bi-l-lafz. (according to the letter of the text), the only kind recognized

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by Muslim orthodoxy today. In this connection one thinks particularly of one of the versions of the h.adīth preserved by T.abarī that features ‘Umar. It exists in several variants that their isnād tells us go back to two Companions, Abū Hurayra and Abū Bakr. Again, the wording is vague: there is no reference to a particular sura, only a general claim supported by the principle of recitation bi-l-ma‘nā. The limitations on variation are specified more precisely in another group of texts in which the license to make substitutions is illustrated by an example. One tradition collected by ‘Abd al-Razzāq al-S.an‘ānī (corresponding to matn C in Nasser’s classification) may be taken to stand for the group as a whole. The account begins in a manner rather similar to the one due to Zuhrī, with a disagreement between Ubayy b. Ka‘b and another Companion over the proper recitation of an unidentified verse. The ending, by contrast, is modeled on h.adīth proscribing the transposition of mercy and punishment; in the meantime there is this instructive detail: If [the verse concludes with the phrase] ‘azīz h.akīm [almighty and wise] and you say samī‘ ‘alīm, Allāh is samī‘ ‘alīm [all-hearing and all-knowing]. The narrative in this case has none of the color that enlivens Nasser’s matn A, in which ‘Umar and Hishām disagreed about how to recite sura 25 (al-Furqān). And yet we may be sure that it has to do with the seven ah.ruf for two reasons: first, this detail occurs at the very beginning of the text; second, we know of a more concise h.adīth concerned with this same question that, according to its isnād, came from Abū Hurayra and that discusses the propriety of reciting ‘alīm h.akīm (allknowing and wise) in place of ghafūr rah.īm (most forgiving and merciful) or vice versa. In the version that figures in the Musnad of Ibn H.anbal (d. 855), three pairs of epithets are said

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to be equivalent: ghafūr rah.īm, samī‘ ‘alīm, and ‘alīm samī‘; and in the version that Abū Dā’ūd (d. 889) conserved in his Sunān, it is said: All [these formulas] are acceptable, you may say samī‘ ‘alīm or ‘azīz h.akīm. Whereas Zuhrī’s h.adīth contains only one reference to the sura al-Furqān—an empty gesture, as it turns out, a gratuitous detail intended to impart an air of verisimilitude to the account without furnishing any real insight into the nature of the discrepancies entailed by the various ah.ruf—the traditions we have been considering just now agree with one another with regard to a well-known peculiarity of Qur’anic style, namely, the use of doubled divine epithets at the end of a verse. Even if the practice itself was not explicitly mentioned, every Muslim knew perfectly well that these phrases were meant, since the adjectives that occur in them, and their sequence, agree with what is actually found in the Qur’an. The freedom to substitute synonymous epithets at the end of a verse assumes another aspect in one of the versions of the story of Muhammad’s secretary ‘Abd Allāh b. abī Sarh., whom we have already encountered. While carrying out his duties as one of the “scribes of revelation,” he inadvertently wrote ghafūr rah.īm in place of ‘azīz h.akīm—or, according to another source, samī‘ ‘alīm in place of ghafūr rah.īm. Ibn abī Sarh. then read to Muhammad the text he had transcribed, and the Prophet approved, saying, “It’s the same either way.” This situation was not so problematic as the one I mentioned earlier, where the very content of a revelation, and not merely a final phrase, derived from the utterances of certain Companions. And yet, while noting that the epithets he had spontaneously introduced in place of the initial wording of the revelation had been authorized by Muhammad, Ibn abī Sarh. was

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wracked by doubts and wound up being judged an apostate. Here again, the various doubled divine epithets that appear among the variants of this account coincide with the ones that occur in the canonical text. Sometimes these pairs of adjectives appear in the body of a verse, but more often, as I say, they are located at the end of a verse. They are relatively stable, as may be seen from the list drawn up by Arne Ambros of those pairs, sixteen in number, that occur more than five times in the Qur’an. The total number of occurrences (274) accounts for almost 4 percent of the 6,236 verse endings in the Cairo edition. There is nonetheless a sizeable disparity between the first four sets of pairs (Ambros records 179 examples) and the others. The remaining twelve pairs represent a little more than a third of the doubled divine epithets, whereas the first four alone make up almost two-thirds (65 percent); in order of frequency they are: 1. ghafūr rah.īm (most forgiving and merciful), 71 times 2. ‘azīz h.akīm (almighty and wise), 47 times 3. samī‘ ‘alīm (all-hearing and all-knowing), 32 times 4. ‘alīm h.akīm (all-knowing and wise), 29 times It is hardly a coincidence that the adjectival pairs cited by traditional sources should be precisely those that occur most frequently in the Qur’an. To be sure, there is no indication in the sources whether we are dealing here with verse endings, though the overwhelming majority of doubled divine epithets do in fact appear in exactly this location. The essential point is that, in various formulations, one school of Muslim tradition has preserved an instruction that goes back to Muhammad, who ruled that it was permissible to substitute one pair of divine epithets for another of equivalent meaning. It is difficult to imagine that a teaching of this sort, which stands in striking

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contrast to the literalism that accompanied the dissemination of the ‘Uthmānic rasm, could have been a forgery circulated in the late seventh century—or, still less probably, at some later date. The license granted by Muhammad must nonetheless be understood, as I say, as being subject to the limitations laid down by the h.adīth collected by ‘Abd al-Razzāq al-S.an‘ānī and others, which, in denying the interchangeability of mercy and punishment, placed emphasis on the meaning of Muhammad’s message and not on its literal form. One account that concerns the question of the initial wording of the revelation, as it was first written down during Muhammad’s lifetime, and that may furnish us with a key for interpreting the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, once more involves ‘Abd Allāh b. abī Sarh.. There exist several versions in which Ibn abī Sarh. is the main character, among them the one we considered earlier. All these versions end in apostasy, but the cause of it varies. In the version that interests us here, Ibn abī Sarh. is writing down a revelation received by Muhammad. No sooner had the Prophet finished uttering the message than the scribe is said to have cried out: fa-tabaraka Allāh ah.san al-khāliqīn (glory be to Allāh, the best of creators!). This exclamation immediately met with Muhammad’s approval. He told Ibn abī Sarh. to include these words at the end of the revealed verse; thus they became, according to medieval commentators, the clausula that concludes Q. 23:14—a passage we examined earlier in connection with Bell’s speculations regarding the composition and chronology of the Qur’anic text. If we take a broader view of the different versions of this story, it becomes clear that, among the variants that occur in a particular textual segment, one thing remains constant: it is always the end of a verse that is at issue, which is to say a clausula. It seems to me that the application of this term must be extended to an entire set of final phrases whose semantic

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contribution is negligeable (since removing them in no way affects the meaning of the rest of the verse) and whose contours are well defined (since they assume the form of comment clauses), but which nonetheless serve an important purpose in respect of rhyme and rhythm. H.adīth referring to divine epithets in the context of the seven ah.ruf are typically concerned with clausulae; for want of a specific term, medieval traditionists used these synonymous pairs of adjectives to refer to clausulae of all kinds—pars pro toto. Accounts of this type show the persistence of a memory of practices prior to the establishment of a canonical Qur’anic text—and indeed prior to the first written version of the Qur’an. We now come back to the question of the date of the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf. Gotthelf Bergsträsser, in the second edition of the Geschichte des Qorāns, argued that the h.adīth had been used by a part of the Islamic community that sought to overcome the conflicts that had arisen over the Qur’an during the seventh century, calling for tolerance and insisting on respect for the diversity of interpretations that had emerged after the death of Muhammad. Nasser, for his part, has advanced reasons for dating Zuhrī’s version of the h.adīth to the late seventh century. The h.adīth, Nasser believes, was meant to defend the authenticity of a Qur’anic codex belonging to ‘Abd Allāh b. al-Zubayr, the name of whose brother, ‘Urwa, occurs in the isnad; the implication, then, is that ‘Urwa was originally responsible for this version. On this view, the h.adīth came into circulation well after the Qur’an was given written form, which, according to Zuhrī, took place under the reign of Caliph ‘Uthmān. Nasser’s dating of the h.adīth is plausible, but only for Zuhrī’s version of it. This version requires further comment. It is surely not insignificant that another account due to Zuhrī, having to do with the writing down of the Qur’an, also begins with a dispute over the proper rendering of the sacred text. On this point the

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version of the account recorded by T.abarī is more specific than the one found in Bukhārī. Moreover, since some of the various h.adīth that refer to the seven ah.ruf make no mention of any textual discrepancy, the decision to discuss this issue was no doubt deliberate. If it was actually Zuhrī who gave the version known to us through Bukhārī and T.abarī its finished form, his links with the Umayyad rulers would explain the recurrence of the theme of discord (fitna) as part of an official attempt to justify the prohibition of license in recitation; in the context of the early eighth century, a time when sectarian dissension threatened to undermine the authority of the nascent Islamic state, the emphasis placed on this theme is readily understood. The reference to clausulae, by contrast, identified once more for reasons of convenience with doubled divine epithets, goes back to the time of Muhammad’s apostolate—a detail sometimes incorporated in more recent versions, as in the case of the h.adīth in which Ubayy figures. The h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, in its various versions, is bound up with the oral realization of the Qur’anic text. If my dating of the text’s primary kernel is correct, we have a valuable clue as to how the Qur’an was used in the early years of Islam. The permissibility of making substitutions so long as the meaning of the message was respected went together with an interest, plainly implied in certain versions, in facilitating recitation and perhaps learning as well. Watt pointed out some time ago in this connection that clausulae (detachable rhymephrases) function as a sort of refrain. This suggests the need to inquire further into the original purpose of this element of Qur’anic style, which might have been the equivalent, on a smaller scale, of the congregation’s united response in Christian liturgy. In the light of all this it would no doubt be instructive to reconsider what we know about the practice of recitation during the ancient period. The high regard in which Abū Mūsā

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al-Ash‘arī was held, for example, was expressed by means of an adjective, afsah., which has to do more with the quality of one’s language than the beauty of one’s voice. This may have been an allusion to al-Ash‘arī’s talent in deploying substitutions. If so, it would explain why he is said to have been one of the Companions who recited a version of the Qur’an known to him personally but not to the others. Comparing the text of the vulgate with that of S 1(a) brings out the importance of verse endings in putting the suras in finished form. The flexibility allowed by a larger repertoire of rhymes, whether considered narrowly with reference to the last word of the verse or in the more expansive context of clausulae, seems almost surely to have been profitably exploited for this purpose. It could hardly have been by chance, for example, that Bell selected a sequence of verses at the beginning of sura 23 for the purpose of uncovering some of the traces of editorial intervention concealed in the Qur’anic text. The final phrase of 23:14, and the account involving ‘Abd Allāh b. abī Sarh. that is associated with it, naturally encouraged him to examine this passage more closely. Insofar as Muhammad was able to personally approve or disapprove a recitation, and considering that no complete written recension could be contrary to the revealed word of God, there was no great difficulty to begin with in upholding the multiform character of the revelation, not only in respect of clausulae but also more generally. The dissemination of written copies no doubt came to constitute an obstacle to maintaining the flexibility of the Qur’anic text, but editors seem to have taken advantage of the opportunities clausulae presented for adjustment and adaptation wherever possible. The variants involving clausulae that are found in the various families of the ancient manuscript tradition of which we have some knowledge very probably reflect the initial state of these texts, which circulated with Muhammad’s approval. In

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that case the recensions that were made after his death would naturally have preserved such variants. The seventh and final example of a variation in clausula form in S 1(a) appears on line 17 of fol. 11v (fig. 22). It is particularly significant for what it implies about the flexibility of the text until the end of the seventh century, perhaps even later than that. The passage in question is one of the most famous in all of the Qur’an, certainly one of the most easily memorized, the Verse of Light (24:35), of which a large number of variant readings have come down to us. The parchment of the palimpsest has unfortunately been damaged, and it is not possible to wholly make out the text that transcribes the final part of the verse. Nevertheless the few letters that can be deciphered very clearly show that the clausula we know from the vulgate, Allāha bi-kulli shay’ in ‘alīmun (God has full knowledge of everything), had been replaced by another; as we have seen, it may be reconstructed to read la‘alla-hum yatadhakkarūn a (perhaps they will reflect), or yatafakkarūn a (will they perhaps reflect). It was permissible, in other words, to choose from among various phrases supplying a verse with its final element, and clausulae were one of the resources available. The flexible treatment of verse endings in Muslim communities during the first decades of Islam suggests that what seems to have begun in the first instance as a practice associated with recitation may have become, as a consequence of the desire to produce a written version of the Qur’an, from the late Meccan period onward, a valuable editorial tool. Various traces of this activity have been preserved, primarily by Muslim tradition, but also by the earliest surviving manuscripts, including the Sanaa Palimpsest as well as others, such as the Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus, whose text is quite similar to that of the ’Uthmānic recension. Finally, comparing the information preserved by both Muslim tradition and the manuscripts allows us to penetrate

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Figure 22. Q. 24:35 (Verse of Light). Reconstruction of S 1(a) by Hadiye Gurtmann. Qur’anic manuscript Sanaa, Dār al-Makhtūtāt 01.27–1, fol. 11v (Codex S. an‘ā’ 1, second half of the seventh century).

the fundamental and mysterious meaning of the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf. As we have seen, the h.adīth has to do with different versions of Muhammad’s teaching, both oral and written, that circulated during his lifetime and that gave rise to the various recensions that have come down to us, of which S 1(a) is the only example with extended passages of uninterrupted text. The word h.arf, as Frederik Leemhuis has observed, was used in the ancient period to designate Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version. This is our first clue. The coincidence between the h.adīth and what the manuscripts tell us about clausulae is another and altogether decisive clue. To be sure, the matn of the h.adīth speaks only of substitutions of pairs of epithets, but it is clear that synecdoche—a preeminent figure of Qur’anic style, where a part stands for the whole—is implied in this case, referring to all those situations in which a substitution was allowed to be made. That medieval Muslim scholars should have neglected to point out this equivalence is perfectly understandable: ever since the time of ‘Uthmān, if one accepts the canonical version of the history of the Qur’an, the state’s support for the

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official text, to the exclusion of other recensions, was constant and unwavering; in the interval, outstanding representatives of Islamic orthodoxy such as Mālik b. Anas and T.abarī did their utmost to drive out rival versions and to affirm the absolute primacy of the ‘Uthmānic text. Once the many Qur’ans of the earliest years of Islam had been reduced to one, orthodox scholars could no longer discuss the meaning of h.arf with reference to other versions. The h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, in the formulation that refers to doubled divine epithets, leads us to conclude that the Companions were granted great latitude in selecting from among them, and possibly also in altering them if the need arose—so long as the meaning was not modified. Human creativity thus shaped the formation of the various recensions from the time of Muhammad’s apostolate, and its effects continued to be felt as late as the Umayyad period, as the revisions supervised by al-H.ajjāj b. Yūsuf show. That this approach to the Qur’anic text accompanied not only its oral transmission, but its written transmission as well, we know from the testimony of Parisino-Petropolitanus regarding the ancient state of the ‘Uthmānic version, which confirms the particular role of clausulae in elaborating the final recension of the Qur’an. On four occasions one of these phrases is bracketed by signs marking verse endings. This suggests that they were endings recorded in a prior written version of the text, chosen from among others in response to the need to contrive a rhyme for a revelation that had to be fitted into a passage awaiting its final formulation. After a transitional phase in which traces of these insertions survived, the contours of the verses as they have come down to us today were fixed once and for all, with many minor variations that came to be catalogued and analyzed by specialists in the Qur’anic sciences.

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slamic orthodoxy, by its selective account of the historical transmission of the sacred text, attaches supreme importance to the unique and immutable character of the Qur’an. This was, after all, the end sought by ‘Uthmān himself. As Yasin Dutton puts it, ‘Uthmān’s decision was not only caliphal but also effectively one of ijmā‘, consensus, i.e. the consensus of the Companions, which is why, as al-T.abarī points out, and as Mālik [b. Anas]’s judgments and Ibn Mujāhid’s legal decisions indicate, it is an act of obedience for the Muslims to abide by it, and an opening of the door of fitna and conflict to do anything else.

The theme of strife (fitna), which we have examined in connection with certain accounts of the seven ah.ruf and of the making of a written version of the Qur’an, may have been introduced in order to justify the choices made by editors of the text during the ancient period. In the view of a modern commentator such as Dutton, it completely justifies them; indeed, he goes so far as to speak of a “consensus of the Companions,”

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even though our sources report something very different. It is quite clear that reasons of state account for the decision, which was taken very early, around the mid-seventh century, to endorse a single Qur’anic rasm for the use of the whole community. The divine character of this consonantal skeleton was the result, in other words, of a human decision, in the same way that, much later, as Shady Hekmat Nasser reminds us, Ibn Mujāhid’s ruling, supported by the Abbasid authorities, was to give canonical readings the status of revelation. In the meantime, the elaboration of a doctrinal corpus explicating the divine inspiration of the Qur’an and affirming its perfect authenticity, on the basis of ideas contained in the sacred text itself, had the effect of moving orthodox opinion further in the direction of absolute literalism. By contrast with this dominant view, which insisted on an ideal correspondence between the earthly Qur’an, in both recited and written form, and its heavenly archetype (inscribed on the “well-kept tablet” of Q. 85:22), the information that has come down to us from medieval scholars regarding the history of the Qur’anic text during the first decades of Islam, in combination with what we are able to learn from the earliest surviving manuscripts, makes it clear that the genesis and initial transmission of the text, both oral and written, was characterized above all by plurality, by a multiplicity of interpretations. This in turn supports the view that the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf can be explained only by taking into consideration the oral character of the initial transmission of the revelations sent down to Muhammad. For it was by means of this teaching that Muhammad gave his approval to the circulation of parallel versions of the revelations, in which discrepancies of form were tolerated so long as they did not call into question the basic meaning of the text. Different formulations of the h.adīth (corresponding to matns A–G in Nasser’s classification) were

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disseminated, but the ones that mention clausulae very probably were a point of departure—the generative kernel of a tradition that not only licensed the substitution of synonymous words and phrases but also incorporated other versions as a consequence of just this freedom. Not only were these versions too radical, by comparison with the most commonly known matns, notably A, to have gained currency at a later date, they coincided all too closely with an earlier practice attested by the manuscript tradition, pointing to to a clearly identifiable aspect of Qur’anic style in order to define the scope of permissible variation (synonomy in the broad sense) that we are concerned with here. In all likelihood the h.adīth was intended not solely to guide recitation, but also to inform the partial and provisional transcriptions that had begun to be made by various groups of believers, each one based on personal recollections of the Prophet’s teaching. The transition from oral to written expression no doubt made the discrepancies among the different versions more perceptible. What was Muhammad’s attitude toward the existence of so many distinct interpretations? Did he intend to create a canonical recension at some point? The circulation of these various collections could hardly have escaped his notice. That at least some of them were transformed into mas.āh.if after Muhammad’s death in 632 can only mean that he never expressed a preference for one version rather than another. His only known position on the matter, expressed by the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, amounted to taking no position at all—for reasons that may readily be imagined. Thanks to the discovery of a copy of the Qur’an dating to the second half of the seventh century, layer S 1(a) of the Sanaa Palimpsest, the contours of this primitive phase of transmission have grown clearer. We may suppose that the division of the text into chapters was similar from one collection to another, very probably because it had been made at the di-

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rection of Muhammad himself. Like ‘Umar, who, in the version of the h.adīth recounted by Zuhrī, recognized at once the sura al-Furqān as the source of the passage recited by Hishām, Muslim scholars were not slow to detect a close resemblance between the earliest recensions and the canonical version. The exact sequence of suras differs from one collection to another, however, and there was some uncertainty in the minds of the compilers concerning the status of a few fragments. This explains the discrepancies in the number of suras between the ‘Uthmānic recension and those of Ibn Mas‘ūd and Ubayy. Moreover, the phrasing of the verses themselves diverged in ways similar to the ones we considered earlier. Noncanonical versions seem to have been used within early Muslim communities as aids to memory. Even taking into account the defective character of the system of notation that was first used in writing down the text and what we are able to conclude on the basis of the oldest manuscripts available to us, it is clear that each one of the primary collections was intended for people who knew the same version of the Qur’an. After Muhammad’s death, the coerced adoption of a single text, traditionally associated with ‘Uthmān, could not have failed to arouse opposition on the part of those who no longer recognized the Qur’anic text that they knew by heart or that they had in a written version that did not coincide with the ‘Uthmānic recension. The defenders of orthodoxy, by contrast, saw matters differently. For another twenty years or so, Dutton says, the situation must have remained roughly the same, with the variety on the level of detail that is suggested by the seven ah.ruf h.adīth and [other reports]. But then dispute about differences in reading set in—and our sources pre-suppose substantive differences, not just differences of pronunciation or

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“dialect”—and in order to prevent the greater harm of conflict and dissension among the community, the decision was taken, with the agreement of the Companions, to impose a single written form on the community. According to traditional accounts, however, the decision was not unanimous. There seems to have been resistance from certain Companions loyal to recensions that were now officially prohibited. We have it on good authority that versions due to Ibn Mas‘ūd and Ubayy were in circulation at least until the tenth century. Notwithstanding the destruction of ancient copies that punctuated ‘Uthmān’s campaign on behalf of a uniform text, and then after the revision superintended by al-H.ajjāj b. Yūsuf in about 703, it was necessary from time to time to reissue official prohibitions, which were aimed as much at eradicating aberrant readings as at doing away with copies that contained them. Finally, however, a particular Qur’anic text, decided upon in the first instance by those whom ‘Uthmān had entrusted with the writing down of the Qur’an and then given canonical form three centuries later by Ibn Mujāhid, was acknowledged to permanently record the true words of God. Doubts about the authenticity of the ‘Uthmānic version nonetheless continued to persist until at least the early tenth century. Yet authenticity was not the only matter of concern. The choice of this text to the exclusion of all others amounted to permanently depriving the Muslim community of prophetic teachings that, by virtue of the many different versions that had survived, incontestably enjoyed a considerable importance in the lives of the faithful. The initial doctrinal insistence on the integrity of the divine message, which the localized variations exhibited by clausulae did nothing to

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impair, very quickly ran up against the force of political necessity at a moment when factional rivalries portended division and unrest, while at the same time coming into conflict with the implications of verses that referred, on the one hand, to the existence of a heavenly archetype and, on the other, to the idea of falsification. The situation was further complicated by the promulgation of doctrines concerning the eternal nature of the text, its divine origin, and its miraculous character. Any deviation from the authorized text was therefore bound to be highly suspect. Zuhrī’s version of the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, strengthened by a vivid narrative, had the additional advantage of containing no indication of exactly what ‘Umar and Hishām disagreed about. The rapid embrace of a single text, supported by the caliphal state and consecrated as the only true version of the Qur’an, could not help but impoverish the analysis of the meaning of the word h.arf by medieval exegetes. Obliged to restrict their attention to one version, rather than a multiplicity of versions, they were condemned to produce explanations that were as futile as they were ahistorical. Ultimately, and in spite of the indignation of experts such as Suyūtī, the equivalence that had taken hold in the popular mind between the seven ah.ruf and the seven readings of Ibn Mujāhid provided a satisfactory solution to the problem of reconciling prophetic teaching and a canonical text—even if the number seven did not have at all the same meaning in the two cases. In order to understand the meaning of the word h.arf, one must recall how it was understood in Medina prior to Muhammad’s death in 632. It referred then to the oral formulations and “authoritative text-forms”—predecessors of the recensions associated with ‘Uthmān, Ibn Mas‘ūd, and other Companions—that had begun to circulate among various groups of believers in Medina. Nevertheless they did not possess the status that versions

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purporting to be definitive subsequently came to acquire, for they could still be modified, whether in accordance with the idea of abrogation or in the form of editorial alterations made for the purpose of incorporating a new revelation or inserting one clausula rather than another. Not only is the malleability of the text apparent in the contrast between the canonical version and its competitors; one finds evidence of it in each textual tradition—I am tempted to say, in each copy of the Qur’an. As the Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus shows, limited variations concerning synonymy among coordinating conjunctions, for example, or the treatment of the basmala appear in copies from the seventh century that more or less faithfully reproduce the ‘Uthmānic rasm. They are found in S 1(a), our only partial (though direct) example of a text from another recension, but they are accompanied there by other kinds of variation having a larger scope, extending as far as a group of words, and are associated with a specific sequence of suras. Differences among recensions were probably not restricted to rival formulations. They also involved different attitudes toward the text, which is to say a greater or lesser tolerance of flexibility. And yet this tolerance seems originally not to have been peculiar to one textual tradition rather than another, since even partisans of the ‘Uthmānic recension accepted substitutions of synonyms, at least in recitation. The limitations to which the version that finally became established was subject were nonetheless much more contraining than in the case of Ibn Mas‘ūd, for which we sometimes have a number of variants for the same verse. For at least a century, under the Umayyads (661–750) and perhaps still under the first Abbasids in the second half of the eighth century, individual choice (ikhtiyār) held an important place in the practice of reciters (qurrā’), but Qur’anic manuscripts of the period, such as Paris, BnF Arabe 331, show

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that copyists could also selectively prefer a formulation deriving from another transmission of the Qur’an. The fact that both oral and written custom adopted the same procedure makes it necessary to contemplate a complex model of textual transmission in which regional peculiarities and allegiance to a particular school exerted considerable influence. All the evidence available to us suggests that the attitude toward the text during the ancient period was quite different from the absolute literalism that subsequently came to be enforced. In the early years of Islam, certain believers—inspired perhaps by the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf—made use of different recensions and employed synonymous substitutions; as late as the early tenth century, Ibn Shanabūdh’s resolve to use the version due to Ibn Mas‘ūd while nonetheless transmitting a canonical reading, which is to say a text in complete conformity with the ‘Uthmānic rasm, reflected an older state of affairs. The history of the rasm accounts for much of the text that we know today, or, more exactly, for the coexistence of different canonical readings (qirā’āt). The lacunae and ambiguities characteristic of the state of Arabic script and orthography in the mid-seventh century allowed variants to develop, in large part owing to the freedom of choice allowed to early interpreters. In the years that followed, gradual advances in improving the system of notation made it possible to fix the text of written copies of the Qur’an with increasing accuracy; oral transmission, by contrast, had already been diversified to a considerable extent. When al-Kisā’ī recited the Qur’an in public, Ibn Mujāhid says, his listeners wrote down his qirā’āt in their personal copies. Even if it undoubtedly contains a certain degree of anachronism, this anecdote shows how much things had changed by al-Kisā’ī’s time, in the late eighth and early ninth centuries. Such a scene, which would have been unimaginable without the progress that had been made in the

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interval in making the Arabic script more precise, is revelatory of the influence of writing in the process of transmitting and canonizing the Qur’anic text. As for clausulae, which attracted the notice of various modern scholars, their importance in the editorial process by which the suras came to be constituted is plain. While it would surely be wrong to suppose that there was an existing repertoire from which ready-made formulas were drawn in order to more perfectly incorporate a revelation within a given passage, certainly at least the principles of their composition were understood. The h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, for its part, makes it clear that orality must not be neglected. We cannot exclude the possibility that the insertion of a clausula took place during recitation, with the person reciting spontaneously deciding which one should be used in view of the meaning and context of a particular passage. The fact that Parisino-Petropolitanus preserves occasional traces of a phase prior to the establishment of the ‘Uthmānic version raises the question of when such adjustments were made. Although no firm answer can be given yet, by comparing this codex to S 1(a) and taking into account the additional information provided by Muslim tradition, we are able to form some idea of what the editorial process involved and of the extent to which it may have been aided by a way of looking at the Qur’anic text that had been strongly influenced by the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf. From the h.adīth itself, in the version that I take to be the most ancient, we have good reason to believe that Muhammad was more concerned with the meaning of the message he transmitted than its literal expression. The Qur’anic codices that the first caliphs ordered to be made had long-lasting consequences in this regard: on the one hand, they modified an evolving and flexible style of oral proclamation (qur’ān) whose

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written form was neither definitive nor unique to begin with; on the other, they shaped attitudes toward the Qur’an within the community of believers, whose choices with regard to synonymy and so forth helped to fashion a text that retained its suppleness. In the decades that followed, however, the political preoccupations of the Umayyads and, after them, the Abbasids converged with the theological constructions of classical Islam to strongly favor the success of a recension that, although it could not claim to be a faithful and complete transcription of the revelations received by Muhammad, any more than other recensions could, alone among them enjoyed the full support of the imperial authorities. The existence of a written version was indispensable in bringing about this state of affairs, no matter how determined the upholders of the primacy of oral performance were to deny its importance. For ultimately it was scripture, as a consequence of its endorsement and promotion by the defenders of orthodoxy, that gained the upper hand by becoming the de facto criterion of the legitimacy of a particular reading: all those renderings that were incompatible with the ‘Uthmānic rasm were rejected, without regard for their authenticity or their merit on other grounds. One may reasonably assume that the extensive production of Qur’anic manuscripts during the first four centuries of Islam reflects in large part the decisive role of the written text in imposing a canonical version that would answer the perceived need to erect a rampart—symbolic, to be sure, but no less effective for that—against variation and the threat of dissension it implied. Beginning in the late seventh century, and then throughout the eighth and the ninth centuries, the introduction of a specific style of writing, and also of a specific format and manner of binding peculiar to manuscript copies of the Qur’an, was intended to give them a distinctive visual identity that

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sacralized the Book of God (kitāb Allāh) and set it apart from the daily practice of writing. A single text, jealously guarded by the Qur’anic sciences, which inventoried all of its aspects in the most minute detail, had become perfectly and utterly authentic at last. The kitāb had supplanted the qur’ān.

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Glossary

Names ‘Abd Allāh b. abī Sarh. (d. 656 or 658): a scribe of Muhammad (and therefore a Companion of the Prophet) who renounced Islam. During the conquest of Mecca, Muhammad was ready to put him to death, but through the intercession of his foster brother, ‘Uthmān, he was pardoned. Subsequently he became a loyal ally of the Umayyads. ‘Abd Allāh b. ‘Umar (d. 693): Companion of Muhammad, son of ‘Umar b. al-Khattāb; he was known for his moral character and his role in the initial collection of h.adīth. ‘Abd Allāh b. al-Zubayr (d. 692): grandson of Abū Bakr; in opposition to the Umayyads he instituted a counter-caliphate at Mecca following the death of Yāzid in 683. He died during the siege of the city by al-H.ajjāj b. Yūsuf. ‘Abd al-Razzāq al-S. an‘ānī (d. 827): Yemeni traditionist whose work conserves much ancient information. Abū Bakr (d. 634): Companion of Muhammad who succeeded him at his death, in 632, as head of the new Muslim state; the first of the “Rightly Guided Caliphs.” Abū al-Dardā’ (d. 652): Companion of Muhammad who served as the Qadi (magistrate) of Damascus during ‘Uthmān’s caliphate; recognized as an authority on Qur’anic readings.

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Abū Ja‘far Yazīd b. al-Qa’qa’ al-Madanī (d. 748): one of the three eponymous Readers who were added to the list initially established by Ibn Mujāhid. Abū Mūsā al-Ash‘arī (d. 664): A native of Yemen and Companion of Muhammad who held various offices in the eastern part of the early empire, notably at Bas.ra, and took part in conquests in the region. He was famous for his recitation of the Qur’an, and his name is associated with a recension of the sacred text. ‘Ā’isha bt. Abī Bakr (d. 678): daughter of Abū Bakr and wife of Muhammad. ‘Alī b. abī T.ālib (d. 660): cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, whose daughter Fātima he married; he was the fourth and the last of the so-called Rightly Guided Caliphs, reigning between 656 and 660, the date of his assassination. His partisans, and those of his descendants, constitute a specific group within Islam, the Shia. A recension of the Qur’an is attributed to him. Anas b. Mālik (d. between 709 and 711): Companion and servant of Muhammad, and a respected traditionist; he settled in Bas.ra, where he died at an advanced age. ‘Ās. im b. abī al-Najūd (d. 745): one of the seven eponymous Readers chosen by Ibn Mujāhid; of that number he was one of three from Kūfa. Bukhārī (d. 870): Persian Islamic scholar and a foremost authority on h.adīth; his collection entitled S.ah.īh. included only those h.adīth that he considered to be authentic. Al-Dhahabī (d. 1348): Syrian historian, an expert on tradition and Islamic law. Al-Farrā’ (d. 822): grammarian, lexicographer, and exegete associated with the Kūfan school. H.afs. b. Sulaymān (d. 796): born in Baghdad, one of the two transmitters of ‘Ās.im b. abī al-Najūd; his reading is the one that was adopted by the Cairo edition of the Qur’an. H.afs. a bt. ‘Umar (d. 665): daughter of ‘Umar and widow of Muh.ammad who, according to certain traditions, inherited sheets

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(or leaves; s.uh.uf) of papyrus and other materials containing a recension of the Qur’anic text commissioned by Abū Bakr. Al-H.ajjāj b. Yūsuf (d. 714): Governor of Iraq under ‘Abd al-Malik known for his vigorous administration of state affairs and for supervising the revision of ‘Uthmān’s edition of the Qur’anic text. H.amza al-Zayyāt (d. 772): one of the seven eponymous Readers chosen by Ibn Mujāhid and one of three from Kūfa. H.udhayfa b. al-Yamān (seventh century): Companion of Muhammad who took part in the first conquests of Islam and, anecdotally, in composing the first written version of the Qur’an. H.usayn b. ‘Alī (d. 680): son of ‘Alī opposed to Yazīd, Mu‘āwiya’s successor; while attempting to return to Kūfa, where he expected to be reunited with his partisans, he was killed at Karbala. Ibn abī Dā’ūd (d. 928): Persian scholar, son of a traditionist, who wrote a work on Qur’anic manuscripts that collected information about the history of the text and variants found in noncanonical recensions, such as that of Ibn Mas‘ūd. Ibn abī Sarh.. See ‘Abd Allāh b. abī Sarh.. Ibn H.ajar al-‘Asqalānī (d. 1449): an Egyptian authority on traditions and a historian who held the ofices of Qadi (magistrate) and Mufti (interpreter of canonical law). Ibn al-Jazarī (d. 1430): Syrian expert on Qur’anic interpretation whose influence was decisive in canonizing three readings in addition to the ones previously authorized by Ibn Mujāhid. Ibn Mas‘ūd (d. 653/54): Companion of Muhammad responsible for a version of the Qur’an that enjoyed particular favor in Kūfa but that was rejected by the authorities. Ibn Mujāhid (d. 936): Iraqi expert on readings who established a set of seven canonical readings; with the support of the Abbasid authorities he succeeded in disqualifying all others. Ibn Shanabūdh (d. 939): Iraqi expert on readings who argued in favor of the continued use, alongside those readings held

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to be canonical by Ibn Mujāhid and others who shared his point of view, of versions of the Qur’an that did not have their approval. For this he was punished and forced to repent. Al-Kisā’ī (d. 804): One of the seven eponymous Readers chosen by Ibn Mujāhid, and one of three from Kūfa. He was a student of H.amza al-Zayyāt. Mālik b. Anas (d. 796): Eponymous jurist of the Mālikī school, one of four schools of Islamic law in Sunni Islam, who lived most of his life in Medina. His teaching, collected in the Muwattā’ (The Well-Trodden Path), was transmitted by disciples in various recensions. Mu‘āwiya (d. 680): a member of the Umayyad clan who rose up against ‘Alī, demanding reparations for the murder of ‘Uthmān. After ‘Alī’s assassination he was recognized as caliph and reigned from 661 to 680. He was the founder of the Umayyad dynasty. Al-Nadīm (d. between 995 and 998): Iraqi scholar who compiled al-Fihrist (The Catalogue), a compendium of thousands of authors and works in a variety of disciplines for which in many cases he is our only source. Nāfī‘ al-Madani (d. 785): one of the seven eponymous Readers chosen by Ibn Mujāhid; he represented Medina. Quraysh: the tribe to which Muhammad belonged, then the ruling tribe of Mecca. Sa‘īd b. Jubayr (d. about 714): Iraqi jurist whose reading figures in the isnād (chain of transmission) due to H.amza, but who also transmitted noncanonical variants. Shāfi‘ī (d. 819): eponymous jurist of the Shāfi‘ī school, one of four schools of Islamic law in Sunni Islam. Shām: the Arabic name for Syria, which in the ancient period of Islam included modern Iraq. Sufyān al-Thawrī (d. 778): traditionist and exegete, born in Khorosan and educated in Kūfa, where he studied with al-Zuhrī before moving to Bas.ra.

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Al-Suyūtī (d. 1505): Egyptian polymath of the late Mameluk period and author of an influential work, Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, that assembled a considerable amount of information from Muslim tradition about the Qur’an. Al-T.abarī (d. 923): Persian historian and exegete who worked in Baghdad, also an expert on Islamic law and tradition. Ubayy b. Ka‘b (d. before 656): Companion of Muhammad and scribe who was responsible for a version of the Qur’an that was declared illegitimate by the authorities. ‘Umar b. ‘Abd al-‘Azīz (d. 720): The “good” Umayyad caliph of later Muslim historiography, whose brief reign (from 717) was recognized alone among those of the other Umayyads as authentic. ‘Umar b. al-Khattāb (d. 644): Companion of Muhammad who succeeded Abū Bakr as caliph, reigning from 634 until his assassination ten years later. ‘Urwa b. Zubayr (d. 712): brother of ‘Abdallāh b. Zubayr and nephew of ‘Ā’isha; he collected and transmitted h.adīth concerning Muhammad. ‘Uthmān b. ‘Affān (d. 656): member of the Umayyad clan and Companion of Muhammad who succeeded ‘Umar in 644. Under his caliphate, according to tradition, the text of the Qur’an was written down for the first time. He was assassinated in 656. Zayd b. Thābit (d. between 662 and 673): a native of Medina, Companion of Muhammad and scribe of the revelation; the task of putting the Qur’an into written form was assigned to him. Al-Zuhrī (d. 742): An expert on traditions, born in Medina; the first to put them in writing, at the direction of the Umayyads.

Terms āya: a Qur’anic verse; originally, a sign. basmala: name given to the formula that appears at the head of every sura but one, and that is frequently spoken or

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written by Muslims from all walks of life: bismi Allāhi alrah.māni al-rahīmi (In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate). caliph (from the Arabic khalifa, “substitute, successor”): Muslim sovereign, successor to Muhammad; the first four caliphs are said to have been “rightly guided.” clausula: last element of a strophe or of an oratorical period, meant to produce a certain rhythmic or sound effect. codex: a type of book formed by sheets gathered into signatures and sewn together; it first appeared at the beginning of the Common Era and came into common usage throughout the lands bordering the Mediterranean. Companions (S.ah.ābah): direct disciples of Muhammad. dabt: set of elements added to the “naked” rasm to indicate correct pronunciation. denticle: in the Arabic alphabet the term designates a short vertical stroke; in isolation, at the beginning of a sequence of connected letters, or within a sequence, it indicates the letters bā’, tā’, thā, nūn, or yā’; grouped in threes, it corresponds to the letters sīn and shīn. Its value is usually specified by the addition of diacritical marks above or beneath. diacritical mark: sign added to a letter of the Arabic alphabet in order to modify its value. It may have the form of a dot, especially in the modern period, or of a more or less definite dash. fitna: dissension, discord, civil war. Followers (or Successors; Tābi‘ūn): the second generation of Muslims; they did not know Muhammad, only the Companions. h.adīth: an account relating the words and deeds of Muhammad, sometimes also of his Companions; formally, it consists of an isnād and a matn. Taken together, such accounts constitute prophetic tradition. hamza: a glottal stop, often represented in modern transcription from the Arabic by a closing single quote (’), by analogy with the Greek smooth breathing mark. The opening sin-

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gle quote (‘) is used to represent ‘ayn, by analogy with the Greek rough breathing mark. h.arf (pl. ah.ruf): edge; letter; particle. The exact meaning of the term in relation to the Qur’an is disputed. ikhtiyār: a choice. Applied to Qur’anic readings (qirā’āt), the term refers to the approach of ancient readers (qurrā’) who composed their readings by selecting from various alternatives. isnād: chain of transmission; that is, a series of names of the persons through whom information has come down to a scholar, beginning with the most recent source. Each h.adīth is prefaced by an isnād in order to guarantee the authenticity of the account. jāhiliyya: age of ignorance, as the period prior to the advent of Islam in Arabia was later known. kitāb: book; more generally, writing. matn: the text proper of a h.adīth; it is preceded by the isnād. mus.h.af (pl. mas.āh.if): a written copy of the Qur’an. mas.āh.if al-ams.ār: according to Muslim tradition, copies of the Qur’an sent by Caliph ‘Uthmān to the principal garrison towns of the empire. mutawātir: said of a historical report or prophetic tradition that satisfies the conditions of tawātur (see below). “mysterious letters”: phrase designating letters that occur in isolation (nūn, in sura 68) or grouped together (tā-hā, in sura 20) at the head of certain suras and that are pronounced in the course of recitation; their meaning remains mysterious, though many explanations have been proposed. qāri (pl. qurrā’): a reader (more precisely, a reciter) of the Qur’an. qirā’a (pl. qirā’āt): taken individually, a textual variant; collectively, a system of Qur’anic readings. qur’ān: recitation; a (sacred) text meant to be recited. rasm: literally, “drawing,” “outline,” or “pattern”; the consonantal skeleton that the copyist writes down first on a folio. s.ah.īfa (pl. s.uh.uf): the exact meaning of this term, in relation to its physical appearance, is unclear. The singular form is

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plausibly translated as “scroll,” but in the plural the term refers to the “leaves” of a parchment codex, as in the account concerning ‘Ā’isha. scriptio defectiva: a written Qur’anic text characterized by defective orthography, typically involving the omission of certain letters indicating long vowels in scriptio plena (see below). scriptio plena: roughly speaking, a written Qur’anic text displaying the full or complete orthography that gradually superseded the scriptio defectiva during the eighth century and that is standard still today. shādhdh: an adjective, applied to a reading, that originally meant “isolated”; later, with Ibn Mujāhid, it acquired the sense of “invalid,” “irregular,” or “noncanonical” in reference to readings attested by only one source. Shiites (or Shia): Muslims who hold that the succession to Muhammad ought to have passed in the first instance to his cousin and son-in-law, ‘Alī, and thereafter to his descendants. sura: a chapter of the Qur’an; ‘Uthmān’s version contains 114 suras. stemma: the genealogical tree of an ancient text indicating the relations between the various manuscripts that transmit it. Sunni: Orthodox Muslims, a majority within Islam, who accept the traditional order of succession to Muhammad. tafsīr: exegetical commentary on the Qur’an. tawātur: the character of what is transmitted without interruption and independently by different authorities, the truth of which cannot be doubted. umma: the community of Muslims; the faithful. volumen: a book having the form of a roll on which the text was written in columns; the Torah is a survival of this type of book, which was replaced by the codex.

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Notes

Introduction 1. Shady Hekmat Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur’ān: The Problem of Tawātur and the Emergence of Shawādhdh (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 1. 2. Al-Bukhārī, al-Jāmi‘ al-S.ah.īh., ed. Muh.ammad Zahayr al-Nās.ir, 9 vols. (Beirut: Dār tawq al-najāt, 1994), 3:122 (no. 2419) and 6:184–85 (no. 4992); and al-T.abarī, Jāmi‘ al-bayān ‘an ta’wīl āy al-Qur’ān, ed. ‘Abd Allāh ibn ‘Abd al-Muh.sin al-Turkī, 26 vols. (Riyadh: Dār ‘ālam al-kutub, 2003), 1:24–25. [The English version reproduced here is from al-T.abarī, The Commentary on the Qur’ān, ed. and trans. John Cooper (London: Oxford University Press, 1987), 1:17.—Trans.] 3. Muh.ammad Mus.t.afā al-A‘z.amī, The History of the Qur’ānic Text, from Revelation to Compilation: A Comparative Study with the Old and New Testaments, 2d ed. (Riyadh: Azami Publishing House, 2014), 235. 4. See Fred M. Donner, Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), 146–55. 5. Reuven Firestone, “The Qur’ān and the Bible: Some Modern Studies of Their Relationship,” in John C. Reeves, ed., Bible and Qur’ān: Essays in Scriptural Intertextuality (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 1–2. 6. Firestone, “The Qur’ān and the Bible,” 2. 7. See Moshe Sharon, “People of the Book,” in Jane Dammen McAuliffe, ed., Encyclopedia of the Qur’ān, 6 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2001–6), 4:39 (henceforth cited as EQ). 8. See Gerald R. Hawting, “Pre-islamic Arabia in the Qur’ān,” in EQ, 4:260.

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9. The author reproduces the French translation by Régis Blachère, Le Coran (al-Qor’ân) (Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve, 1957). Here and in what follows, with the author’s approval, I have used the English translation by M. A. S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur’an (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), while noting discrepancies between the two versions as necessary.—Trans. 10. See Q. 7:157, 26:197. 11. See al-A‘z.amī, The History of the Qur’ānic Text, 236–37. 12. I will come back to the chronology of the text in due course. 13. See al-T.abarī, Jāmi‘ al-bayān ‘an ta’wīl āy al-Qur’ān, 24:286. 14. See Daniel A. Madigan, The Qur’ân’s Self-Image: Writing and Authority in Islam’s Scripture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); and Anne-Sylvie Boisliveau, Le Coran par lui-même: Vocabulaire et argumentation du discours coranique autoréférentielle (Leiden: Brill, 2014). 15. See, for example, Aziz al-azmeh, The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity: Allah and His People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 436. 16. See al-Suyūtī, al-Durr al-Manthūr fī al-tafsīr al-ma’thūr (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-‘ilmiyya, 1990), 1:198. 17. Abdel Haleem dissents from Blachère’s translation, saying that “the basic meaning of nasakha is ‘removed’ rather than ‘abrogated’ (alMu‘jam al-Wasit)”; see The Qur’an, 212n1. Claude Gilliot interprets the term similarly, as meaning “suppressed,” while nonetheless insisting on its synonymy with “abrogated”; see “Creation of a Fixed Text,” in Jane Dammen McAuliffe, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Qur’ān (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 43.—Trans. 18. See Q. 16:67, 2:219, 16:90. 19. See al-Bukhārī, al-Jāmi‘ al-S.ah.īh., 6:186 (nos. 4997–98). 20. See Ibn abī Shayba, al-Mus.annaf fī al-ah.ādīth wa-l-āthār, ed. Sa‘īd Muh.ammad al-Lah.h.ām, 16 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-fikr, 1989), 7:204; and alSuyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, ed. Ah.mad b. ‘Alī (Cairo: Dār al-h.adīth, 2004), 154. 21. See Ignace Goldziher (and Arthur Stanley Tritton), “Badā’,” in Emeri Johannes van Donzel et al., eds., Encyclopedia of Islam, 2d ed., 12 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2005), 1:850–51 (henceforth cited as EI2). 22. See Ibn Salāma, al Nāsikh wa-l-mansūkh (with Wāh.idī’s Asbāb al-nuzul in the margins) (Cairo: Matba’a al-hindiyya, 1897), 12. 23. See Hassan Chahdi, “Le Mus.h.af dans les débuts de l’islam: Recherches sur sa constitution et étude comparative de manuscrits coraniques anciens et de traités de qirā’āt, rasm et fawās.il,” diss., École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, 2016, 84–88.

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24. See Ibn H.ajar al-‘Asqalānī, Talkhīs. al-h.abīr, ed. H.asan ibn ‘Abbās b. Qutb, 4 vols. (Cairo: Mu’assasa Qurtuba, 1995), 4:96 (no. 2021). 25. See Friedrich Schwally, in Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed. by Friedrich Schwally, Gotthelf Bergsträsser, and Otto Pretzl, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1909–38), 2:248–51. [Here and elsewhere I follow the author in citing to the original German editions, familiar to generations of scholars. Interested readers may also consult the new English translation by Wolfgang H. Behn, The History of the Qur’ān (Leiden: Brill, 2013).—Trans.] 26. See Yasin Dutton, “Orality, Literacy, and the ‘Seven Ah.ruf ’ H.adīth,” Journal of Islamic Studies 23, no. 1 (2012): 1–49. 27. See Dominique Urvoy and Marie-Thérèse Urvoy, Enquête sur le miracle coranique (Paris: Cerf, 2018).

1 The Genesis of the Qur’anic Text and the Sources of Variation 1. Muslim tradition concerning the life and deeds of the Prophet (also known as the sīra literature) holds that he was born in the “Year of the Elephant,” during which the Abyssinian governor of southern Arabia led an armed expedition, fortified by war elephants, against the northern part of the Peninsula—thus the customary interpretation of sura 105 of the Qur’an. Historians of ancient Arabia are agreed, however, that this event was prior to the Prophet’s birth. On Muhammad’s life and times, see Maxime Rodinson’s 1961 biography, translated by Anne Carter as Mohammed (New York: Pantheon, 1971). 2. See Angelika Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike: Ein europäischer Zugang (Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2010). 3. See Gregor Schoeler, Écrire et transmettre dans les débuts de l’islam (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002), 18–26. 4. See ‘Alī Ibrāhīm al-Ghabbān, Christian Robin, and Sa‘īd Fāyiz al-Sa‘īd, “Inscriptions antiques de la région de Narjān (Arabie séoudite méridionale): Nouveaux jalons pour l’histoire de l’écriture, de la langue et du calendrier arabes,” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres (2014): 1088. 5. See François Déroche, La transmission écrite du Coran dans les débuts de l’islam: Le Codex Parisino-petropolitanus (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 43–45. 6. See Johann W. Fück, “Abu ’l-Aswad al-Du’alī,” in Emeri Johannes van Donzel et al., eds., Encyclopedia of Islam, 2d ed., 12 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2005), 1:106–7 (henceforth cited as EI2); and in connection with

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Notes to Pages 25–31

Yaghmur, see Alfred-Louis Prémare, Les fondations de l’islam: Entre écriture et histoire (Paris: Seuil, 2002), 458–60. 7. See Alain George, “Coloured Dots and the Question of Regional Origins in Early Qur’ans (Part I),” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 17, no. 1 (2015): 4–5 and fig. 1. 8. See Déroche, La transmission écrite du Coran dans les débuts de l’islam, 60–63. 9. See also Q. 81:23. 10. See al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, ed. Ah.mad b. ‘Alī (Cairo: Dār al-h.adīth, 2004), 153. 11. Al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 37 (= s. al-Kawthar, though this seems scarcely credible). [The reference here is to sura 108 (“Abundance”), the shortest chapter of the Qur’an.—Trans.] 12. See also Q. 53:10. 13. Al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 124–25. 14. The three episodes figure in Q. 2:125, 33:59, and 66:5; see al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 124. See also Avraham Hakim, “Context: ‘Umar b. al-Khattāb,” in Andrew Rippin, ed., Blackwell Companion to the Qur’ān (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 205–20. 15. Al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 149. 16. There are 87 occurrences in the singular, 295 in the plural. 17. For example, in Q. 2:106 and Q. 13:1; see the entry for ’-W-Y in Arne A. Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2004). See also Elsaid M. Badawi and Muhammad Abdel Haleem, ArabicEnglish Dictionary of Qur’anic Usage (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 68, sense no. 7. 18. See Devin J. Stewart, “Rhymed Prose,” in Jane Dammen McAuliffe, ed., Encyclopedia of the Qur’ān, 6 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2001–6), 4:478 (hereafter cited as EQ); elsewhere, in “Saj‘ in the Qur’ān: Prosody and Structure,” Journal of Arabic Literature 21, no. 2 (1990): 108, Stewart gives the more precise figure of 85.9 percent. 19. See my discussion in chapter 5. 20. See Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike, 367–68. 21. See Friedrich Schwally, in Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed. by Friedrich Schwally, Gotthelf Bergsträsser, and Otto Pretzl, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1909–38), 1:30. 22. See Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike, 277. 23. Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, 141. 24. See François Déroche, Les manuscrits du Coran, 2 vols. (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1983–85), 1:67, figs. 19 and 20 reproducing manuscripts Paris BnF Arabe 331 and Arabe 6087, for example. 25. See Lamya Kandil, “Die Surennamen in der offiziellen Kairiner Koranausgabe und ihre Varianten,” Der Islam 69 (1992): 44–60.

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26. See al-Tirmidhī, al-Sunān, ed. M. Albānī (Riyadh: Maktaba alma‘ārif, 2000), 691n3086; also al-Qurtubī, Jāmi‘ li-ah.kām al-Qur’ān, ed. ‘A. al-Turkī, 24 vols. (Beirut: Mu’assasa al-risāla, 2006), 1:98. 27. See Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike, 240. 28. Al-T.abarī, Jāmi‘ al-bayān ‘an ta’wīl āy al-Qur’ān, ed. ‘Abd Allāh al-Turkī, 26 vols. (Riyadh: Dār ‘ālam al-kutub, 2003), 1:54. [I translate here from the French version quoted by the author, in Viviane Comerro, Les traditions sur la constitution du mus.h.af de ‘Uthmān (Würzburg: Ergon, 2012), 36.—Trans.] 29. See al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 195. 30. See Comerro, Les traditions sur la constitution du mus.h.af de ‘Uthmān, 81. 31. See al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 132. Suyūtī also mentions sura 6, though he evidently doubts the trustworthiness of his sources. 32. See Schwally (citing Zamakhsharī and Bukhārī) in Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed., 1:29. 33. See Schwally in Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed., 1:29. 34. See Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1860), 24, 35, 194. 35. See Schwally in Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed., 2:1–4. 36. See Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike, 240–43. 37. See Ibn abī Dā’ūd, Kitāb al-mas.āh.if; Arabic text in Arthur Jeffery, ed., Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’an (Leiden: Brill, 1937), 31–32. 38. See al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, ed. Rida Tajaddud (Tehran: Marvi Offset Printing, 1971), 29–30; and al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 202–3. 39. See Muh.ammad Mus.tafā al-A‘z.amī, The History of the Qur’ānic Text, from Revelation to Compilation: A Comparative Study with the Old and New Testaments, 2d ed. (Riyadh: Azami Publishing House, 2014), 236–37. 40. See, for example, Ibn H.ajar al-‘Asqalānī, al-‘Ujab fī bayān al-asbāb, ed. ‘Abd al-H.akīm Muh.ammad al-Anīs, 2 vols. (Dammām: Dār Ibn alJawzī, 1997). [The process of revelation is known as “sending down” (the Arabic word tanzil is used most often in this connection).—Trans.] 41. Régis Blachère, Introduction au Coran [1947], 2d ed. (Paris: Besson & Chantemerle, 1959), 232. 42. See al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 52–54. 43. A notable example is a manuscript belonging to the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, QUR 89; see François Déroche, The Abbasid Tradition: Qur’ans of the 8th to the 10th Centuries (London: Nour Foundation in association with Azimuth Editions and Oxford University Press, 1992), 156–65.

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44. The Medinan sura 9 ends with two verses that are Meccan; in the Meccan sura 54, verses 44–46 are Medinan. This is also the case with sura 11, discussed below. In connection with sura 22, see Nicolai Sinai, The Qur’an: A Historical-Critical Introduction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), 127–28. 45. See note 42 above. 46. See Gustav Weil, Historisch-kritische Einleitung in der Koran (Bielefeld: Velhagen & Klasing, 1844). 47. Schwally carries over Nöldeke’s classification in Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed., 1:74–232. 48. See William Muir, The Coran, Its Composition and Teaching, and the Testimony It Bears to the Holy Scriptures (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1875). 49. See Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, 49 (reproduced by Schwally, rev. ed., 1:63); also Sinai, The Qur’an, 113–24. 50. See Angelika Neuwirth, Studien zur Komposition der mekkanischen Suren (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1981). 51. Angelika Neuwirth, The Qur’an and Late Antiquity: A Shared Heritage, trans. Samuel Wilder (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 163 (= Der Koran als Text der Spätantike, 277). 52. See Angelika Neuwirth, “Structure and the Emergence of Community,” in Rippin, ed., Blackwell Companion to the Qur’ān, 151–52. 53. See Sinai, The Qur’an, 93–95. 54. See Richard Bell, ed. and trans., The Qur’ān: Translated, with a Critical Re-Arrangement of the Surahs, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1937–39); also W. Montgomery Watt, ed., Bell’s Introduction to the Qur’an (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1970), 113–14. 55. See Richard Bell, A Commentary on the Qur’ān, ed. C. E. Bosworth and M. E. J. Richardson (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1991). 56. Alford T. Welch, “Al-K.ur’ān,” in van Donzel et al., eds., EI2, 5:417. 57. See John E. Wansbrough, Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). 58. See John Burton, The Collection of the Qur’an (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 59. See Bell’s critique of Nöldeke’s approach in Watt’s revised edition of Introduction to the Qur’an, 111–12. 60. This was a manner of speaking, for Bell surely knew that paper was not used in Arabia during this period; see Watt, ed., Bell’s Introduction to the Qur’an,, 101–7. 61. See, for example, Q. 88:17–20, which differs in respect of both style (rhyme, verse length) and thematic elements from the seven preceding

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verses, 88:10–16. Bell conjectured that verses 17–20 were found on the reverse of the document on which verses 13–16 had been copied. 62. See Watt, ed., Bell’s Introduction to the Qur’an, 90–92. 63. See Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, 222. 64. See Schwally in Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed., 1:32. 65. See Schwally in Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed., 1:32. 66. See Bell, ed. and trans., The Qur’ān, 1:vii. 67. See Ibn H.ajar al-‘Asqalānī, al-Is.āba fī tamyīz al-s.ah.āba, ed. Khalīl bin Ma’mūn Shih.ā, 4 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-ma‘rifa, 1991), 1:6. 68. See al-T.abarī, Jāmi‘ al-bayān ‘an ta’wīl āy al-Qur’ān, 1:519. 69. See Joseph Schacht, “Mālik b. Anas,” in van Donzel et al., eds., EI2, 6:262–65. 70. See Hassan Chahdi, “Le Mus.h.af dans les débuts de l’islam: Recherches sur sa constitution et étude comparative de manuscrits coraniques anciens et de traités de qirā’āt, rasm et fawās.il” (diss., École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, 2016), 97–102 and 105–11. 71. See Comerro, Les traditions sur la constitution du mus.h.af de ‘Uthmān, 201. 72. See Aziz al-Azmeh, The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity: Allah and His People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 401. 73. See al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 219–26. 74. See Ibn Sa‘d, al T.abaqāt al-kabīr, ed. ‘Ali Muhammad ‘Umar, 11 vols. (Cairo: Maktaba al-khanji ī, 2001), 3:248–49. 75. See Paul Casanova, Mohammed et la fin du monde: Étude critique sur l’islam primitif (Paris: Geuthner, 1911), 3, 96–103. 76. See Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike, 242. 77. See Tilman Nagel, “Medinensische Einschübe in mekkanischen Suren,” in Stefan Wild, ed., The Qur’an as Text (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 61. 78. See Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike, 243. 79. See Ah.mad b. H.anbal, al-Musnad, ed. Shu’aib al-Arnā’ūt et al., 50 vols. (Beirut: Mu’assasa al-risāla, 1993–2001), 35:483–84 (nos. 21606–7). 80. See Blachère, Introduction au Coran, 144–49; also Keith Massey, “Mysterious Letters,” in McAuliffe, ed., EQ, 3:471–76. 81. See, for example, Hans Bauer, “Über die Anordnung der Suren und über die geheimnisvollen Buchstaben im Qoran,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 75 (1921): 1–20. 82. See al-Bukhārī, al-Jāmi‘ al-S.ah.īh., ed. Muhammad Zahayr al-Nās.ir, 9 vols. (Beirut: Dār tawq al-najāt, 1994), 6:45 (no. 4582). 83. See Anna M. Gade, “Recitation of the Qur’an,” in McAuliffe, ed., EQ, 4:369; also, with regard to prayers, Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 194–95. 84. See Chahdi, “Le Mus.h.af dans les débuts de l’islam,” 286.

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Notes to Pages 49–60

85. See, for example, al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, chap. 35. 86. See Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike, 350 and following; also Neuwirth, “Structure and the Emergence of Community,” in Rippin, ed., Blackwell Companion to the Qur’ān, 153. 87. Neuwirth, The Qur’an and Late Antiquity, 164 (= Der Koran als Text der Spätantike, 278). 88. See Neuwirth, “Structure and the Emergence of Community,” in Rippin, ed., Blackwell Companion to the Qur’ān, 153; and Watt, ed., Bell’s Introduction to the Qur’an, 137–41. 89. See al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 127–28. 90. See al-Azmeh, The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity, 449, 454. 91. Prémare, Les fondations de l’islam: Entre écriture et histoire, 320. 92. See William A. Graham, Divine Word and Prophetic Word in Early Islam: A Reconsideration of the Sources, with Special Reference to the Divine Saying or Hadīth Qudsī (The Hague: Mouton, 1977).

2 The Qur’an and Orality in the First Decades of Islam 1. Yasin Dutton, “Orality, Literacy, and the ‘Seven Ah.ruf’ H.adīth,” Journal of Islamic Studies 23, no. 1 (2012): 34. 2. I develop this theme below in chapter 3. 3. See François Déroche, La transmission écrite du Coran dans les débuts de l’islam: Le Codex Parisino-petropolitanus (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 44–45. 4. See al-Bukhārī, al-Jāmi‘ al-S.ah.īh., ed. Muhammad Zahayr al-Nās.ir, 9 vols. (Beirut: Dār tawq al-najāt, 1994), 3:122 (no. 2419) and 6:184–85 (no. 4992); and al-T.abarī, Jāmi‘ al-bayān ‘an ta’wīl āy al-Qur’ān, ed. ‘Abd Allāh Turkī, 26 vols. (Riyadh: Dār ‘ālam al-kutub, 2003), 1:24–25. 5. Al-T.abarī, Jāmi‘ al-bayān ‘an ta’wīl āy al-Qur’ān, ed. Turkī, 1:21. [Here I translate from the author’s own version.—Trans.] 6. See Shady Hekmat Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur’ān: The Problem of Tawātur and the Emergence of Shawādhdh (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 24–29. 7. See Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur’ān, 19–24. 8. See al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, ed. Ah.mad b. ‘Alī (Cairo: Dār al-h.adīth, 2004), 156; Suyūtī considers only sixteen interpretations in detail, however. 9. See, for example, Anna M. Gade, “Recitation,” in Andrew Rippin, ed., The Blackwell Companion to the Qur’ān (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 484. 10. See Claude Gilliot, “Les sept ‘lectures’: Corps social et écriture révélée. I,” Studia Islamica 61 (1985): 19; also al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 176.

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11. See Abū ‘Amr al-Dānī, al-Ah.ruf al-sab‘a li-l-Qur’ān, ed. ‘Abd alMuhaymin Tahhān (Jeddah: Dār al-manāra, 1997), 28–29. 12. In this connection see Gilliot, “Les sept ‘lectures,’ ” 21. 13. See al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 155–62. 14. An abridged and very slightly amended quotation from Gilliot, “Les sept ‘lectures,’ ” 18. 15. See Dutton, “Orality, Literacy, and the ‘Seven Ah.ruf’ H.adīth,” 21–30. 16. See Ibn al-Jazarī, al-Nashr fī al-Qirā’āt al-‘ashr, ed. ‘Alī Muh.ammad D.abbā’, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-‘ilmiyya, n.d.), 1:23–28. 17. Mus.h.af wa-qirā’ātuhu, ed. ‘Abdelmajid al-Sharfī, 5 vols. (Rabat: Mu‘assasa mū‘minūn bilā h.udūd li-l-dirāsāt wa-l-abh.āth, 2016), 4:384 (henceforth cited as MQ). 18. See MQ, 3:338. 19. See MQ, 1:446–47. 20. See MQ, 2:105. There also exists a third reading due to Ibn Mas‘ūd, close to the second one. 21. See MQ, 2:395. 22. See MQ, 3:429. 23. See MQ, 3:212. 24. See MQ, 2:86. 24. See MQ, 1:90. 26. See MQ, 3:330. 27. See Dutton, “Orality, Literacy, and the ‘Seven Ah.ruf’ H.adīth,” 8–10. 28. See Gotthelf Bergsträsser, in Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed. by Friedrich Schwally, Gotthelf Bergsträsser, and Otto Pretzl, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1909–38), 3:106–7; also Schwally, in the same work, 1:50–52. 29. Gilliot, “Les sept ‘lectures,’ ” 12. 30. See Gilliot, “Les sept ‘lectures,’ ” 13–14. 31. See Gilliot, “Les sept ‘lectures,’ ” 15–17. 32. See Gilliot, “Les sept ‘lectures,’ ” 14. 33. Dutton, “Orality, Literacy, and the ‘Seven Ah.ruf’ H.adīth,” 43. 34. Dutton, “Orality, Literacy, and the ‘Seven Ah.ruf’ H.adīth,” 31. 35. See Dutton, “Orality, Literacy, and the ‘Seven Ah.ruf’ H.adīth,” 32; also Albert Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960). 36. See Dutton, “Orality, Literacy, and the ‘Seven Ah.ruf’ H.adīth,” 42–43. 37. See Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur’ān, 24–29. 38. See my further discussion in chapter 3. 39. See Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur’ān, 29–31.

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40. Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur’ān, 34. 41. See Ibn Jinnī, al-Muh.tasab fī tabyīn wujūh shawādh al-qirā’āt wa-l-id āh. ‘anhā, ed. ‘Alī al-Najdī Nās.if, ‘Alī al-Najjār, and ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Shalabī (Cairo: Ministry of Religious Affairs, 2004), 2:336; also MQ, 4:286. 42. See Ibn Jinnī, al-Muh.tasab fī tabyīn wujūh shawādh al-qirā’āt wa-l-idāh. ‘anhā, 1:45; also MQ, 2:63. 43. See MQ, 4:199. 44. See Hassan Chahdi, “Le Mus.h.af dans les débuts de l’islam: Recherches sur sa constitution et étude comparative de manuscrits coraniques anciens et de traités de qirā’āt, rasm et fawās.il” (diss., École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, 2016), 159–60. 45. See Gilliot, “Les sept ‘lectures,’ ” 21. 46. See Gilliot, “Les sept ‘lectures,’ ” 22. 47. See Dutton, “Orality, Literacy, and the ‘Seven Ah.ruf’ H.adīth,” 49. 48. See sec. 26 of al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 164, speaking of qirā’āt rather than of h.arf. 49. See James Robson, “Ibn Mudjāhid,” in Emeri Johannes van Donzel et al., eds., Encyclopedia of Islam, 2d ed., 12 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2005), 3:880 (henceforth cited as EI2). 50. Christopher Melchert disputes the view that this was his intention; see “Ibn Mujāhid and the Establishment of Seven Qur’anic Readings,” Studia Islamica 91 (2000): 19. 51. See al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 165. 52. Frederik Leemhuis, “Readings,” in Jane Dammen McAuliffe, ed., Encyclopedia of the Qur’ān, 6 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2001–6), 4:354 (henceforth cited as EQ). 53. See Leemhuis, “Readings,” in McAuliffe, ed., EQ, 4:354. 54. See al-T.abarī, Jāmi‘ al-bayān ‘an ta’wīl āy al-Qur’ān, 1:519. Earlier, al-Farrā’ had used the phrase “our qirā’a”; see Leemhuis, “Readings,” in McAuliffe, ed., EQ, 4:349. 55. See Ibn Rushd al-Jadd, al-Bayān wa-l-tah.s.īl wa-l-sharh. aw al-tawjīh wa-l-ta‘līl fī masā’il al-mustakhraja, ed. Muh.ammad H.ājjī, 21 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-islāmī, 1984–91), 9:374. 56. See Edmund Beck, “Studien zur Geschichte der kufischen Koranlesung in den ersten zwei Jahrhunderten. IV,” Orientalia, n.s. 22 (1953): 59–78; also Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur’ān, 56. 57. See Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur’ān, 56. 58. See Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur’ān, 56. 59. Leemhuis, “Readings,” in McAuliffe, ed., EQ, 4:356. 60. See Tilman Nagel, “K.urrā’,” in van Donzel et al., eds., EI2, 5:499–500; also Régis Blachère, Introduction au Coran [1947], 2d ed. (Paris: Besson & Chantemerle, 1959), 104–6.

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61. A link between variants and the defective script of early Islam was first posited almost a century ago by David S. Margoliouth, “Textual variations of the Koran,” Moslem World 15 (1925): 338–43. 62. See MQ, 3:338. 63. In the seventh and eighth centuries, when written Arabic was devoid of diacritical marks, readers may naturally have hesitated before interpreting this sequence of five short strokes. The first one was easily understood as a ya’, indicating the third person; the next four, however, could be part of either the verbal root S-Y-R or N-Sh-R—hence 0 + 2 below the line or 1 + 3 above the line. 64. See MQ, 4:297. 65. See my discussion of this fourth category earlier in this chapter. 66. See, for example, the St. Petersburg manuscript, BnR Marcel 13. 67. See Claude Gilliot, “Collecte ou mémorisation du Coran: Essai d’analyse d’un vocabulaire ambigu,” in Rüdiger Lohlker, ed., 8th Colloquium “From Jahiliyya to Islam.” H.adītstudien—Die Überlieferung des ¯ Dr. Kovač, 2009), 77–132. Propheten im Gespräch (Hamburg: Verlag 68. See al-Dhahabī, T.abaqāt al-qurrā’, ed. Ah.mad Khān, 3 vols. (Riyadh: Markaz al-Malik Fays.al li-l-buh.ūth wa-l-dirāsāt al-islāmiyya, 2006), 1:51–58. 69. See al-Bukhārī, al-Jāmi‘ al-S.ah.īh., 9:26. 70. See my discussion below in chapter 3. 71. See Chahdi, “Le Mus.h.af dans les débuts de l’islam,” 209. 72. Notable among the various techniques employed is a method of rational consideration (i‘tibār) that made it possible to “read” the ‘Uthmānic rasm while using a different recension (the one due to Ibn Mas‘ūd, for example), even though its rasm differed from ‘Uthmān’s. See Edmund Beck, “Studien zur Geschichte der kufischen Koranlesung in den ersten zwei Jahrhunderten. I,” Orientalia, n.s. 17 (1948): 327–38. 73. See Chahdi, “Le Mus.h.af dans les débuts de l’islam,” 190. 74. See Makkī b. abī T.ālib, al-Ibāna ‘an ma‘ānī al-qirā’āt, ed. ‘Abd al-Fattāh. Ismā‘īl Shalabī (Cairo: Dār Nahdat Mis.r, 1960), 83. 75. See, for example, Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur’ān, 48, 52. 76. Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur’ān, 58. 77. See MQ, 3:32. 78. See Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1860), 242n1; also Michael Cook, “The Stemma of the Regional Codices of the Koran,” Graeco-Arabica 9–10 (2004): 89–104. 79. See Dutton, “Orality, Literacy, and the ‘Seven Ah.ruf’ H.adīth,” 13–14. 80. See Rudi Paret, “Ibn Shanabūdh,” in van Donzel et al., eds., EI2, 3:935–36. 81. See Dutton, “Orality, Literacy, and the ‘Seven Ah.ruf’ H.adīth,” 11–15.

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Notes to Pages 92–97

82. See MQ, 4:452; also Edmund Beck, “Die b. Mas‘ūdvarianten bei al-Farrā’. II,” Orientalia, n.s. 28 (1959): 194; and Dutton, “Orality, Literacy, and the ‘Seven Ah.ruf’ H.adīth,” 11–12. 83. See my discussion earlier in this chapter. 84. See MQ, 2:397. 85. See MQ, 4:418; also Edmund Beck, “Die b. Mas‘ūdvarianten bei al-Farrā’. I,” Orientalia, n.s. 25 (1956): 382. This reading is also attributed to ‘Alī and to Ibn ‘Abbas. 86. See al-Muslim, S.ah.īh., ed. Muh.ammad Shukri al-Anqarawī, Muh.ammad ‘Izzat al-Za‘farī, and Ah.mad Rif ‘at al-H.ilmi al-Qurah H.us.ārī, 8 vols. (Istanbul: Dār al-T.ibā’a al-’āmira, 1916; reprint, Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, n.d.), 2:206. 87. See Mālik b. Anas, Muwattā’ [al-Laythī recension], ed. Bashār ‘Awwād Ma‘rūf, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-islāmī, 1996), 1:201; also MQ, 1:159. [Abdel-Haleem notes that the reference of the next-tolast phrase, “the middle prayer,” is contested, and prefers “in the best way.”—Trans.] 88. See MQ, 4:58. 89. See Dutton, “Orality, Literacy, and the ‘Seven Ah.ruf’ H.adīth,” 15. 90. See Ibn ‘Atiyya, Muh.arrar al-wajīz fī tafsīr al-Kitāb al-‘azīz, ed. Majlis al-‘Ilmī bi-Fās, 6 vols. (Rabat: Wizāra al-awqāf wa-l-shu’ūn al-islāmiyya, 1975), 6:108; also MQ, 3:9. 91. See for example Mālik b. Anas, Muwattā’, 2:168. 92. See Schwally in Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed., 2:34–35. 93. See Ibn Rushd al-Jadd, al-Bayān wa-l-tah.s.īl, 17:34. 94. See Omar Hamdan, “The Second Mas.āh.if Project: A Step towards the Canonization of the Qur’ānic Text,” in Angelika Neuwirth, Nikolai Sinai, and Michael Marx, eds., The Qur’ān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qur’ānic Milieu (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 801. 95. See Ibn Rushd al-Jadd, al-Bayān wa-l-tah.s.īl, 9:374. 96. See Paret, “Ibn Shanabūdh,” in van Donzel et al., eds., EI2, 3:936; also W. Montgomery Watt, ed., Bell’s Introduction to the Qur’an (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1970), 49. 97. See Bergsträsser and Pretzl in Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed., 3:96n2. 98. Gilliot, “Les sept ‘lectures,’ ” 23. 99. Gilliot, “Les sept ‘lectures,’ ” 22. 100. See Viviane Comerro, Les traditions sur la constitution du mus.h.af de ‘Uthmān (Würzburg: Ergon, 2012), 33–35. 101. See al-Dhahabī, T.abaqāt al-qurrā’, 1:115; also Edmund Beck, “Studien zur Geschichte der kufischen Koranlesung in den ersten zwei Jahrhunderten. II,” Orientalia, n.s. 19 (1950): 334–37.

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102. See Dutton, “Orality, Literacy, and the ‘Seven Ah.ruf’ H.adīth,” 31n109.

3 Muslim Tradition on the Early Stages of the Written Transmission of the Qur’an 1. Viviane Comerro, Les traditions sur la constitution du mus.h.af de ‘Uthmān (Würzburg: Ergon, 2012), 200. 2. See Mājid b. ‘Abbūd Bādah.dah., S.inā‘a al-kitāb wa-l-kitāba fī al-Hijāz: ‘As.r al-nabawwa wa-l-khulafa al-rashida (Riyadh: Mu’assasa al-Furqān li-lturāth al-islamī, 2006). 3. See al-Wāqidī, The Kitāb al-Maghāzī of al-Wāqidī, ed. Marsden Jones (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 680. 4. The word occurs, for example, in the colophon on fol. 226v of MS Strasbourg, BNU 4225 (Arabe 150). See sheet no. 51 in Fichier des manuscrits moyen-orientaux datés (FiMMOD), published in the various fascicles of Nouvelles des manuscrits du Moyen-Orient (1995–); also fol. 197v of MS London, BL Or. 4950, reproduced in Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson, Forty-One Facsimiles of Dated Christian Arabic Manuscripts: With Text and English Translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907), pl. II. 5. See al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, ed. Ah.mad b. ‘Alī, 2 vols. (Cairo: Dār al-h.adīth, 2004), 1:188. 6. See Richard Bell, ed. and trans, The Qur’ān: Translated, with a Critical Re-Arrangement of the Surahs, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1937–39), 1:vii; also W. Montgomery Watt, ed., Bell’s Introduction to the Qur’an (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1970), 143. 7. See Daniel A. Madigan, The Qur’ân’s Self-Image: Writing and Authority in Islam’s Scripture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); and Anne-Sylvie Boisliveau, Le Coran par lui-même: Vocabulaire et argumentation du discours coranique autoréférentielle (Leiden: Brill, 2014). Ambros, however, gives the word only a material sense: “written document or decree, s.th. in writing, book,” particularly “letter or contract of manumission”; see Arne A. Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2004), 235. 8. See my discussion in chapter 1. 9. Again, see my discussion in chapter 1. 10. See Aziz al-Azmeh, The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity: Allah and His People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 434; and Gregor Schoeler, “The Codification of the Qur’ān: A Comment on the Hypotheses of Burton and Wansbrough,” in Angelika Neuwirth, Nikolai Sinai,

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Notes to Pages 103–109

and Michael Marx, eds., The Qur’ān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qur’ānic Milieu (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 783. 11. Keith E. Small, Textual Criticism and Qur’ān Manuscripts (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011), 7–8. 12. See Hans Bauer, “Über die Anordnung der Suren und über die geheimnisvolen Buchstaben im Qoran,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 75 (1921): 1–20; also Régis Blachère, Introduction au Coran (1947), 2d ed. (Paris: Besson & Chantemerle, 1959), 144–49. 13. See Bauer, “Über die Anordnung der Suren und über die geheimnisvolen Buchstaben im Qoran,” 10–12. 14. Al-Bukhārī, al-Jāmi‘ al-S.ah.īh., ed. M. Z. al-Nās.ir, 9 vols. (Beirut: Dār tawq al-najāt, 199), 6:183 (no. 4986). [I have translated here from the French version by Alfred-Louis Prémare in Les fondations de l’islam: Entre écriture et histoire (Paris: Seuil, 2002), 451–52.—Trans.] 15. See Gotthelf Bergsträsser and Otto Pretzl, in Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed. by Friedrich Schwally, Gotthelf Bergsträsser, and Otto Pretzl, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1909–38), 3:32, 3:44–46; also Blachère, Introduction au Coran, 152. 16. Al-Bukhārī, al-Jāmi‘ al-S.ah.īh., 6:183 (no. 4986). [Here I have translated from the French version by Viviane Comerro in Les traditions sur la constitution du mus.h.af de ‘Uthmān, 12.—Trans.] 17. Al-T.abarī, Jāmi‘ al-bayān ‘an ta’wīl āy al-Qur’ān, ed. ‘Abd Allāh Turkī (Riyadh: Dār ‘ālam al-kutub, 2003), 1:54; see the English translation by John Cooper, The Commentary on the Qur’ān (London: Oxford University Press, 1987), 1:25. [It is now understood that the last item in this list refers, not to palm leaves, but to petioles, which is to say the stalks of palm leaves.—Trans.] 18. Al-T.abarī, The Commentary on the Qur’ān, ed. and trans. Cooper, 1:25. 19. Al-T.abarī, The Commentary on the Qur’ān, ed. and trans. Cooper, 1:26. 20. Al-T.abarī, The Commentary on the Qur’ān, ed. and trans. Cooper, 1:26. 21. Al-T.abarī, The Commentary on the Qur’ān, ed. and trans. Cooper, 1:26. 22. See, for example, al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 1:193. 23. Al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 1:193. 24. See Muh.ammad Mus.tafā al-A‘z.amī, The History of the Qur’ānic Text, from Revelation to Compilation: A Comparative Study with the Old and New Testaments, 2d ed. (Riyadh: Azami Publishing House, 2014), 102. 25. The claim that the recension was made a little later, under the Umayyads, has been defended by Prémare, for example; see his Aux ori-

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gines du Coran: Questions d’hier, approches d’aujourd’hui (Paris: Téraèdre, 2004), 98. The existence of manuscripts of the Qur’an dating from the third quarter of the seventh century, should it be confirmed, would pose problems for this argument, however; see my discussion below in chapter 4. 26. See my earlier discussion in chapter 2. 27. See John F. Healey and G. Rex Smith. “Jaussen-Savignac 17—the earliest dated Arabic document (A.D. 267),” Atlal 12 (1989): 77–84. 28. One such manuscript, dating from 643, is discussed in Christian Julien Robin, “La réforme de l’écriture à l’époque du califat médinois,” Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph 59 (2006): 319–64. 29. See Johann Wilhelm Fück, “Abu ’l-Aswad al-Du’alī,” in Emeri Johannes van Donzel et al., eds., Encyclopedia of Islam, 2d ed., 12 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2005), 1:106–7 (henceforth cited as EI2). 30. See Alain George, “Coloured Dots and the Question of Regional Origins in Early Qur’ans (Part I),” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 17, no. 1 (2005): 4–5 and fig. 1. 31. See my discussion in chapter 2. 32. See Comerro, Les traditions sur la constitution du mus.h.af de ‘Uthmān, 201. 33. There are generally said to have been four such copies (for Mecca, Bas.ra, Kūfa, and Damascus), but a later commentator, al-Zarqānī, increased the number to six, while rejecting an alternative list that included Yemen and Bah.rayn; see Muh.ammad ‘abd al-‘Az.īm al-Zarqānī, Manāhil al-‘irfān fi ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, ed. F. A. Zimarlī, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-‘arabī, 1995), 1:329. 34. See Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr, al-Tamihīd limā fī al-Muwatta’ minā al-ma‘ānī wa al-asānīd, ed. M. A. ‘Alawī and M. A. al-Bikrī, 24 vols. (Rabat: Wizārat al-Awqāf wa-al-Šu’ūn al-Islāmīyya, 1967), 8:292. 35. See, for example, Pascal Buresi, “Une relique almohade: L’utilisation du Coran (attribué à ‘Uthmān b. ‘Affān [644–56]) de la Grande Mosquée de Cordoue,” in Lieux des cultes: Aires votives, temples, églises, mosquées. IXe colloque international sur l’histoire et l’archéologie de l’Afrique du Nord antique et médiévale, Tripoli, 19–25 February 2005 (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2008), 273–80. 36. See Tayyar Altıkulaç, ed., Al-mus.h.af al-sharīf al-mansūb ila ‘Uthmān ¯¯ bin ‘Affan (The Copy at the Topkapı Palace Museum) (Istanbul: Markaz al-buh.ūth al-islāmiyya, 2007). 37. See François Déroche, “Twenty Leaves from the Tashkent Koran,” in Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom, eds., God Is Beautiful and Loves Beauty: The Object in Islamic Art and Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 57–77.

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Notes to Pages 114–120

38. See Oscar Hamdan, “Zur Problematik der vermeintlich vom dritten Kalifen ‘Uthmān b. ‘Affān stammenden Aussage ‘Es befinde sich ein Art von lah.n im Mus.h.af,’ ” in François Déroche, Christophe Julien Robin, and Michel Zink, eds., Les origines du Coran, le Coran des origines (Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, 2015), 207–17. 39. See Comerro, Les traditions sur la constitution du mus.h.af de ‘Uthmān, 117–18, referring to al-Baghawī, Sharh. al-sunna, ed. Muh.ammad Zuhayr al-Shāwīsh and Shu‘ayb al-Arnā’ūt, 2d ed., 16 vols. (Beirut: alMaktab al-islāmī, 1983), 4:51. 40. See al-Zarqānī, Manāhil al-‘irfān fi ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 1:130. 41. See al-A‘z.amī, The History of the Qur’ānic Text, 103. 42. Arabic text of Ibn abī Dā’ūd, Kitāb al-mas.āh.if, in Arthur Jeffery, ed., Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’ān (Leiden: Brill, 1937), 10; translated from the French version by Alfred-Louis Prémare in Les fondations de l’islam: Entre écriture et histoire (Paris: Seuil, 2002), 447. 43. See Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’ān, 283–85. 44. See Etan Kohlberg and and Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, Revelation and Falsification: The Kitāb al-qirā’āt of Ah.mad b. Muh.ammad alSayyārī (Leiden: Brill, 2009). 45. See Kohlberg and and Amir-Moezzi, Revelation and Falsification, 43 (nos. 380, 382). 46. See al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 1:197. 47. See Comerro, Les traditions sur la constitution du mus.h.af de ‘Uthmān, 159–67. 48. Ibn Shabba, Ta’rīkh al-Madīna al-munawwara (Akhbār al-Madīna al-nabawiyya), ed. ‘Ali Muh.ammad Dandal and Yasin Sa’d Bayān, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-‘ilmiyya, 1979), 3:991. 49. Shabba, Ta’rīkh al-Madīna al-munawwara, ed. Dandal and Bayān, 3:997–98; from the French translation by Comerro, Les traditions sur la constitution du mus.h.af de ‘Uthmān, 163. 50. See Bukhārī, al-Jāmi‘ al-S.ah.īh., 6:185 (no. 4993). 51. See Mus.h.af wa-qirā’ātuhu, ed. ‘Abelmajid al-Sharfī, 5 vols. (Rabat: Mu‘assasa mū‘minūn bilā h.udūd li-l-dirāsāt wa-l-abh.āth, 2016), 1:159 (henceforth cited as MQ). The same thing is reported in the case of H.afs.a; see Ibn abī Dā’ūd, Kitāb al-mas.āh.if, in Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’ān, 85. 52. Al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 1:188. [The English version reproduced here is found in The Perfect Guide to the Sciences of the Qur’ān: Al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, ed. Osman S. Isma’īl A. al-Bīlī, trans. H.amid Algar, Michael Schub, and Ayman Abdel H.aleem (Reading, UK: Garnet, 2011), 139.—Trans.]

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53. Al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 1:205; from The Perfect Guide to the Sciences of the Qur’ān, 156. 54. Ibn Shabba, Ta’rīkh al-Madīna al-munawwara, 3:998–99; translated from the French version by Prémare in Les fondations de l’islam, 463–64. 55. See Ibn Shabba, Ta’rīkh al-Madīna al-munawwara, 3:1002; also Ibn abī Dā’ūd, Kitāb al-mas.āh.if, in Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’ān, 9. 56. See al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, ed. Rida Tajaddud (Tehran: Marvi Offset Printing, 1971), 29–30; also al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 1:202–3, 204. 57. See Ibn abī Dā’ūd, Kitāb al-mas.āh.if, in Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’ān, 25. 58. See Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’ān, 53–54. The verses of the two additional suras were assembled from different sources by Schwally in Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed., 2:33–34. 59. See, for example, Hassan Chahdi, “Le Mus.h.af dans les débuts de l’islam: Recherches sur sa constitution et étude comparative de manuscrits coraniques anciens et de traités de qirā’āt, rasm et fawās.il” (diss., École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, 2016), 80. 60. See Shady Hekmat Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur’ān: The Problem of Tawātur and the Emergence of Shawādhdh (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 56. 61. Ibn al-D.urays, Fadā’il al-Qur’ān, ed. Ghazwah Budayr (Damascus: Dār al-fikr, 1987), 75. 62. Ibn abī Shayba, al-Mus.annaf fī al-ah.ādīth wa-l-āthār, ed. Sa‘īd alLah.h.ām, 16 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-fikr, 1989), 7:204. 63. Ibn abī Shayba, al-Mus.annaf fī al-ah.ādīth wa-l-āthār, 7:204. 64. Ah.mad b. H.anbal, al-Musnad, ed. Shu’aib al-Arnā’ūt et al., 50 vols. (Beirut: Mu’assasa al-risāla, 1993–2001), 5:395 (no. 3422). 65. Al-H.ākim al-Nīsābūrī, al-Mustadrak ‘alā al-S.ah.īh.ayn, ed. Mus.tafā ‘Abd al-Qadir ‘Atā, 4 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-‘ilmiyya, 1990), 2:250. 66. Ibn abī Shayba, al-Mus.annaf fī al-ah.ādīth wa-l-āthār, 7:184. 67. Ah.mad b. H.anbal, al-Musnad, 1:411. 68. See al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, 29. Ibn Mas‘ūd’s version numbers 110 suras in all. 69. See Bergsträsser and Pretzl, in Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed., 3:83. Blachère did not hold out great hope for reconstructing a complete list; see Introduction au Coran, 210. Hamdan, however, takes a more optimistic view; see “Können die verschollenen Korantexte der Frühzeit durch nichtkanonische Lesarten rekonstruirt werden?” in Stefan Wild, ed., The Qur’an as Text (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 27–40.

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70. Al-Farrā’, Ma‘ānī al-Qur’ān, ed. ‘I. al-Driwīsh, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār ‘ālam al-kutub, 2011), 1:152. 71. Ibn abī Dā’ūd, Kitāb al-mas.āh.if, in Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’ān, 59. 72. See Kohlberg and Amir-Moezzi, Revelation and Falsification, no. 99 (Arabic text). 73. Al-Farrā’, Ma‘ānī al-Qur’ān, 1:165. Edmund Beck gives a slightly different text; see “Die b. Mas‘ūdvarianten bei al-Farrā’. I,” Orientalia, n.s. 25 (1956): 379. 74. Ibn abī Dā’ūd, Kitāb al-mas.āh.if, in Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’ān, 59 [= MQ, 1:213]; again, see also Beck, “Die b. Mas‘ūdvarianten bei al-Farrā’. I,” 379. 75. Abū H.ayyān, al-Bah.r al-muh.īt, ed. ‘A. al-Mahdī, 8 vols. (Beirut: Dār ih.yā’ al-turāth al-‘arabī, n.d.), 2:710–11 [= MQ, 1:212]. 76. See Kohlberg and Amir-Moezzi, Revelation and Falsification, no. 343 (Arabic text). 77. See Al-Farrā’, Ma‘ānī al-Qur’ān, 2:786. 78. See Ibn Rushd al-Jadd, al-Bayān wa-l-tah.s.īl wa-l-sharh. aw al-tawjīh wa-l-ta‘līl fī masā’il al-mustakhraja, ed. Muh.ammad H.ājjī, 21 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-islāmī, 1984–91), 9:374. Abū ‘Ubayd claimed that Ibn Mas‘ūd successfully refused to hand over his copy to ‘Uthmān; see Bergsträsser and Pretzl, in Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed., 3:96n2. Pretzl (following al-Zamakhsharī) mentions a copy of Ibn Mas‘ūd’s text that may have been the one that was buried before 689, in the time of alH.ajjāj. 79. See al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, 29. 80. See Bergsträsser and Pretzl, in Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed., 3:79–81. 81. Ibn abī Dā’ūd, Kitāb al-mas.āh.if, in Jeffery, Materials for the History of  the Text of the Qur’ān, 117; translated from the French version by Prémare in Les fondations de l’islam, 456. [The poor Arabic spoken in the Kallā’ district of Bas.ra, where Yazīd al-Fārisī had been born, was looked down upon by members of the ruling class, who were born in Arabia, the cradle of Islam, and it was thought fitting that the menial task of entering the changes ordered by the prince should be entrusted to one who had grown up there.—Trans.] 82. See Omar Hamdan, Studien zur Kanonisierung des Korantextes: Al-H.asan al-Bas.rīs Beiträge zur Geschichte des Korans (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 2006). 83. Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-a‘yān wa-anbā’ abnā’ al-zamān, ed. I.hsān ‘Abbās, 8 vols. (Beirut: Dār S. ādir, 1977–1978), 2:32; translated from the French version by Prémare in Les fondations de l’islam, 458–59.

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84. Al-Samhūdī, Wafā’ al-wafā bi-akhbār Dār al-Mus.tafā, ed. M. M.-D. ‘Abd al-H.amīd, reprint, 4 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-‘ilmiyya, 1984), 2:668; translated from the French version by Prémare in Les fondations de l’islam, 461. 85. See Ibn Duqmāq, Kitāb al-Intis.ār l-wāsitat ‘iqd al-ams.ār, ed. Karl Vollers, 5 vols. (Cairo: Imprimerie Nationale, 1893), 5:73. [The fifth volume, in French, bears the title Description de l’Égypte.—Trans.] 86. Al-Kindī, Risāla; translated from Georges Tartar, ed. and trans., Dialogue islamo-chrétien sous le calife al-Ma’mūn (813–834): Les épîtres d’alHāsimī et d’al-Kindī (Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Latines, 1985), 190. 87. See Hamdan, Studien zur Kanonisierung des Korantextes, 166–70. 88. A comparative table of the sequence of suras in the versions due to Ibn Mas‘ūd, Ubayy, and ‘Alī, drawing on various sources, is found in the introduction (“Muqaddima”) to MQ, 54–62. 89. See al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 1:203. I have kept the numerical ordering of the vulgate in order to bring out the difference between the two versions. 90. See my discussion in the introduction. 91. See Kohlberg and Amir-Moezzi, Revelation and Falsification, 39 (English text). 92. See Kohlberg and Amir-Moezzi, Revelation and Falsification, 39 (English text). 93. See Ibn Shabba, Ta’rīkh al-Madīna al-munawwara, 3:998–99. 94. Ibn Shabba, Ta’rīkh al-Madīna al-munawwara, 3:991. 95. See al-Azmeh, The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity, 473. 96. See al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-ashrāf, ed. Ih.sān ‘Abbās, 7 vols. (Wiesbaden: Verlag Franz Steiner, 1978), 4:552. 97. See Ibn abī Dā’ūd, Kitāb al-mas.āh.if, in Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’ān, 12. 98. See Ibn abī Dā’ūd, Kitāb al-mas.āh.if, in Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’ān, 21, 24–25. 99. See al-Kindī, Risāla, in Tartar, ed. and trans., Dialogue islamochrétien sous le calife al-Ma’mūn (813–834), 190; on indemnification, see Hamdan, Studien zur Kanonisierung des Korantextes, 170. 100. See Comerro, Les traditions sur la constitution du mus.h.af de ‘Uthmān, 75. 101. See Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur’ān, 56. 102. See al-T.abarī, Ta’rikh al-T.abarī, ed. Nawaf al-Jarrāh (Beirut: Dār S. ādir, 2003), 969. 103. See Ibn Rushd al-Jadd, al-Bayān wa-l-tah.s.īl, 9:374. 104. See al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, 29.

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Notes to Pages 136–145

105. See Bergsträsser and Pretzl, in Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed., 3:96n2. 106. Yasin Dutton, “Orality, Literacy, and the ‘Seven Ah.ruf’ H.adīth,” Journal of Islamic Studies 23, no. 1 (2012): 42. 107. See Dutton, “Orality, Literacy, and the ‘Seven Ah.ruf’ H.adīth,” 33. 108. See Edmund Beck, “Der uthmanische Kodex in der Koranlesung des zweiten Jahrhunderts,” Orientalia, n.s. 14 (1945): 360.

4 The Lesson of the Manuscripts 1. See Irmeli Perho, ed., Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts: Codices arabici & Codices arabici additamenta (Copenhagen: Royal Library, 2007), xx. 2. See C. F. Bricka, ed., Dansk biografisk lexikon: Tillige omfattende Norge for tidsrummet 1537–1814, 19 vols. (Copenhagen: Gydendalske [F. Hegel & Son], 1887–1905), 1:101–5. 3. See Jacob Georg Christian Adler, Descriptio codicum quorumdam cuficorum partes Corani exhibentium in Bibliotheca Regia Hafniensi et ex iisdem de scriptura Arabum observationes novae: Praemittitur disquisitio generalis de arte scribendi apud Arabes ex ipsis auctoribus arabicis isque adhuc unditis sumta (Altona: Eckhard, 1780). 4. See François Déroche, La transmission écrite du Coran dans les débuts de l’islam: Le Codex Parisino-petropolitanus (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 10–13. 5. See Henri Dehérain, Orientalistes et antiquaires: Silvestre de Sacy: Ses contemporains et ses disciples (Paris: Geuthner, 1938); and Pierre-François Burger, “Jean-Louis Asselin de Cherville, agent consulaire et collectionneur de manuscrits orientaux,” Dix-huitième siècle 28 (1996): 125–33. 6. Up to the present day, we know of only one manuscript from this source—a genealogy—that is not a Qur’an. 7. Jean-Louis Asselin de Cherville, “Lettre de M. J. L. Asselin de Cherville, Agent du Consulat général de France, au Caire, à M. Dacier, Secrétaire perpétuel de la troisième classe de l’Institut,” Magasin encyclopédique: ou Journal des sciences, des lettres et des arts 21, no. 3 (1815): 88. 8. See the entry for Amari in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 96 vols. (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960–), 2:69–77; available online via www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ michele-benedetto-gaetano-amari_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. 9. See Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres (1857): 139. 10. See Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1860); also François Déroche, “La genèse de la Geschichte des Qorāns,”

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in François Déroche, Christian Julien Robin, and Michel Zink, eds., Les origines du Coran, le Coran des origines (Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, 2015), 1–25. 11. See Aloys Sprenger, Das Leben und die Lehre des Moh.ammad, 3 vols. (Berlin: Nicolai’sche, 1861–65). 12. See Hartwig Derenbourg, ed., “Bibliographie primitive du Coran, par Michele Amari: Extrait tiré de son mémoire inédit sur la chronologie et l’ancienne bibliographie du Coran,” in Centenario della nascita di Michele Amari, 2 vols. (Palermo: Virzi, 1910), 1–22. 13. See M. Le Baron de Slane, ed., Catalogue des manuscrits arabes (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale / Imprimerie Nationale, 1883–95). 14. On Wetzstein’s collections see François Déroche, “The Qur’anic Collections Acquired by Wetzstein,” in Boris Liebrentz and Christoph Rauch, eds., Manuscripts, Politics, and Oriental Studies: The Collector and Diplomat Johann Gottfried Wetzstein (1815–1905) (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 92–115. 15. See Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, 301. 16. See Giorgio Levi della Vida, Frammenti coranici in carattere cufico (Vatican: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1947). 17. See Nabia Abbott, The Rise of the North Arabic Script and Its Kur’ānic Development (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939), especially p. 60, no. 1. 18. See Déroche, “The Qur’anic Collections Acquired by Wetzstein,” in Liebrentz and Rauch, eds., Manuscripts, Politics, and Oriental Studies, 100. 19. See Muh.ammad Bayrām Bey, “Madīnat al-Qayrawān,” al-Muqtataf 21 (April 1897): 243. 20. See Paolo Costa, “La Moschea Grande di San‘â’,” Annali dell’Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli 34 (1974): 487, 505–6. 21. See Gotthelf Bergsträsser, “Plan eines Apparatus Criticus zum Koran,” Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 7 (1930): 1–11. 22. See Bergsträsser, “Plan eines Apparatus Criticus zum Koran,” 9. 23. See Abbott, The Rise of the North Arabic Script and Its K.ur’ānic Development; and S. alāh. al-Dīn al-Munajjid, Dirāsāt fī tārīkh al-Khatt al-‘Arabī (Beirut: Dar al-Kitāb al-Jadīd, 1972). 24. See, for example, Estelle Whelan, “Writing the Word of God: Some Early Qur’an Manuscripts and Their Milieux, Part I,” Ars Orientalis 20 (1990): 113–47; also Sheila Blair’s discussion in Islamic Calligraphy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 108. 25. See vol. 1 of François Déroche, Les manuscrits du Coran (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1983–85); also Déroche, The Abbasid Tradition:

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Notes to Pages 149–157

Qur’ans of the 8th to the 10th Centuries (London: Nour Foundation in association with Azimuth Editions and Oxford University Press, 1992). 26. See, for example, Alain George, The Rise of Islamic Calligraphy (London: Saqi, 2010). 27. I treat this point more fully in what follows. 28. See, for example, Shady Hekmat Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur’ān: The Problem of Tawātur and the Emergence of Shawādhdh (Leiden: Brill, 2013). 29. See the facsimiles published by Tayyar Altıkulaç, for example, in his edited volume Al-mus.h.af al-sharīf al-mansūb ila ‘Uthmān bin ‘Affan ¯¯ (The Copy at the Topkapı Palace Museum) (Istanbul: Markaz al-buh.ūth al-islāmiyya, 2007). 30. See Déroche, Les manuscrits du Coran, 1:151–55. 31. See Abbott, The Rise of the North Arabic Script and Its K.ur’ānic Development, 59–69. 32. See my discussion in chapter 1. 33. See François Déroche, Qur’ans of the Umayyads: A First Overview (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 11–13. 34. See my discussion in chapter 2. 35. See Hans-Caspar von Bothmer, Karl-Heinz Ohlig, and GerdRüdiger Puin, “Neue Wege der Koranforschung,” Magazin Forschung 1 (1999): 40. 36. See Déroche, La transmission écrite du Coran dans les débuts de l’islam, 171–79. 37. See F. E. Peters, The Voice, the Word, the Book: The Sacred Scripture of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 164. 38. See Emanuel Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 130. 39. See Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches, 128, 131. 40. See Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches, 128. 41. See Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches, 127. 42. See Keith E. Small, Textual Criticism and Qur’ān Manuscripts (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011), 7–8. 43. On this technical question there remains no better work than Anton Spitaler, Die Verszählung des Koran nach islamischer Überlieferung (Munich: Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1935). 44. In this connection, for the London manuscript (BL Or. 2165), see Intisar A. Rabb, “Non-canonical Readings of the Qur’ān: Recognition and Authenticity (The H.ims.ī Reading),” Journal of Quranic Studies 8, no. 2 (2006): 84–127; for the Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus, see Déroche, La transmission écrite du Coran dans les débuts de l’islam, 92–94.

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45. See Déroche, La transmission écrite du Coran dans les débuts de l’islam, 152. 46. See Déroche, La transmission écrite du Coran dans les débuts de l’islam, 105–6. 47. See Déroche, La transmission écrite du Coran dans les débuts de l’islam, 105. 48. See Déroche, La transmission écrite du Coran dans les débuts de l’islam, 106–7. 49. On variants of the rasm, see, for example, Gotthelf Bergsträsser and Otto Pretzl, in Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed. by Friedrich Schwally, Gotthelf Bergsträsser, and Otto Pretzl, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1909–38), 3:6–19. 50. In this connection see David Stephan Powers, “Muhammad Is Not the Father of Any of Your Men”: The Making of the Last Prophet (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), xxx. 51. Quoted in al-Dānī, al-Muh.kam fī naqt al-mas.āh.if, ed. ‘Issat H.asan (Damascus: Wizāra al-thaqāfa wa-l-irshād al-qawmī, 1960), 11; see also Régis Blachère, Introduction au Coran [1947], 2d ed. (Paris: Besson & Chantemerle, 1959), 151. 52. One of the copyists, D, employs letter-forms characteristic of a style that I have proposed calling O 1 and that flourished under the reign of ‘Abd al-Mālik; see Déroche, La transmission écrite du Coran dans les débuts de l’islam, 156–57; and Déroche, Qur’ans of the Umayyads, 78–80. 53. Further aspects of the matter are analyzed in Éléonore Cellard, “Un nouveau témoignage sur la fixation du canon coranique dans les débuts de l’islam: Le manuscrit S. an’ā’ DaM 01–29.1,” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles lettres (April–June 2018), 1107–19. 54. See Efim A. Rezvan, “The Qur’ān and Its World: VI. Emergence of the Canon: The Struggle for Uniformity,” Manuscripta Orientalia 4, no. 2 (1998): 23–26 and the tables on pp. 28–46. On the origin of the manuscript, see François Déroche, “Note sur les fragments coraniques anciens de Katta Langar (Ouzbékistan),” in Ashirbek Muminov, Francis Richard, and Maria Szuppe, eds. Patrimoine manuscrit et vie intellectuelle de l’Asie centrale islamique (Tashkent: Institut Français d’Études sur l’Asie Centrale and Aix-en-Provence: Edisud, 1999), 65–73; and Efim A. Rezvan, “Yet Another ‘‘Uthmānic Qur’ān’ (on the History of Manuscript E 20 from the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies),” Manuscripta Orientalia 6, no. 1 (2000): 49–68. 55. See Rezvan, “The Qur’ān and Its World: VI,” 45–46. 56. See Mus.h.af wa-qirā’ātuhu, ed. ‘Abdelmajid al-Sharfī, 5 vols. (Rabat: Mu‘assasa mū‘minūn bilā h.udūd li-l-dirāsāt wa-l-abh.āth, 2016), 1:300 (henceforth cited as MQ).

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Notes to Pages 167–173

57. See MQ, 3:98. 58. See MQ, 3:281; also Ibn abī Dā’ūd, Kitāb al-mas.āh.if, in Arthur Jeffery, ed., Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’an (Leiden: Brill, 1937), 68. 59. See MQ, 4:36; also Ibn abī Dā’ūd, Kitāb al-mas.āh.if, in Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’ān, 71. 60. See Déroche, Les manuscrits du Coran, 1:67n15 and pl. 9. 61. For Leiden, see Michael Josef Marx and Tobias J. Jocham, “Radiocarbon (14C) Dating of Qur’an Manuscripts,” in Andreas Kaplony and Michael Marx, eds., Qur’an Quotations Preserved on Papyrus Documents, 7th–10th Centuries: And the Problem of Carbon Dating Early Qur’ans (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 216. 62. See Abbott, The Rise of the North Arabic Script and Its K.ur’ānic Development, 60 and pls. 8–9. 63. See Marx and Jocham, “Radiocarbon (14C) Dating of Qur’an Manuscripts,” in Kaplony and Marx, eds., Qur’an Quotations Preserved on Papyrus Documents, 7th–10th Centuries, 216. 64. See Hassan Chahdi, “Le Mus.h.af dans les débuts de l’islam: Recherches sur sa constitution et étude comparative de manuscrits coraniques anciens et de traités de qirā’āt, rasm et fawās.il” (diss., École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, 2016), 354. 65. See MQ, 1:93. 66. See Abū H.ayyān, al-Bah.r al-muh.īt, ed. ‘A. al-Mahdī, 8 vols. (Beirut: Dār ih.yā’ al-turāth al-‘arabī, n.d.), 1:586. 67. See Muslim, S.ah.īh., ed. Muh.ammad Shukri al-Anqarawī, Muh.ammad ‘Izzat al-Za‘farī, and Ah.mad Rif ‘at al-H.ilmi al-Qurah H.us.ārī, 8 vols. (Istanbul: Dār al-T.ibā’a al-’āmira, 1916; reprint, Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, n.d.), 2:206; also my earlier discussion in chapter 2. 68. Again, see my discussion in chapter 2. 69. See Marx and Jocham, “Radiocarbon (14C) Dating of Qur’an Manuscripts,” in Kaplony and Marx, eds., Qur’an Quotations Preserved on Papyrus Documents, 7th–10th Centuries, 216, table 6.2, note 2. 70. See Elisabeth Puin, “Ein früher Koranpalimpsest aus S. an‘ā’ (DAM 01–27.1),” in Markus Groß and Karl-Heinz Ohlig, eds. Schlaglichter: Die beiden ersten islamischen Jahrhunderte (Berlin: H. Schiler, 2008), 461–93; “Ein früher Koranpalimpsest aus S. an‘ā’ (DAM 01–27.1): Teil II,” in Markus Groß and Karl-Heinz Ohlig, eds., Vom Koran zum Islam (Berlin: H. Schiler, 2009), 523–81; and “Ein früher Koranpalimpsest aus S. an‘ā’ (DAM 01–27.1): Teil III—Ein nicht-‘ut mānischer Koran,” in Markus Groß and Karl-Heinz ¯ Ohlig, eds., Die Entstehung einer Weltreligion I: Von der koranischen Bewegung zum Frühislam (Berlin: H. Schiler, 2010), 233–305 (especially p. 247).

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71. See Behnam Sadeghi and Mohsen Goudarzi, “S. an‘ā’ 1 and the Origins of the Qur’ān,” Der Islam 87 (2010): 2–129. 72. See Alba Fedeli, “Early Evidence of Variant Readings in Qur’ānic Manuscripts,” in Karl-Heinz Ohlig and Gerd-Rüdiger Puin, eds., Die dunklen Anfänge: Neue Forschungen zur Enstehung und frühen Geschichte des Islam (Berlin: H. Schiler, 2007), 293–316. 73. See Asma Hilali, The Sanaa Palimpsest: The Transmission of the Qur’an in the First Centuries AH (Oxford: Oxford University Press and London: Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2017). 74. Hilali, The Sanaa Palimpsest, 83; elsewhere (p. 45) Hilali refers to “a collection of leaves rather than a mus.h.af.” 75. This and the previous two brief quotations occur in Hilali, The Sanaa Palimpsest, 66–67. 76. See Hilali, The Sanaa Palimpsest, 3. 77. The four leaves that seem to have belonged to the same manuscript were subsequently sold at auction in London: the David Collection in Copenhagen acquired one of these (Inv. no. 86/2003); the others are now held by individual owners (from sales at Sotheby’s in 1993, Bonhams in 2000, and Christie’s in 2008). See Behnam Sadeghi and Uwe Bergmann, “The Codex of a Companion of the Prophet and the Qur’ān of the Prophet,” Arabica 57 (2010): 348. 78. In what follows I reproduce the folio numbers cited by Hilali. 79. See the preface to Hilali, The Sanaa Palimpsest, xv; nor does the author mention this point in her descriptions of individual leaves (see pp. 130–35 and 190–97). 80. Hilali (The Sanaa Palimpsest, 33) says “approximately thirty lines to each folio”; and elsewhere (p. 35), “approximately twenty-nine lines.” 81. See Puin, “Ein früher Koranpalimpsest aus S. an‘ā’ (DAM 01–27.1),” in Groß and Ohlig, eds., Schlaglichter, 474. 82. See Hilali, The Sanaa Palimpsest, 35. 83. See Sadeghi and Goudarzi, “S. an‘ā’ 1 and the Origins of the Qur’ān,” 53, fig. 16, for example. 84. See Hilali, The Sanaa Palimpsest, 41. 85. See Déroche, Les manuscrits du Coran, 1:67n15 and 1:69n22, for example. 86. See Hilali, The Sanaa Palimpsest, 42. 87. See Sadeghi and Goudarzi, “S. an‘ā’ 1 and the Origins of the Qur’ān,” 114n537. 88. See Aziz al-Azmeh, The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity: Allah and His People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 485. 89. See al-Suyūtī, al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, ed. Ah.mad b. ‘Alī (Cairo: Dār al-h.adīth, 2004): 177–78; also Lamya Kandil, “Die Surennamen in der

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Notes to Pages 178–185

offiziellen Kairiner Koranausgabe und ihre Varianten,” Der Islam 69 (1992): 44–60. 90. See, for example, the introduction [Muqaddima] to MQ, 54–62. 91. See Hilali, The Sanaa Palimpsest, 66. 92. These manuscripts, conserved outside Kairouan at the National Museum of Islamic Art in Raqqada, include Rutbi 3/84 (13 leaves, roughly 30 lines each, with a section of the Majālis of Abū Zayd and bearing an audition certificate issued in the year 905) and Rutbi 1651 (14 leaves, roughly 40 lines each, with a section from the Majālis of Ashhab b. ‘Abd al-‘Azīz al-Qaysī and bearing a notice from 892–93), both of which consist of nonrectangular parchment folios. 93. See Déroche, La transmission écrite du Coran dans les débuts de l’islam, 23–24. 94. See Arent Jan Wensinck (and Clifford E. Bosworth), “Lawh.,” in Emeri Johannes Donzel et al., eds., Encyclopedia of Islam, 2d ed. (= EI2), 12 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2005), 5:698; M. A. Bādah.dah., S.inā‘a al-kitāb wa-l-kitāba fī al-Hijāz: ‘As.r al-nabawwa wa-l-khulafa al-rashida, 2 vols. (Riyadh: Mu’assasa al-Furqān li-l-turāth al-islamī, 2006), 2:456–60; and the exhibition catalogue L’Islam dans les collections nationales (Paris: Éditions des Musées Nationaux, 1977), 118, no. 215. 95. Hilali, The Sanaa Palimpsest, 70. 96. According to T.abarī’s account, H.afs.a’s s.ah.īfa was wiped clean in this fashion; see my discussion in chapter 3. 97. See the reconstruction and interpretation by Alba Fedeli at https:// cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-OR-01287-LARGE/1. 98. See Puin, “Ein früher Koranpalimpsest aus S. an‘ā’ (DAM 01–27.1)— Teil III,” in Groß and Ohlig, eds., Schlaglichter, 249–50. 99. See Puin, “Ein früher Koranpalimpsest aus S. an‘ā’ (DAM 01–27.1)— Teil III,” in Groß and Ohlig, eds., Schlaglichter, 252–53. 100. See Hilali, The Sanaa Palimpsest, 36. 101. See Déroche, La transmission écrite du Coran dans les débuts de l’islam, 27. 102. See Déroche, Qur’ans of the Umayyads, 43–47. 103. See Déroche, Les manuscrits du Coran, 1:67n15 and 1:69n22. 104. See Hilali, The Sanaa Palimpsest, 42. 105. See Hans-Caspar von Bothmer, “Meisterwerke islamischer Buchkunst: Koranische Kalligraphie und Illumination im Handschriftenfund aus der Großen Moschee von Sanaa,” in Werner Daum, ed., Jemen: 3000 Jahre Kunst und Kultur des glücklischen Arabien (Innsbruck: Pinguin and Frankfurt-am-Main: Umschau, 1987), 178. 106. See Hilali, The Sanaa Palimpsest, 69. She mistranslates a quotation from Mālik b. Anas, whom she has asking, “In whose presence did you

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read the Qur’an?” The Arabic verbal phrase qara’ta, which she renders as “did you read,” actually means “did you recite” (i.e., in the course of the teaching session). 107. See Michael Cook, “The Stemma of the Regional Codices of the Koran,” Graeco-Arabica 9–10 (2004): 89–104. 108. See my discussion in chapter 3. 109. See al-Samhūdī, Wafā’ al-wafā bi-akhbār Dār al-Mus.tafā, ed. M. M.-D. ‘Abd al-H.amīd, reprint, 4 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-‘ilmiyya, 1984), 2:668. 110. See, for example, the manuscript Rutbi 38, at the National Museum of Islamic Art in Raqqada; also Déroche, Qur’ans of the Umayyads, 121–26 and figs. 41–43. 111. Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur’ān, 79n2 (quoting al-Zuhayli). 112. See Muh.ammad Mus.tafā al-A‘z.amī, The History of the Qur’ānic Text, from Revelation to Compilation: A Comparative Study with the Old and New Testaments, 2d ed. (Riyadh: Azami Publishing House, 2014), 235. 113. See Hilali, The Sanaa Palimpsest, 70–71. 114. This manuscript, presently kept in the Eastern Library of the Great Mosque in Sanaa, is the subject of a 2004 master’s thesis by Razan Ghassan Hamdun, a graduate student at al-Yemenia University in Sanaa. See Déroche, Qur’ans of the Umayyads, 43–47; also Hilali, The Sanaa Palimpsest, 33. 115. Hilali, The Sanaa Palimpsest, 70. 116. Elisabeth Puin provides a detailed analysis of the variants she detected in “Ein früher Koranpalimpsest aus S. an‘ā’ (DAM 01–27.1): Teil III,” in Groß and Ohlig, eds., Die Entstehung einer Weltreligion I, 262–300. I give a brief summary of her findings here. 117. Neither this variant nor the ones following are reported in treatises on qirā’āt. 118. Here I translate Blachère’s rendering. The idea of mending one’s ways is implicit in Abdel Haleem’s more economical version (“so that they may reflect”), it being understood that the object of such reflection is one’s transgressions.—Trans. 119. Hilali, The Sanaa Palimpsest, 70. 120. See Fedeli, “Early Evidence of Variant Readings in Qur’ānic Manuscripts,” in Ohlig and Puin, eds., Die dunklen Anfänge, 305, 315. 121. See Puin, “Ein früher Koranpalimpsest aus S. an‘ā’ (DAM 01–27.1)— Teil III,” in Groß and Ohlig, eds., Schlaglichter, 235. 122. See Sadeghi and Goudarzi, “S. an‘ā’ 1 and the Origins of the Qur’ān,” 17. 123. With the exception, of course, of copies to which a colophon was subsequently added.

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Notes to Pages 191–204

124. See Sadeghi and Bergmann, “The Codex of a Companion of the Prophet and the Qur’ān of the Prophet,” 348–54. 125. See https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/latest/2015/07/quranmanuscript-22–07–15.aspx (accessed 27 March 2020). 126. See Mas.āh.if Sana’a (Kuwait: Dār al-āthār al-islāmiyya, n.d. [1985]), 44 (in the Arabic part of this English-Arabic edition, printed in two parts). 127. Puin, “Ein früher Koranpalimpsest aus S. an‘ā’ (DAM 01–27.1)—Teil III,” in Groß and Ohlig, eds., Schlaglichter, 233. [Puin uses the technical term “ductus,” referring to the manner in which the letter strokes are applied to the parchment.—Trans.] 128. Fedeli, “Early Evidence of Variant Readings in Qur’ānic Manuscripts,” in Ohlig and Puin, eds., Die dunklen Anfänge, 315. 129. See https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/25/passages -from-the-bible-discovered-behind-quran-manuscript-christies (accessed 28 March 2020). 130. See Alain George, “Le palimpseste Lewis-Mingana de Cambridge, témoin ancien de l’histoire du Coran,” in Déroche, Robin, and Zink, eds., Les origines du Coran, le Coran des origines, 219–70. 131. See Sadeghi and Goudarzi, “S. an‘ā’ 1 and the Origins of the Qur’ān,” 55. 132. See my discussion in chapter 3.

5 Clausulae and the H.adīth of the Seven Ah.ruf 1. See my discussion in chapter 4. 2. See François Déroche, La transmission écrite du Coran dans les débuts de l’islam: Le Codex Parisino-petropolitanus (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 78–94. 3. Anton Spitaler, Die Verszählung des Koran nach islamischer Überlieferung (Munich: Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1935). 4. See Gustav Flügel, Corani textus arabicus, 3d ed., 2 vols. (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1883). In Flügel’s idiosyncratic verse numbering system, v. 5 is part of Cairo’s v. 3. 5. See Friedrich Schwally in Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed. by Friedrich Schwally, Gotthelf Bergsträsser, and Otto Pretzl, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1909–38), 1:227. 6. See W. Montgomery Watt, ed., Bell’s Introduction to the Qur’an (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1970), 93–94. 7. See Schwally’s account in Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed., 1:227–29; also Gerhard Böwering, “Chronology and the Qur’ān,” in Jane Dammen McAuliffe, ed., Encyclopedia of the Qur’ān, 6 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2001–6), 1:326 (henceforth cited as EQ).

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8. See Richard Bell, ed. and trans., The Qur’ān: Translated, with a Critical Re-Arrangement of the Surahs, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1937–39), 1:192; see also my discussion in chapter 1. 9. The author reproduces Blachère’s translation of the standard version of these two verses, suitably rearranged and modified to reflect the manuscript version. I have done the same, following Abdel Haleem, whose English translation fully agrees with the French in this instance.—Trans. 10. This division is supplementary in the sense that it is not recorded in any of the specialized treatises of Muslim tradition; see the series of tables with verse equivalents of the whole text of the Qur’an in Spitaler, Die Verszählung des Koran nach islamischer Überlieferung. 11. In addition to Q. 4:33 (mentioned earlier), the other occurrences are 4:41, 4:72, 4:79, 4:159, and 4:166. 12. A list of these adjectival pairs has been published by Arne A. Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2004), 356–57. On rhymes, see Watt, Bell’s Introduction to the Qur’an, 70–71; also Devin J. Stewart, “Rhymed Prose,” in McAuliffe, ed., EQ, 4:482. 13. Schwally in Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed., 1:41. 14. For a detailed presentation, see app. 1 in Devin J. Stewart, “Saj‘ in the Qur’ān: Prosody and Structure,” Journal of Arabic Literature 21, no. 2 (1990): 135–37. 15. See Régis Blachère, Introduction au Coran (1947), 2d ed. (Paris: Besson & Chantemerle, 1959), 175. [The formula referred to here takes its name in English directly from the Latin clausula (pl. clausulae)—literally, a little close or conclusion—a rhythmic figure placed at the end of a sentence or phrase. The use of clausulae among ancient authors is most famously associated with Cicero, but they are found in many other Roman (and Greek) writers as well.—Trans.] 16. See Watt, ed., Bell’s Introduction to the Qur’an, 72. 17. See Stewart, “Rhymed Prose,” in McAuliffe, ed., EQ, 4:482. 18. Angelika Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike: Ein europäischer Zugang (Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2010), 325. 19. See Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike, 367–68. 20. In addition to these verse markings, chiefly stylistic in nature, other editorial alterations may have been made for the sake of modifying the sense of a passage, as in the case of Q. 10:10 and 24:4, for example; see my discussion in chapter 1. 21. See Watt, Bell’s Introduction to the Qur’an, 90–93, and particularly 92–93; also Alford T. Welch, “al-K.ur’ān,” in Emeri Johannes van Donzel et al., eds., Encyclopedia of Islam, 2d ed., 12 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2005), 5:422 (henceforth cited as EI2).

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22. See Ibn abī Dā’ūd, Kitāb al-mas.āh.if; Arabic text in Arthur Jeffery, ed., Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’ān (Leiden: Brill, 1937), 57–73. 23. See Ibn abī Dā’ūd, Kitāb al-mas.āh.if; Arabic text in Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’ān, 69. 24. See Ibn abī Dā’ūd, Kitāb al-mas.āh.if; Arabic text in Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’ān, 59. 25. See Ibn abī Dā’ūd, Kitāb al-mas.āh.if; Arabic text in Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’ān, 59. 26. For want of a definitive study of what remains of the lower layer of the palimpsest, I rely on text published by Sadeghi and Goudarzi, “S. an‘ā’ 1 and the Origins of the Qur’ān,” Der Islam 87 (2010): 2–129, currently the most complete version. I thank Hadiya Gurtmann for having kindly made available to me her reconstruction of S 1(a). 27. In the absence of indications to the contrary, the variants mentioned below do not appear in the specialized traditional literature (for example, in Mus.h.af wa-qirā’ātuhu [= MQ]). 28. Alternatively, “devastating torment”; for both renderings see Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, 281. 29. See Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, 27. 30. Alternatively, “those who have certain knowledge”; see Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, 299. [Abdel Haleem prefers “those of firm faith,” closer in this instance to the manuscript.—Trans.] 31. Here reasonableness has the literal sense of “being endowed with reason”; see Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, 192. [The French verb used in translating ta‘qilūn (raisonner), can also mean “to think carefully”—not so very different from Abdel Haleem’s reference to “people who are willing to learn.”—Trans.] 32. See Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, 215. 33. For a list of double epithets, see note 11, above. 34. In both cases the bracketed interpolation is a tentative reconstruction of the missing text. 35. See Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, 238. 36. Also those who are “godless,” “sinning”; see Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, 213. 37. See Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, 195, 214. [The verb ya‘malūn (to work, to act) has a very subtly distinct meaning from yaf ‘alūn (to do), though in both English and French the same verb is typically used to translate both.—Trans.] 38. Three other places in the vulgate (Q. 2:283, 23:51, and 24:28) contain parallel passages where the verb is in the second person plural and the adjective ‘alīm appears at the end of the verse.

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39. See Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, 58. 40. See Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, 151. 41. See Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, 215 (form 5). 42. See note 35, above. 43. See Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, 83. 44. A form 5 verb that, in addition to signifying the state of being mindful or aware, has the related sense of “remembering”; also of “letting someone be warned.” See Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, 104. 45. See Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, 215. 46. See Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, 151. 47. Here “being in error” means “to be sinning”; see Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, 87. 48. Likewise, those who do wrong are sinners, evildoers; see Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, 179. 49. See my discussion in chapters 1 and 2. 50. Viviane Comerro has given a very fine analysis of Zuhrī’s habit of slanting accounts so that they support a particular point of view in her study of those traditions concerned with how the Qur’an came to be written down; see Les traditions sur la constitution du mus.h.af de ‘Uthmān (Würzburg: Ergon, 2012), 201. 51. See Hassan Chahdi, “Le Mus.h.af dans les débuts de l’islam: Recherches sur sa constitution et étude comparative de manuscrits coraniques anciens et de traités de qirā’āt, rasm et fawās.il” (diss., École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, 2016), 97–102. 52. See Déroche, La transmission écrite du Coran dans les débuts de l’islam, 78–94. 53. See Claude Gilliot, “Les sept ‘lectures’: Corps social et écriture révélée. I,” Studia Islamica 61 (1985): 12. 54. See my discussion in chapter 3. 55. See Gilliot, “Les sept ‘lectures,’ ” 14. 56. See, for example, al-T.abarī, Jāmi‘ al-bayān ‘an ta’wīl āy al-Qur’ān, ed. ‘Abd Allāh Turkī, 26 vols. (Riyadh: Dār ‘ālam al-kutub, 2003), 1:21; also my discussion of this passage in chapter 2. 57. See my discussion in chapter 2. 58. See al-T.abarī, Jāmi‘ al-bayān ‘an ta’wīl āy al-Qur’ān, 1:24–25. 59. See al-T.abarī, Jāmi‘ al-bayān ‘an ta’wīl āy al-Qur’ān, 1:40. 60. See al-T.abarī, Jāmi‘ al-bayān ‘an ta’wīl āy al-Qur’ān, 1:38, 1:45; also Ah.mad b. H.anbal, al-Musnad, ed. Shu’aib al-Arnā’ūt et al., 50 vols. (Beirut: Mu’assasa al-risāla, 1993–2001), 34:70 (no. 20425) and 34:146 (no. 20514). 61. ‘Abd al-Razzāq al-San‘ānī, al-Mus.annaf, ed. H.abīburrahmān alA‘z.amī, 11 vols. (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1970–72), 11:219–20. 62. See my discussion in the introduction.

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Notes to Pages 220–230

63. See al-T.abarī, Jāmi‘ al-bayān ‘an ta’wīl āy al-Qur’ān, 1:21; also Ah.mad b. H.anbal, al-Musnad, 14:120 (no. 8390) and 15:424 (no. 9678). 64. See Ah.mad b. H.anbal, al-Musnad, 34:84–85 (no. 21149). 65. I owe this reference to Yasin Dutton, “Orality, Literacy, and the ‘Seven Ah.ruf’ H.adīth,” Journal of Islamic Studies 23, no. 1 (2012): 20n80. 66. In the first instance, see al-T.abarī, Jāmi‘ al-bayān ‘an ta’wīl āy alQur’ān, 9:405–12; in the second, see Ibn ‘Atiyya, Muh.arrar al-wajīz fī tafsīr al-Kitāb al-‘azīz, ed. M. ‘A. Baydūn, 5 vols. (Rabat: Wizāra al-awqāf wa-lshu’ūn al-islāmiyya, 1975), 6:108. Dutton notes other variants of this same account where the adjectival pairs are ‘alīy h.akīm / ‘alīm h.akīm and samī‘ ‘alīm / ‘alīm h.akīm (or vice versa). 67. See Dutton, “Orality, Literacy, and the ‘Seven Ah.ruf’ H.adīth,” 15. 68. See Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, 357. The author groups together those cases where a definite adjective comes first and those where both adjectives are indefinite. 69. Here again I rely on the data collected by Ambros in A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic. 70. See Ibn ‘Atiyya, Muh.arrar al-wajīz fī tafsīr al-Kitāb al-‘azīz, 6:68. According to other authors, the episode involved ‘Umar b. al-Khattāb; see Schwally in Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed., 1:46–47. 71. See my discussion in chapter 2. 72. See Gotthelf Bergsträsser and Otto Pretzl in Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, 3:106–7. 73. See Shady H. Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur’ān: The Problem of Tawātur and the Emergence of Shawādhdh (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 30. 74. See Watt, ed., Bell’s Introduction to the Qur’an, 72. 75. See MQ, 3:49–50. 76. See Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, 151. 77. See Frederik Leemhuis, “Readings,” in McAuliffe, ed., EQ, 4:354. 78. See Spitaler, Die Verszählung des Koran nach islamischer Überlieferung.

Conclusion 1. See al-T.abarī, Jāmi‘ al-bayān ‘an ta’wīl āy al-Qur’ān, ed. ‘Abd Allāh al-Turkī, 26 vols. (Riyadh: Dār ‘ālam al-kutub, 2003), 1:22. 2. See al-Sah.nūn, Al-Mudawwana al-kubrā, ed. ‘Abd al-Rah.man al‘Utaqī, 16 vols. (Cairo: Matba‘a al-sa‘āda, 1905–6), 1:84. 3. See my discussion and references in chapter 2. 4. Yasin Dutton, “Orality, Literacy, and the ‘Seven Ah.ruf ’ H.adīth,” Journal of Islamic Studies 23, no. 1 (2012): 43.

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5. See Shady Hekmat Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur’ān: The Problem of Tawātur and the Emergence of Shawādhdh (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 58. 6. See Régis Blachère’s shrewd analysis of this situation in Le Coran (al-Qor’ân) (Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve, 1957), 26–27. 7. Dutton, “Orality, Literacy, and the ‘Seven Ah.ruf ’ H.adīth,” 41. 8. See Gotthelf Bergsträsser and Otto Pretzl in Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. ed. by Friedrich Schwally, Gotthelf Bergsträsser, and Otto Pretzl, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1909–38), 3:105–12. 9. See Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur’ān, 58.

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Illustration Credits

Figure 6. Qur’anic MS Paris, BnF Arabe 332, fol. 42v. © Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Figure 8. Qur’anic MS Paris, BnF Arabe 328, fol. 46r. © Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Figure 10. Qur’anic MS Paris, BnF Arabe 349, fol. 46r. © Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Figure 11. Qur’anic MS Paris, BnF Arabe 328, fol. 25r. © Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Figure 14. Qur’anic MS Paris, BnF Arabe 328, fol. 18r. © Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Figure 15. Qur’anic MS Paris, BnF Arabe 328, fol. 93r. © Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Figure 16. Qur’anic MS Paris, BnF Arabe 328, fol. 29r. © Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Figure 17. Qur’anic MS Paris, BnF Arabe 331, fol. 1v. © Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Figure 18. Qur’anic MS Sanaa, Dār al-Makhtūtāt 01.27–1, fol. 2v. © Dār al-Makhtūtāt, Sanaa. Figure 19. Qur’anic MS Sanaa, Dār al-Makhtūtāt 01.27–1, fol. 2v. © Hadiye Gurtmann. Figure 20. Qur’anic MS Sanaa, Dār al-Makhtūtāt 01.27–1, fol. 5r. © Hadiye Gurtmann. Figure 21. Qur’anic MS Paris, BnF Arabe 328, fol. 44r. © Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Figure 22. Qur’anic MS Sanaa, Dār al-Makhtūtāt 01.27–1, fol. 11v. © Hadiye Gurtmann.

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Index

Abbasid caliphate, 73, 54, 91, 96, 138, 231 Abbott, Nabia, 149 ‘Abd al-Malik, 129, 131, 135, 185 ‘Abd al-Rah.man b. al-Hārith b. Hishām, 104, 105 ‘Abd al-Razzāq al-S.an‘ānī, 74–75, 220 ‘Abd Allāh (brother of H.afs.a), 135 ‘Abd Allāh b. al-Zubayr, 54, 69, 104, 105, 118, 224 ‘Abd Allāh b. Mas‘ūd. See Ibn Mas‘ūd ‘Abd Allāh b. ‘Umar, 85 ‘Abd Allāh b. Zubayr al-Ghāfiqī, 120 abrogation, divine, 15–16, 18, 20, 26, 35, 94; differing interpretations of, 16–18 Abū ‘Abd al-Rah.mān al-Sulamī, 115, 116 Abū ‘Amr al-‘Alā’, 140 Abū al-Aswad al-Du’alī, 111 Abū al-Dardā’, 85, 86; anomalous readings of the Qur’an by, 92–93, 170 Abū al-Layth al-Samarqandī, 33

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Abū Bakr, 7, 17, 22, 32–33, 85, 88, 117; and written versions of the Qur’an, 106, 109, 114, 117, 120, 220 Abū Dā’ūd, Sunān, 221 Abū H.ayyān, Muh.ammad b. Yūsuf, 128 Abū Hudhayfa, 120 Abū Hurayra, 220 Abū Ja‘far, 49 Abū Khuzayma b. Khuzayma. See Khuzayma b. Thābit Abū Mūsā al-Ash‘arī, 49, 85, 86, 94, 225–26; recension of the Qur’an attributed to, 121, 122 Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, 144–45 Adler, Jacob Georg Christian, 142–43, 146 adulterers, stoning of, 17–18, 94 ‘A’isha (Muhammad’s wife), 93; codex of the Qur’an in the possession of, 118, 119, 134, 139, 170 ‘Alī b. abī T.ālib (Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law): 7, 22, 46, 85, 115, 134; as Muhammad’s successor, 117; recension attributed to, 116, 118

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298 ‘Alqama, 92 Amari, Michele, 144–45 A‘mash, Sulaymān b. Mihrān al-, 97 Ambros, Arne, 29, 31, 85, 222; on the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, 70–71 ‘Amir b. ‘Abd Qays, 115 Anas b. Mālik, 75, 85, 86, 104, 216; anomalous readings of the Qur’an by, 92; on the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, 70–71 Apocrypha, 7 Arabe 331, paleographic analysis of, 167–68, 169, 170 Arabian Peninsula, spread of Judaism and Christianity in, 23–24 Arabic writing: constituent elements of, 110–11; early development of, 24–25, 259n63; scriptio continua as applied to, 25, 80, 111, 175. See also dabt; Qur’anic manuscripts; rasm ‘As., Sa‘īd b. al-, 104, 105 asbāb al-nuzul (occasions of revelation), 35 Ash‘ath, al-, 117 ‘As.im. See Najūd, ‘As.im b. abī al‘As.im, ‘Asr b., 131 Asselin de Cherville, Jean-Louis, 143–44, 145, 146, 149 A‘z.amī, Muh.ammad Mus.tafā al-, 34, 134, 108, 116, 186; and the authenticity of the ‘Uthmānic mus.h.af, 3, 5–6, 10, 11, 20, 55 Azhar University, al-, Cairo, research on Qur’anic manuscripts at, 148 ‘Azīz, ‘Umar b. ‘Abd al-, 80 Badr, battle of, 44 Baghawī, H.usayn al-, 115 Bakr, ‘A’isha bt. Abī, 85

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Index basmala (formulaic opening phrase of a sura), 163, 184–85, 236 Bas.rī, H.asan al-, 131 Bauer, Hans, 103, 134 Bell, Richard, 48, 101–2, 156, 204, 210, 223, 226; on the chronology of the revelations, 39–44, 50; translation of the Qur’an by, 39, 40, 41–42, 43, 205, 208 Bergsträsser, Gotthelf, 36, 96, 126, 129; Geschichte des Qorāns (2nd ed.), 148; on the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, 67–68, 224 Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Qur’anic manuscripts at, 144, 145, 147, 150, 151, 167 Birmingham Qur’an, 191 Blachère, Régis, translation of the Qur’an by, 12, 13, 35, 206, 250n9, 250n17 Bockwold (Buchwald), Frederik, 142 Boisliveau, Anne-Sylvie, 102 Bonaparte, Napoleon, Qur’anic manuscripts acquired through, 143 Bothmer, Hans-Caspar von, 183–84 Bukhārī, Muh.ammad b. Ismā‘īl al-, 33, 86; on the genesis of written versions of the Qur’an, 104–5, 106, 108, 109, 112–13, 116, 117, 119, 135, 225; S.ah.īh., 60 Burton, John, 39 Cairo edition. See ‘Uthmānic recension Cambridge University Library, Qur’anic manuscripts in, 147, 180 Casanova, Paul, 47

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Index Chahdi, Hassan, 218 Christian Bible, dicolon as used in, 156 Christian doctrine, Muslims’ acquaintance with, 6–7 Christian Gospels, 10; and continuity with Judaism, 8 clausula (pl. clausulae; final element of a Qur’anic verse), 29–30, 223–24, 229, 238, 277n15; in the Codex ParisinoPetropolitanus, 200–210; doubled divine epithets as, 206, 208, 212, 217–18, 220–22, 225, 229; in the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, 220–29; in Ibn Mas‘ūd’s codex, 210; Neuwirth on, 209; rhyme as aspect of, 202, 203, 206–8, 210, 211–18, 226; in the Sanaa Palimpsest, 211–18, 227; variants involving, 211–18, 226–27 Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus, 152–54, 167, 173, 179, 182, 184, 192, 193, 197, 236; the basmala as handled by various copyists of, 163, 236; clausulae in, 200–210; paleographic analysis of, 154, 157–65; rhyme in, 202, 203; and the ‘Uthmānic recension, 152, 163–64, 229 Codex Sinaiticus, 156 codicology. See Qur’anic manuscripts in archives and libraries Comerro, Viviane, 46, 99–100, 108, 115, 116, 118, 279n50 Companions (of Muhammad), and transmission of the Qur’an, 45, 52, 59, 72, 85–86, 115. See also Abū al-Dardā’; Abū Bakr; Abū Mūsā al-Ash‘arī; ‘Alī b. abī T.ālib; Anas b. Mālik; Ibn Mas‘ūd; Ubayy b. Ka’b;

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299 ‘Umar b. al-Khattāb; ‘Uthmān b. ‘Affān; Zayd b. Thābit Copenhagen, Denmark, Qur’anic manuscripts in royal library in, 142 dabt, 25, 110–11; and variations in the text of the Qur’an, 76, 84, 97–98, 111–12 Damascus, Syria, Qur’anic manuscripts found in, 147 Dānī, Abū ‘Amr ‘Uthmān b. Sa‘īd al-, 60 Dar al-Makhtūtat (Sanaa, Yemen): Qur’anic manuscripts at, 147, 183–84; Sanaa Palimpsest at, 171–98 Dāraqutnī, al-, 116 Dhahabī, Shams al-dīn Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muh.ammad b. ‘Uthmān al-, 86, 116 dicolon (:), as used to separate verses, 156 divine abrogation. See abrogation, divine divine insufficiency, 17 Drake, Charles Francis Tyrwhitt, 147 Dutton, Yasin, 19, 54; on departures from the authorized rendering of the Qur’an, 92–94, 98, 230, 233–34; on the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, 62, 67, 68–69; on the ‘Uthmānic recension, 137 Egyptian National Library, Cairo, Qur’anic manuscripts at, 146 Fārisī, Yazīd al-, 129–30, 266n81 Farrā’, Abū Zakarīyā Yah.yā b. Ziyād al-Kūfī al-, 74–75, 126, 127, 128

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300 Fedeli, Alba, on the Sanaa Palimpsest, 173, 188, 191, 192 Firestone, Reuven, 5 Flügel, Gustav, 204–5 Furqān, sura of the (al-Furqān), 2–3, 51, 218, 220–21, 233 Fustāt, Egypt, Qur’anic manuscripts found in, 143, 146, 151, 166–71. See also Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus Gabriel, Angel, 17, 21, 28, 47, 50–51, 119, 123, 124 Ghaziyya, ‘Umāra b., 32 Gilliot, Claude, 61, 250n17; on the Companions, 85, 86; on the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, 68, 69, 71–72, 96–97, 218, 219 Gotha Research Library, Gotha, Germany, Qur’anic manuscripts in, 144 Goudarzi, Mohsen, on the Sanaa Palimpsest, 173, 174, 175, 177, 185, 188, 190, 191, 194, 211 Graham, William, 50–51 Great Mosque of Kairouan, Tunisia, Qur’anic manuscripts found at, 147, 179, 180 Gurtmann, Hadiye, 176, 178, 228 h.adīth: on variation in the Qur’anic text, 2–3, 17–18, 19. See also Anas b. Mālik; h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, 45–46, 51–52, 73, 97–98, 105, 110, 138, 229, 238; Anas b. Mālik on, 70–71; Bergsträsser on, 67–68; clausulae in, 220–29; dating of, 224; differing versions of, 58–62, 71, 95, 218–20, 231–32; disputes described in, 220, 224–

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Index 25; dissemination of, 137–38; Dutton on, 62, 67, 68–69, 72; Gilliot on, 68, 69, 71–72, 218, 219; Ibn al-Jazarī on, 62–67, 72, 76, 77, 80, 81; as interpreted by modern historians, 67–72; Nasser on, 59–60, 69–70, 218, 220, 224, 231; Zuhrī as transmitter of, 45–46, 51, 69, 139–40, 218–19, 220, 221, 224, 225, 235 h.adīth qudsī (divine utterances), 50–51 H.afs. b. Sulaymān, 1–2, 30, 89, 136 H.afs.a (Muhammad’s wife), 32, 33; and the compilation of the ‘Uthmānic recension, 104, 106, 107–8, 109, 110, 113, 119, 135, 139, 170 H.ajjāj b. Yūsuf: and destruction of copies of the Qur’an, 135, 219; and modifications to the Qur’an, 95, 128, 129–33, 140, 185, 229 Haleem, M. A. S. Abdel, 13, 250n9, 250n17 Hamdan, Omar, 130, 133 Hamdun, Razan Ghassan, 275n114 H.amza. See Zayyāt, H.amza alh.arf, 228; multiple meanings of, 60–62, 95, 219, 235–36. See also h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf H.ārith b. Khuzayma, 32 Hebrew doctrine, Muslims’ acquaintance with, 6–7 Hegira, of Muhammad and his community, 6–7, 22 h.ijāzī manuscripts, 151, 167, 173, 184 Hilali, Asma, on the Sanaa Palimpsest, 173, 175–88 Hinckelmann, Abraham, 142

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Index Hishām b. Hakīm, 2, 3, 58, 61, 62, 220, 233 H.usayn (son of ‘Alī), 54 Ibn ‘Abbās, 123; anomalous readings of the Qur’an by, 92; on the recension attributed to Ibn Mas‘ūd, 124–25 Ibn ‘Atiyya, Abū Muh.ammad ‘Abd al-H.aqq b. Ghālib al-Gharnātī, anomalous readings of the Qur’an by, 93 Ibn abī Dā’ūd, 126, 127–28, 133; Kitāb al-mas.āh.if of, 117–18, 122, 129, 135, 210 Ibn abī Sarh., ‘Abd Allāh b. abī Sarh., 28; anomalous readings of the Qur’an by, 93, 94, 221–22, 223–24, 226 Ibn abī Shayba, 123, 124 Ibn Ahsittah, 119–20 Ibn al-D.urays, Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muh.ammad b. Ayyūb, 123 Ibn al-Jazarī, 61, 85, 116; on the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, 62–67, 72, 76, 77, 80, 81 Ibn H.ajar al-‘Asqalānī, Shihāb aldīn ‘Ah.mad b. ‘Alī, 45, 85 Ibn H.anbal, Ah.mad b. H.anbal, Musnad, 220–21 Ibn Jinnī, 70–71 Ibn Khallikān, Abū ’l-‘Abbās Ah.mad b. Muh.ammad, 131 Ibn Mas‘ūd, 11, 14, 34; anomalous readings of the Qur’an by, 92, 93, 97, 115; authenticity of his recension, 124–26, 139; clausulae in codex of, 210; oral transmission of recension attributed to, 128; recension of the Qur’an attributed to, 73, 74–76, 91, 96, 97, 98, 103, 109, 110, 121, 123–29,

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301 134, 136, 139, 140, 167, 168, 169, 191, 196, 233, 237; and recitation of the Qur’an, 85; sequence of suras in recension attributed to, 134; variants in text of recension attributed to, 128, 169–70, 210 Ibn Miqsam, 91 Ibn Mujāhid, Abū Bakr Ah.mad b. Mūsā, 2, 53, 136; canonical readings recognized by, 55, 73–74, 75, 76, 86, 88, 91, 92, 94–95, 96, 126, 192, 230, 231, 234, 237–38 Ibn Muqla, Abū ‘Alī Muh.ammad ‘Alī, 96 Ibn Rushd, 94–95 Ibn Shabba, 118, 121, 128 Ibn Shanabūdh, Muh.ammad b. Ah.mad, 91, 97, 126, 237 Institute of Oriental Studies, St. Petersburg, Russia, Qur’anic manuscripts in, 166–67 Is.fahānī, Abū Muslim al-, 17 Islam: expansion of, 53–54; textual variants as threat to unity of, 72. See also Muhammad the Prophet; Qur’an Islamic orthodoxy, and the immutable character of the Qur’an, 19, 230, 233–34. See also Qur’an jāhiliyya (age of ignorance), 7, 23 Jewish manuscript tradition, 156 Jews, in conflict with followers of Muhammad, 7–11 Karbala, battle of, 54 Khadīja (Muhammad’s wife), 7, 22 Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, London, Qur’anic manuscripts in, 152

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302 Khuzayma b. Thābit, 17–18, 32, 104, 107 Kindī, ‘Abd al-Masīh. b. Ish.āq al-, 132–33 Kisā’ī, ‘Alī b. H.amza al-, 88–89, 237 Kitāb al-mas.āh.if (Book of the Qur’anic Codices): of Ibn abī Dā’ūd, 117–18, 122, 129, 135; of al-Sayyārī, 134 Leemhuis, Frederik, 74, 75, 228 Leiden University Libraries, Netherlands, Qur’anic manuscripts in, 167 Lord, Albert, 68 Madigan, Daniel, 102 Mālik b. Anas, 45, 60, 96, 131, 132, 139, 165, 185; on Ibn Mas‘ūd’s recension of the Qur’an, 126, 128, 136; the Muwattā, 45, 60, 91; on ‘Uthmān’s recension of the Qur’an, 113, 229, 230 Mamūn, Caliph al-, 132 Manichaeism, 23 Marcel, Jean-Joseph, 143, 146 mas.āh.if (sing. mus.h.af): debate surrounding the meaning of, 100–101; Sanaa Palimpsest as, 185–86. See also Qur’anic manuscripts mas.āh.if al-ams.ār (written copies of the Qur’an distributed on orders of Caliph ‘Uthmān), 76, 89–91, 113, 114, 115, 116, 157, 232; variants in, 164. See also Qur’an; Qur’anic manuscripts; ‘Uthmānic recension Masoretic manuscripts, 156 Mecca: hostility toward Muhammad and his followers in, 7, 22; Muhammad’s return to, 23

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Index Medina (Yathrib): Jewish tribes in, 6, 7–8; Muslims’ flight to, 6, 10, 22–23; and tensions within the Islamic community, 46–47 Mingana-Lewis Palimpsest, 180–81 Mosque of ‘Amr, Fustāt, Egypt, Qur’anic manuscripts found at, 143, 146, 151 Mu‘awiya b. abī Sufyān, 135 Mughīra b. Shihāb, 115 Muhammad the Prophet, 251n1; hostility toward, 7, 22; the Qur’an as revealed to, 4, 5, 6, 17, 20, 21–22, 26–28, 31, 33, 53, 49, 101, 119, 123–24, 223, 226, 231; sequence of revelations to, 33, 34–44, 119; skepticism regarding revelations of, 11, 18, 26, 59, 205. See also abrogation, divine; Qur’an; Qur’anic manuscripts Muh.ammad b. ‘Abd al-Rah.mān b. Muh.aysin, 97 Muir, William, 36 Munajjid, S.alāh. al-Dīn al-, 149 Muslim (Muslim b. al-H.ajjāj al-Qushayrī al-Naysābūrī), anomalous readings of the Qur’an by, 92 Muslim community: growth of, 23; tensions within, 46–47 Mu‘tazilism, 17 Muwattā, 45, 60, 91 Nabataean alphabet, 111 Nadīm, Abū al-Farraj Muh.ammad b. Ishāq al-, 122, 129, 136, 139 Nafi‘ b. ‘Abd al-Rah.mān al-Laythī, 87–88, 91 Nagel, Tilman, 48 Najūd, ‘As.im b. abī al-, 2, 88, 89, 136 naskh. See nuskha/naskh

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Index Nasser, Shady Hekmat, 1–2, 75, 95, 186, 231; on the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, 59–60, 69–70, 110; on H.amza’s reading of the Qur’an, 88–89 National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg, Qur’anic manuscripts in, 143, 167, 182, 183, 184, 193 National Museum of Islamic Art, Raqqada, Tunisia, Qur’anic manuscripts in, 147, 179, 180, 274n92 Neuwirth, Angelika, 23, 30, 34, 47–48, 49–50; on clausulae, 209 New Testament, and the Qur’an, 6–7 Nöldeke, Theodor, 33–34, 38, 39, 142, 145, 146; Geschichte des Qorāns, 36, 67, 143, 148, 207 nuskha/naskh, Arabic root associated with writing, 14–15 Old Testament, and the Qur’an, 6–7, 8 Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Qur’anic manuscripts at, 150 Palimpsests, rarity of, 194. See also Mingana-Lewis Palimpsest; Sanaa Palimpsest Palmer, Edward Henry, 147 Peoples of the Book. See Christian doctrine, Muslims’ acquaintance with; Hebrew doctrine, Muslims’ acquaintance with; Jews, in conflict with followers of Muhammad Prémare, Alfred-Louis, 50, 262–63n25

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303 Pretzl, Otto, 36, 96, 126, 129; Geschichte des Qorāns (2nd ed.), 148 Puin, Elisabeth, on the Sanaa Palimpsest, 173, 175, 182, 185, 188, 191, 192, 211 Qatāda, anomalous readings of the Qur’an by, 92 qirā’ā/qirā’āt (reading and reciting of the Qur’an), 60, 95; and confusion with ah.ruf, 73–74; debate over number of, 73–74; meanings of, over time, 74–76 Qur’an: anomalous readings of, 91–94; arrangement of suras and verses in, 31–32, 34–35, 100, 101, 233; authenticity of written versions of, 5–6, 11–14, 19, 240; as Book of God, 239–40; canonical readings of, 88–91; chronology of revelations in, 21–22, 34–44; and connection between God and scripture, 13–14, 239–40; in the context of Jewish and Christian texts, 6–7, 8–10; definition of, 186; etymology of the term Qur’ān, 44; and freedom to substitute one word for another, 70, 71, 92, 128, 139– 40, 199, 216, 217, 221–22, 225–27, 229, 232, 236–37, 238–39; genesis of, as revelation to Muhammad, 21–22; interaction between the oral and written versions of, 54–55, 97–98, 115; intermediary involved in transmission of, 26–28; Jews accused of “falsification” of, 8–12; as liturgy, 50; noncanonical readers of, 91–94; origins of variants in, 77–84, 88, 89–91; as a preserved Tablet, 10,

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304 Qur’an (continued) 12; recitation and oral transmission of, 1–2, 44–45, 49–50, 51, 53–59, 60, 71–72, 84–89, 95, 115– 16, 128, 138, 215–16, 231, 236–37, 238–39; revision of revelations in, 16–17, 123–24; scriptural version as protection against variations in, 55, 106; translations of, 39, 40, 41–42, 43, 250n9; verses and verse divisions in, 28–30, 154–57; written transmission of, 4, 25, 31–33, 41–44, 47–49, 114–15, 138, 141–42, 151, 195–97, 236–38. See also clausula; h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf; Ibn Mas‘ūd; Muhammad the Prophet; Qur’anic manuscripts; Qur’anic manuscripts in archives and libraries; rasm; sūras; ‘Uthmānic recension Qur’anic manuscripts: arrangement of suras in, 34–35, 100, 101, 102–3, 232–33; caesuras in, 208; as codices, 101, 112–13; competing recensions of, 96–97, 117–36; destruction of, 117, 128, 133, 135, 194, 234; disputes over variation in, 109, 110; diverse uses of, 185; early history of, 99–103; fragmentary transcriptions of, 138; from Fustāt, Egypt, 143, 146, 151, 166–71; how they came to be produced, 103–10; as mas.āh.if al-ams.ār, 76, 89–91, 100, 113, 114, 115, 116, 157; modifications to, 129–35; partial compilations of, 103; pivotal moment in creation of, 105–6; rasm in, 171, 196, 231, 236; rhyme in,

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Index 29–30, 41, 42, 156, 202, 203, 206–8; symbolic value of, 197; variations in the text of, 11–14, 18–20, 45, 51–52, 55, 58–67, 72–73, 74–76, 77–84, 94–98, 137–40, 141, 167, 168, 170–71, 199–200, 259n61; verse endings in, 29–30, 154–57; the word kitāb (book) as used in, 102. See also clausula; Qur’an; Qur’anic manuscripts in archives and libraries; ‘Uthmānic recension Qur’anic manuscripts in archives and libraries: in Berlin (Staatsbibliotek), 145–46; in Cairo (Egyptian National Library), 146; in the Cambridge University Library, 147, 180; cataloguing of, 142, 144, 147–48; in Chicago (Oriental Institute), 167; chronology of, 151; conservation of, 141–42, 146–47; in Copenhagen (royal library), 142, 146; dating of, 166, 171–73, 191–92, 197; in Damascus (Umayyad Mosque), 147; fragmentary aspect of, 145, 146, 147, 150–51; in Gotha, Germany (Gotha Research Library), 144; in Leiden (Leiden University Libraries), 167; in London (Khalili Collection of Islamic Art), 152; paleographic analysis as applied to, 151, 154, 157–65, 166–68, 169, 175–78, 181–84, 192; in Paris (Bibliothèque Nationale de France), 144, 145, 147, 149, 150, 151, 167; in Raqqada, Tunisia (National Museum of Islamic Art), 147, 179, 180, 274n92; in Sanaa,

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Index Yemen (Dar al-Makhtūtat), 147; scholarly study of, 144–45, 148–51; in St. Petersburg, Russia (Institute of Oriental Studies), 166; in St. Petersburg (National Library of Russia), 143, 167, 182, 183, 184, 193. See also Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus; Sanaa Palimpsest; ‘Uthmānic recension Qurashī, Abū Muh.ammad al-, 119 qurrā (readers/reciters of the Qur’an), 76 Quraysh (tribe of Muhammad the Prophet), 61 Ramadān, 22, 123 rasm (consonantal skeleton), 25, 110; history of, 237; in Qur’anic manuscripts, 171, 196, 231, 236; of the ‘Uthmānic recension, 55, 57, 58, 75–76, 81, 88, 94, 96, 97, 98, 114, 137, 139, 154, 171, 236, 237, 239; and variations in the text of the Qur’an, 65–66, 74–84, 97, 165, 171 Reinaud, Joseph, 144, 145 Renan, Ernest, 144 Rezvan, Efim, 166, 167 Rightly Guided Caliphs, 53, 86, 117 Sā’ib, ‘Abdallāh b., 115 Sadeghi, Behnam, on the Sanaa Palimpsest, 173, 174, 175, 177, 185, 188, 190, 191, 194, 211 S.ah.īh.: of Bukhārī, 60; of Muslim, 92 Sa‘īd b. Jubayr, anomalous readings of the Qur’an by, 92, 93, 97 Sālim, 119–20

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305 Samhūdī, Nūr al-dīn Abū al-H.asan ‘Alī b. ‘Abd Allāh al-, 131–32, 185 Sanaa, Yemen: palimpsest at the Dār al-Makhutūtāt (House of Manuscripts) in, 149, 171–98; Qur’anic manuscripts found in, 147–48, 151, 154–55, 171–98, 275n114. See also Sanaa Palimpsest Sanaa Palimpsest, 149, 171–98, 232; basmala referred to in, 184–85; clausulae in, 211–18, 227; compared with the ‘Uthmānic recension, 178, 188–91, 215, 226; dating of, 171–73, 191–92, 197; divisions among the suras in, 175–78; as example of economic aspect of creating a book, 194–95; as a mus.h.af, 185–86; paleographic analysis of, 175–78, 181–84, 192–93; rhyme in, 211–18; scholarly debate surrounding, 173–91; sequence of suras in, 178, 196, 197; variants in, 196 Sayyārī, Ah.mad b. Muh.ammad al-, 118, 127, 128; Kitāb al-mas.āh.if of, 134 Schefer, Charles, 147 Schwally, Friedrich, 34, 44, 204, 209–210; Geschichte des Qorāns (2nd ed.), 18, 36, 148, 207 scriptio continua, as applied to Arabic writing, 25, 80, 111, 175 scriptio defectiva, 162, 248 scriptio plena, 158, 248 Seetzen, Ulrich Jasper, 144, 146 seven (as a number), symbolic value of, 61, 62, 73–74 Shāfi‘ī, Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muh.ammad b. Idrīs, 71

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306 Shiism, 123; emergence of, 117 Shu’ba, 116; anomalous readings of the Qur’an by, 93 Sinai, Nicolai, 38 Slane, William MacGuckin, baron de, 145 Small, Keith, 103, 138, 156 Spitaler, Anton, 200 Sprenger, Aloys, Leben und Lehre des Moh.ammad, 145 St. Gall, abbey of, Christian scriptures at, 152 Stanford folio (2007), dating of, 191–92 Stark, Rodney, 5 Stewart, Devin, 208 sūras: arrangement of, 31–32, 34–35, 100, 103, 134–35, 138, 233; classification of, 35–38; evolution of, 49–50; naming of, 31; origin and meaning of the word sūra, 30–31; tripartite structure of, 38. See also Muhammad the Prophet; Qur’an; Qur’anic manuscripts Suyūtī, Jalāl al-dīn Abū al-Fad. l ‘Abd al-Rah.mān b. abī Bakr al-, 14, 35, 50, 62, 74, 95, 101, 177, 235; on alternative written versions of the Qur’an, 118, 119–20; on the arrangement of the suras, 134; Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān, 28, 47, 73; on the word h.arf, 60, 61 Sylvestre de Sacy, Antoine, 143 T.abarī, Abū Ja‘far Muh.ammad b. Jarīr al-, 12, 32, 59, 68, 71–72, 73, 74–75; on anomalous readings of the Qur’an, 92, 93, 96–97, 230; on the genesis of written versions of the Qur’an,

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Index 108–10, 112, 113, 116, 117, 225; on H.afs.a’s copy of the Qur’an, 135 T.alh.a, anomalous readings of the Qur’an by, 93 Tashkent Qur’an, 113 Thawrī, Sufyān al-, 74 Tirmidhī, Abū ‘Īsā Muh.ammad b. Sawra al-, 136 Topkapı Palace, library of, Istanbul, Qur’anic manuscripts in, 113 Torah, 100; authenticity of, 9–10 Tov, Emanuel, 156 Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum, Istanbul, Qur’anic manuscripts in, 147 ‘Ubayd Allāh b. Ziyād, 129–30, 133, 134 Ubayy b. Ka‘b: anomalous readings of the Qur’an by, 92; arrangement of suras in recension attributed to, 134; recension of the Qur’an attributed to, 73, 80, 94, 109, 110, 121, 122, 134, 191, 196, 233; and recitation of the Qur’an, 85, 115, 220 ‘Umar b. al-Khattāb, 2–3, 4, 7, 17–18, 22, 28, 32, 45, 51, 85, 86, 94, 233; conversion of, 47, 102; and the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, 58–59, 61, 62, 71, 218, 220; and written versions of the Qur’an, 106, 117 Umayyads, 54, 118, 136–37, 225; modifications to the Qur’an during the reign of, 129–33. See also ‘Azīz, ‘Umar b. ‘Abd al-; H.ajjāj b. Yūsuf; ‘Uthmān b. ‘Affān; Ziyād b. Abū Sufyān

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Index ‘Uthmān b. ‘Affān, 22; background of, 4–5; and recitation of the Qur’an, 85, 115, 116; and written version of the Qur’an, 3–4, 7, 30, 34, 104–5, 112, 136–37, 142, 224, 230. See also ‘Uthmānic recension ‘Uthmān Qur’an: dating of, 166; paleographic analysis of, 166–67 ‘Uthmānic recension, 30, 37, 55, 56, 71, 73, 78, 83, 84, 89, 90, 97, 110, 131, 233; arrangement of suras in, 34–35, 100, 103, 134; authenticity of, 3, 5–6, 10, 11, 20, 50, 234–35; as compared with Ibn Mas‘ūd’s recension, 124–26, 233; compilation of, 104–5, 107–9, 113, 115–19, 125; copies of, 113–14; dating of, 109, 262–63n25; distribution of copies of, 104–5, 108, 114, 185; as effort to heal divisions within the Muslim community, 72, 104–5, 138; Muslim dogma regarding, 3, 55, 75, 95–97, 98, 116, 234; mysterious letters in, 48–49, 198; opposition to, 123, 136; oral transmission of, 115–16; rasm of, 55, 57, 58, 75–76, 81, 88, 94, 96, 97, 98, 114, 137, 139, 154, 171, 236, 237, 239, 259n72; resistance to, 234–35; variants in, 114, 126–28, 137, 164–66, 169–70; widespread acceptance of, 136–37. See also Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus; Qur’an; Qur’anic manuscripts; ‘Uthmānic recension Uzbekistan, Qur’anic manuscripts in, 166

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307 Vatican Library, Qur’anic manuscripts at, 152 Verse of Light, 227–28 vulgate. See ‘Uthmānic recension Wansbrough, John, 39 Wāqidī, Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muh.ammad b. ‘Umar al-, 100 Watt, W. Montgomery, 208, 225 Weil, Gustav, 36, 38 Welch, Alford T., 39 Wetzstein, Johann Gottfried, 145, 147 writing, practice of, as a way of preserving texts, 51. See also Arabic writing; Qur’anic manuscripts Yamān, H.udhayfa b. al-, and the ‘Uthmanic recension, 104, 105, 121–22 Yathrib. See Medina Zarqānī, Muh.ammad ‘Abd al‘Az.īm al-, 115, 116 Zayd (Muhammad’s son), 22 Zayd b. Thābit (Companion of Muhammad), 32, 48, 85, 124; and recitation of the Qur’an, 115; and the ‘Uthmānic recension, 104, 105, 106–7, 109, 110, 113, 115, 122, 124, 125, 135 Zayyāt, H.amza al-, 1–2, 88–89 Ziyād b. Abū Sufyān, 136 Zubayr, ‘Urwa al-, 69–70, 224 Zuhrī, Muh.ammad b. Muslim al-, 32, 105, 110, 112; as transmitter of the h.adīth of the seven ah.ruf, 45–46, 51, 69, 139–40, 218–19, 220, 221, 224, 225, 233, 235, 279n50

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