General Questions Thread

[zman]

Originally Posted by HereWeGo
What do you mean by "Preserved"? You need to answer that first.

I'm referring to the version compiled during the time of Uthman (RA). Ideally the one that didn't have any dots; if not, the dotted version will do. The dots allow for variations in reading and meaning. Before even getting into the discussion of variations, first I want to identify the "oldest" version that can be considered complete. For instance the Birmingham manuscript is probably the oldest version that exists today but we have only 4 chapters from it. What is the oldest version with all 114 chapters? It might be the Topkapi manuscript. But how old is it? Does it truly date back to the time of Uthman (RA) as it is claimed?

[HereWeGo]

Originally Posted by zman
I'm referring to the version compiled during the time of Uthman (RA). Ideally the one that didn't have any dots; if not, the dotted version will do. The dots allow for variations in reading and meaning. Before even getting into the discussion of variations, first I want to identify the "oldest" version that can be considered complete. For instance the Birmingham manuscript is probably the oldest version that exists today but we have only 4 chapters from it. What is the oldest version with all 114 chapters? It might be the Topkapi manuscript. But how old is it? Does it truly date back to the time of Uthman (RA) as it is claimed?

You answered your own question... but here is a good summary of events that led to multiple Quran

Source : https://www.facebook.com/whysocrious...25348577543758

Yasir Qadhi, a prominent Muslim scholar based in the West, landed in quite a bit of controversy recently over his remarks that there are "holes" in the traditional Muslim narrative of Quran's preservation.

For those who might not be aware, its almost an article of faith among Muslims to believe that the Quran has not been changed since the time of the Prophet. Its commonly asserted that not a single letter has been added or removed from the original Quran.

Well, as with all things, the situation is much more complicated (and interesting!). I'll try to briefly summarize some of the issues here.

Background
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For starters, we need to understand that the Quran was primarily an oral text spoken by the Prophet, and learnt by heart by his companions. The Arabic alphabet was pretty primitive in the early days of Islam (lacking vowels, among other essential features), and hence, any copy that was made, couldn't be just opened and read without knowing the recitation in advance.

These recitations (or "readings") are called qir'at while the physical text of the Quran is called "mushaf". The consonantal text of the Quran (in a defective script) was more or less standardized around 650AD by the Caliph Usman who then ordered the destruction of all other parallel mushafs.

So, while the textual version of the Quran was fixed, given the primarily oral nature of the Book, several different readings persisted for centuries among the Muslim community. These readings, as we'll see, are not all about pronounciation.

Standard readings
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In the 10th century AD, a scholar named ibn Mujahid declared that only 7 readings (from different parts of the Arab world) should be chosen for recitation, and the rest should be discontinued (He never gave his exact reasons, but other scholars presume that it was because these 7 readings reached the status of tawatur - something with which several early scholars disagreed)

(Like hadiths, readings were also associated with an isnad - chain of narrators - and a mutawaatir reading was one that had been transmitted independently by several reliable narrators right from the Prophet's time)

Other scholars came up with different number of "standard"/authoritative readings (both before and after ibn Mujahid). Some proposed 8, some 10 or 14, and others proposed upto 20 different readings. In the end, however, it was ibn Mujahid's 7 that became the de facto standard in the Islamic world, though the figure of 10 was never really rejected.

So, how prominently these 7 (or 10) readings differ from each other? Not much, to be fair.

Most changes relate to how a word is pronounced (and consequently in spelling, when that reading is put down in the written form). Sometimes however, a "waw" letter is replaced with a "fe" or omitted (which doesn't cause much difference in meaning). In rare cases, a "qaala" ("He said") is changed to "qul" (Say!) or an active voice is replaced by a passive one, which do cause a slight change in meaning. But overall, these variations are pretty minor.

When the standard print edition of the Quran was compiled in 1924 in Cairo, the reading of Hafs (from Asim) - one of the 7 chosen by ibn Mujahid - was used, and that's the familiar Quran that most of us have in our homes today. We can, however, find printed Qurans in other readings too.

The problem
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This is the issue at hand: there are readings of the Quran outside these 7 or 10 readings that have strong chains of narrations, but don't reach the status of "mutawaatir" (though the proposition that others do, is also debatable). These are the last 4 of the 14 readings that are often touted as standard, alongside the readings that are mentioned in hadiths and Quranic tafsirs (commentaries)

All of them are lumped under the category of "shaadh" or "irregular" readings. Their prime charactristic is that they don't always conform to the "standard" Quranic consonantal text compiled by Usman (whereas other readings more or less do). In these shaadh readings, entire words (or even phrases) are replaced by other words/phrases of a similar meaning, thus constituting a significant deviation in the Quran (there're even instances of additional/missing verses, but we won't consider them here; they're usually explained by Islamic scholars as a case of "naskh", etc)

Even a giant of a scholar like Tabari routinely rejected some phrasings of the 7 readings that are "standard" today, and preferred their shaadh versions as "more correct"

This difference in Quranic wordings has been a topic of discussion since the very beginning. There are strong hadiths that mention that the Companions used to hear others recite the Quran differently from how they learnt from the Prophet, and when they asked this in his presence, the Prophet told them that the Book was revealed in seven different "ahruf" (letters/words/styles). Till date, there's no consensus of what "ahruf" exactly meant, but it does provide an early example of our modern discomfort with shaadh readings.

ibn Masud's reading
--------------------------

An interesting case is that of the companion Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, one of the best Quranic reciters approved by the Prophet. When Usman asked everyone to burn their mushafs, ibn Mas'ud bluntly refused this imposition of a single mushaf. There is evidence that his reading of the Quran (reportedly having several important variations, attested by strong hadiths) survived for at least a couple of centuries after Usman's standardization.

In fact, the reading of ibn Masud and the associated mushaf were so common that Imam Malik (founder of one of the 4 main schools of Sunni thought) had to issue a judgement in the second half of the 8th century, that if anyone prays behind an imam reading from ibn Masud's version, his/her prayer would become invalid. He also asked political authorities to punish people who were selling mushaf or reciting according to his reading.

Conclusion
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This is all a very brief summary of a very old and complicated issue that Muslim scholars have recognized and debated for centuries. Its not openly discussed or shared with the general public because the ulema think that people would start harbouring doubts about the Quran's preservation if they came to know of these variations. But of course, in the age of internet, such discussions are bound to become public.

So, is the Quran preserved? From the available evidence, its clear that its preserved to a very high degree. Is it absolutely perfectly preserved word for word? That's a question that has no easy answers.

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Further reading:
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- "Orality, literacy and Seven Ahruf tradition", Yasin Dutton (a wonderful overview with suggestions on how Muslims can reconcile these facts with their faith)
- "The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qurān", a comprehensive book by Shady Hekmat Nasser

(You can also read some modern defenses of these problematic issues here from a traditional Islamic perspective: https://yaqeeninstitute.org/…/the-or...-variant-r…/)

[Zeeshan]

zman having a momentary crisis to turn to god for salvation after that shady 3 million deal at wells fargo?

[zman]

Hey everybody's got their share of dirty secrets I'm not giving up mine
Welcome back Zee