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When did the consonantal skeleton of the Quran reach closure? Part II1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2014

Nicolai Sinai
Nicolai Sinai*
Affiliation:
Oriental Institute, University of Oxford
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

The Islamic tradition credits the promulgation of a uniform consonantal skeleton (rasm) of the Quran to the third caliph ʿUthmān (r. 644–656). However, in recent years various scholars have espoused a conjectural dating of the Quran's codification to the time of ʿAbd al-Malik, or have at least taken the view that the Islamic scripture was open to significant revision up until c. 700 ce. The second instalment of this two-part article surveys arguments against this hypothesis. It concludes that as long as no Quranic passages with a distinct stylistic and terminological profile have been compellingly placed in a late seventh-century context, the traditional dating of the standard rasm (excepting certain orthographical features) to 650 or earlier ought to be our default view.

Keywords

QuranRasmCodificationTransmissionʿAbd al-Malik ibn MarwānAl-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf
Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 77 , Issue 3 , October 2014 , pp. 509 - 521
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS, University of London 2014 

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Footnotes

1

I am extremely grateful to Robert Hoyland, Alan Jones, Christopher Melchert, Behnam Sadeghi and the two anonymous readers for numerous corrections, objections and suggestions.

References

2 See Nicolai Sinai, “When did the consonantal skeleton of the Quran reach closure? Part I”, notes 21 and 22.

3 See de Prémare, Alfred-Louis, Aux origines du Coran: questions d'hier, approches d'aujourd'hui (Paris: Téraèdre, 2004), 98Google Scholar.

4 Why didn't the Shiites adopt one of the other existing recensions, such as that of Ibn Masʿūd, as their canonical text in order to demarcate themselves from the proto-Sunni majority? Why didn't they replace the ʿUthmānic legend of origins with one that put ʿAlī centre-stage?

5 See Donner, Fred, Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1998), 26–8Google Scholar, who points out the impossibility of effective empire-wide censorship. Sadeghi emphasizes that the dissemination of a Marwanid text of the Quran would have been a public event that a large number of contemporaries must have known and talked about (Behnam Sadeghi and Bergmann, Uwe, “The codex of a companion of the Prophet and the Qur'ān of the Prophet”, Arabica 57, 2010, 343–436, at 364–6Google Scholar, on the basis of a remark in Modarressi, Hossein, “Early debates on the integrity of the Qur'ān: a brief survey”, Studia Islamica 77, 1993, 5–39, at 13–4)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 My use of the term “public event” here is inspired by Sadeghi (see previous note).

7 For example, how far into the early eighth century can we confidently trace back the Shii assumption that the standard rasm was promulgated by ʿUthmān? It is not obvious that ninth-century authors like al-Sayyārī and others are simply relating what early eighth-century Shiites believed about the origin of the standard text (see Kohlberg, Etan and Amir-Moezzi, Mohammad Ali, Revelation and Falsification: The Kitāb al-qirā'āt of Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Sayyārī, Leiden: Brill, 2009, 25–6)Google Scholar.

8 See Schoeler, Gregor, “The codification of the Qur'an: a comment on the hypotheses of Burton and Wansbrough”, in Neuwirth et al. (eds), The Qur'ān in Context (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 779–94Google Scholar, at 787–8; cf. similarly Kohlberg and Amir-Moezzi, Revelation and Falsification, 22, n. 108.

9 Al-Ṭabarī, Annales, ed. M. J. de Goeje et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1871–1901) series 1, vol. 6, 2952: “The Quran used to consist in different books (kāna l-qur'ānu kutuban), but you have abandoned them all except one”. ʿUthmān reacts by pleading that “the Quran is one and comes from One [viz., God]”.

10 Al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-ashrāf, vol. 4.1, edited by ʿAbbās, Iḥsān (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1979), 552Google Scholar. ʿUthmān vindicates his decision to standardize the Quranic text by recalling how people used to differ in their readings and would say to one another, “My Quran is better than yours!” The burning of the rival codices as such is justified by ʿUthmān's wish that “there should only remain what was written under the eyes of the Messenger of God and was firmly established in the leaves that were with ʿĀ'isha”.

11 ʿUmar, Sayf ibn, Kitāb al-ridda wa-l-futūḥ wa-Kitāb al-jamal wa-masīr ʿĀ'isha wa-ʿAlī, ed. al-Sāmarrā'ī, Qāsim (Leiden: Smitskamp Oriental Antiquarium, 1995), 51–2Google Scholar. ʿAlī's apology emphasizes that ʿUthmān had burnt the codices in the presence of all the other Companions, who had previously endorsed his plan to “gather the people around a single codex”.

12 Crone, Patricia and Zimmermann, Fritz, The Epistle of Sālim ibn Dhakwān (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 189–90, n. 7Google Scholar.

13 A comparable text, the Hellenistic Jewish Letter of Aristeas, which describes the legendary genesis of the Greek translation of the Torah, certainly does not waste time on inventing possible objections to the enterprise of rendering the Torah into Greek, only in order then to deliver an emphatic rebuff to such objections.

14 See Lecker, Michael, “Biographical notes on Ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī”, Journal of Semitic Studies 41, 1996, 21–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Sadeghi and Bergmann, “Codex”, 399–405 and appendix 2 (422–3). The four-and-a-half folios analysed by Sadeghi contain Q 2:191–223, 5:41–54, 15:54–72, 63, 62, 89, and 90:1–6.

16 Ibid., 387–8.

17 The qualification “ceteris paribus” is intended to convey that Sadeghi would presumably accept a textual evolution leading from X to XY if the latter variant supports a legal or theological claim that is explicitly debated in the literary sources. The above principle contradicts the classic text-critical rule of brevior lectio potior, which has, however, come under criticism in Biblical scholarship as well (see Sadeghi, “Codex”, 387, n. 84).

18 For example, a development from min ṣiyāmin aw ṣadaqatin aw nusukin (standard text) to min ṣiyāmin aw nusukin (C-1) in Q 2:196 would be explicable as an accidental omission, whereas the reverse development min ṣiyāmin aw nusukin > min ṣiyāmin aw ṣadaqatin aw nusukin would be best explained as a deliberate expansion of the text designed to sanction almsgiving as a way of compensating for premature shaving during the pilgrimage.

19 See Sadeghi and Bergmann, “Codex”, 401. The three variants in question are as follows (words in the standard text that are absent from C-1 are underlined): Q 2:196, second variant (min ṣiyāmin aw ṣadaqatin aw nusukin); 2:217, first variant (qul qitālun fīhi kabīrun wa-ṣaddun ʿan sabīli llāhi wa-kufrun bihi wa-l-masjidi l-ḥarāmi wa-ikhrāju ahlihi minhu akbaru ʿinda llāhi); 2:222 (standard text: fa-ʿtazilūl-nisā'a fī l-maḥīḍi wa-lā taqrabūhunna, C-1: fa-lā taqrabū l-nisā'a fī maḥīḍihinna). Two more pertinent variants occur at 5:42 (fa-in jā'ūkafa-ḥkum baynahum) and 63:1, but Sadeghi concedes that these two should perhaps be disregarded.

20 Sadeghi also provides a stemmatic analysis of the standard rasm, C-1, and the rasm variants ascribed to Ibn Masʿūd. His point of departure lies in the observation that in cases of disagreement, the standard text tends to be in the majority, either siding with C-1 against Ibn Masʿūd, or with Ibn Masʿūd against C-1 (Sadeghi and Bergmann, “Codex”, 394; Sadeghi notes that the same observation would apply had he utilized the rasm variants ascribed to Ubayy instead of Ibn Masʿūd, see ibid., 399, n. 109). Proceeding on this basis, Sadeghi ends up favouring either (i) a stemma in which all three recensions are direct descendants from a common prototype, with the standard text as the most reliable transcript of this common source; or (ii) a stemma in which the standard rasm is a hybrid text following the majority readings of a number of pre-existing Companion codices.

21 The need for further study is emphasized in Sadeghi and Bergmann, “Codex”, 347 and 404.

22 See Sadeghi, Behnam and Goudarzi, Mohsen, “Ṣanʿā' 1 and the origins of the Qur'ān”, Der Islam 87, 2012, 1–129 at 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Note that the three major omissions of C-1 which most obviously constitute “irreducible pluses” of the standard rasm occur in relatively close proximity (2:196.217.222).

23 Donner, Narratives, 49. Shoemaker briefly discusses Q 30:2–4, which according to a minority reading predicts the Islamic victory over the Byzantines (“The Romans have vanquished / in the near part of the land, but after their vanquishing, they shall be vanquished / in a few years”), which would make it an anachronism. However, the majority reading (“The Romans have been vanquished … they shall vanquish”) is surely preferable: it is easier to imagine that some Muslims were tempted to turn a verse that had originally alluded to the Byzantine–Sasanid war ending in 628 into a miraculous prediction of the Islamic victory over the Byzantines than to see why a triumphant prediction of the Islamic conquests, which later Muslims clearly perceived as confirming Muḥammad's claim to prophethood, should have been transformed, by the majority of Quranic readers, into a reference to an obscure pre-Islamic war. Bell's objection to the majority reading that it is “difficult to explain Muhammed's favourable interest in the political fortunes of the Byzantine Empire” (quoted in Shoemaker, Stephen J., The Death of a Prophet: The End of Muhammad's Life and the Beginnings of Islam, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012, 154CrossRefGoogle Scholar) misses part of the passage's point, namely, that “the decision is with God, in the past and in the future” (thus Q 30:4). The “political fortunes of the Byzantine Empire” are thus adduced as an illustration of God's universal control of history.

24 Shoemaker, Death, 153.

25 Shoemaker, Death, 153.

26 Ehrman, Bart D., The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 5th ed. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 193–4Google Scholar. See also John 16:2, where Jesus anachronistically predicts that “they shall put you out of the synagogues”. Although the Gospel of John does not refer to the destruction of the Temple as unequivocally as, for example, Matthew 24:1–2, John 11:48 and 2:13–22 can be construed as presupposing the event.

27 See n. 37 in Part I of this article.

28 While the Quranic “Thou” might occasionally be understood as addressing a generic believer like the Biblical commandment “Thou shalt not kill!” (Rippin, Andrew, “Muḥammad in the Qur'ān: reading scripture in the 21st century”, in Motzki, Harald (ed.), The Biography of Muḥammad: The Issue of the Sources, Leiden: Brill, 2000, 298–309Google Scholar), such a construal is hardly tenable for the entire corpus.

29 See Rippin, Andrew, “The Function of asbāb al-nuzūl in Qur'ānic exegesis”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 51, 1988, 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 See Madigan, Daniel, “Reflections on some current directions in Qur'anic studies”, Muslim World 85, 1995, 345–62, at 353–4Google Scholar.

31 Shoemaker, Stephen J., “In search of ʿUrwa's Sīra: some methodological issues in the quest for ‘authenticity’ in the life of Muḥammad”, Der Islam 85, 2011, 257–344, at 310–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 See Schoeler, Gregor, The Biography of Muḥammad: Nature and Authenticity, trans. Vagelpohl, Uwe, ed. Montgomery, James E. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), 38–79Google Scholar; Görke, Andreas and Schoeler, Gregor, Die ältesten Berichte über das Leben Muḥammads: Das Korpus ʿUrwa ibn az-Zubair (Princeton: Darwin Press, 2008), 22–37Google Scholar. For a response to Shoemaker's criticism see Görke, Andreas, Motzki, Harald and Schoeler, Gregor, “First-century sources for the life of Muḥammad? A debate”, Der Islam 87, 2012, 2–59Google Scholar. Görke and Schoeler, in their study of the sīra traditions ascribed to ʿUrwa, contend that the ʿUrwan origin of the report about Muḥammad's first revelation transmitted on the authority of al-Zuhrī < ʿUrwa < ʿĀ'isha (consisting, inter alia, of Muḥammad's encounter with Gabriel, the revelation of Q 96:1–5, and the accreditation of Muḥammad's prophetic status by Waraqa ibn Nawfal), is at least partly confirmed by three brief reports transmitted on the authority of Hishām ibn ʿUrwa < ʿUrwa. These latter parallel some of the motifs of al-Zuhrī's report and even employ some of the same keywords and phrases, although their diction frequently diverges. Arguably, then, the traditions ascribed to Hishām constitute precisely the “evidence of independent transmission from ʿUrwa that bypassed al-Zuhrī” which Shoemaker demands (“In search”, 306). As Görke and Schoeler emphasize, the Hishām ibn ʿUrwa fragments must have belonged to a larger whole and presuppose other elements of the long al-Zuhrī account. Note that the third Hishām report concludes with a reference to the revelation of Q 93.

33 Görke and Schoeler, Die ältesten Berichte, 145–62. Shoemaker has no major reservations here and accepts that ʿUrwa's version included a reference to the revelation of Q 24:11 (“In search”, 321–6).

34 Heidemann, Stefan, “The evolving representation of the early Islamic empire and its religion on coin imagery”, in Neuwirth, Angelika, Sinai, Nicolai and Marx, Michael (eds), The Qur'ān in Context: Literary and Historical Investigations into the Qur'ānic Milieu (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 149–95, at 167Google Scholar.

35 Ibid., 170–4.

36 See Blenkinsopp, Joseph, A History of Prophecy in Israel, revised edition (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press), 100, on the narratives in Isaiah 36–9Google Scholar.

37 The divergence in the understanding of Muḥammad that arises between the Quran and the ḥadīth is pointed out in Donner, Narratives, 50–52.

38 The case of the Psalmic superscriptions is briefly taken up in Reynolds, Gabriel S., “Le problème de la chronologie du Coran”, Arabica 58, 2011, 477–502, at 500–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar, but only in order to emphasize that since most critical Biblical scholars would be unwilling to view these Psalmic headlines as reflections of historical facts, we ought to be equally suspicious of the link that the Islamic tradition establishes between the Quran and the life of Muḥammad. Reynolds thus fails to ask what we can learn from the fact that in the case of the psalms such biographical references were incorporated into the scriptural text itself, whereas in the case of the Quran they were relegated to exegetical secondary literature.

39 The expression is taken from Cook, Michael, The Koran: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 134–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 See Wright, William, A Grammar of the Arabic Language, third edition, revised by Smith, W. Robertson and de Goeje, M. J., 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1896), vol. 2, 27Google Scholar.

41 See Burton, John, “Linguistic errors in the Qur'ān”, Journal of Semitic Studies 33/2, 1988, 181–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim reading of Q 20:63 (in hādhāni la-sāḥirāni …) is of course not, strictly speaking, incorrect, for in al-mukhaffafa does not require the accusative (see Wright, Grammar, vol. 2, 81D). On the other hand, it is noteworthy that the majority of canonical readers seem to have read inna hādhāni, at the price of linguistic correctness (Aḥmad Mukhtār ʿUmar and ʿAbd al-ʿĀl Sālim Makram, Muʿjam al-qirā'āt al-qur'āniyya, 2nd ed., 8 vols (Kuwait: Dhāt al-Salāsil, 1988, vol. 4, 89–90). There must consequently have been a strong oral tradition in favour of inna instead of in al-mukhaffafa; and it seems probable that this was the original wording, as it is surely the lectio difficilior. Abū ʿAmr and others read inna hādhayn la-sāḥirān, probably by tacitly going against the rasm. What is significant in the present context is that this oral tradition in favour of inna did not result in an emendation of the rasm.

42 See Joüon, Paul and Muraoka, Takamitsu, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Instituto Biblico, 2006), 65–6Google Scholar. For a number of examples in which early Quran readers adopted this procedure see Beck, “Der ʿuṯmānische Kodex in der Koranlesung des zweiten Jahrhunderts”, Orientalia Nova Series 14, 1945, 355–73, and id., “Die Kodizesvarianten der Amṣār”, Orientalia nova series 16, 1947, 353–76, at 357–8Google Scholar.

43 Nöldeke, Theodor, Geschichte des Qorāns, revised by Schwally, Friedrich, Bergsträsser, Gotthelf and Pretzl, Otto, 3 vols (Leipzig: Dieterich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1909–38, henceforth GdQ), vol. 3, 1–6Google Scholar.

44 Ibid., 4.

45 Crone, Patricia, “Two legal problems bearing on the early history of the Qur'ān”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 18, 1994, 1–37, at 20Google Scholar, makes a similar observation with respect to other opaque terms which were likewise not changed into more intelligible ones.

46 Fishbane, Michael, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 44–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 August Fischer has argued that Q 101:10–11 constitute a later gloss (“Eine Qorān-Interpolation”, in Bezold, Carl (ed.), Orientalistische Studien Theodor Nöldeke zum siebzigsten Geburstag gewidmet (Gießen: Alfred Töpelmann, 1906), 2 vols, vol. 1, 33–55)Google Scholar, but see my comments at http://www.corpuscoranicum.de/kommentar/index/sure/101/vers/1, in the section “Literarkritik”).

48 As I have underscored in the first part of this paper, the conventional scenario, if it is to be squared with some of the data surveyed in this article, will need to be amended in two respects: first, ʿUthmān's measures, whatever they were, do not seem to have immediately displaced rival recensions; second, during much of the seventh century the Quran may have been used primarily for ritual and devotional recitation, not as a normative source, with parts of the corpus being perhaps rarely recited and transmitted only in writing.

49 Sadeghi and Bergmann, “Codex”, 353.

50 Against ibid., 406–10.

51 Ibid., 408; Sadeghi and Goudarzi, “Ṣanʿā' 1”, 22–3.

52 See Jeffery, Arthur, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur'ān: The Old Codices (Leiden: Brill, 1937), 21–3 and 180–1Google Scholar; GdQ, vol. 2, 33–8 and 40–42.

53 See Sadeghi and Goudarzi, “Ṣanʿā' 1”, 23.