Ali Ataie – The Qur’an in Manuscript and Print (Part 3) Qur’anic Sciences Series
AI: Summary ©
The transcript discusses various historical events and theories about the Quran, including the importance of belief in multiple interpretations of the definition of the title of the Quran and the use of parchments and animal skin. The importance of writing to someone is emphasized, and the conversation turns to the use of parchments and sallama letters in writing, as well as the use of a book and a codex to ensure proper writing. The speakers also discuss the use of different writing styles in different regions and the potential political implications of the title of the Quran.
AI: Summary ©
So last time we started talking about the
transmission of the Quranic revelation, we said that
the Quran has been transmitted in 2 ways,
orally and written form.
We said that,
obviously, the Quran,
is required for the 5 daily prayers.
So the Sahaba were constantly hearing and reciting
and memorizing the Quran. This is something unique,
as we mentioned,
in contrast to the Bible, at least the
New Testament,
that was never seen in other books of
the New Testament or seen by any of
the Hawari union of these ideas in that.
According to the common opinion of those historians.
Certainly none of the books of the New
Testament were known to our
But we know that the prophet,
we know exactly what what Suwak he used
to recite at certain prayers.
So we have a lot of reports. We
also mentioned that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
listened to the recitation
by his companions.
We know that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
he sent certain Sahaba to teach the
Quran to different,
tribes.
He sent Musaam as we said to Yathrib,
to the Ansar,
and, he recited the Quran to them.
We left off by saying imam al Suruti
in the Ith Khan here in the Quran.
He mentions by name over 20
well known Sahaba who are who follow the
Quran.
So these include the 4 caliphs,
ibn Nasrud, ibn Abbas,
Abu Horeira, and then women like Aisha and
Hafsa and Masalena,
and many others.
Ibn Hazrat Aspenani, he mentions over 40 Rafaf
by name.
In reality, there were 100 of Rafaf of
the Quran. Hundreds if not thousands of
There were also companions who wrote and collected
the Quran
during the life of the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam,
and this was sort of their main job.
So Ubayi Nuka' is mentioned. Murad I Nujahbal.
Zaid I Nufabit
at Nusa'id.
There was a group of companions that lived
in the mosque, in the surrounding precincts of
the mosque called the Ashanu Sufa.
So the people of the bench as it's
sometimes translated.
There's a there's an entire chapter as Martin
Leans' s sera of the prophets
called people of the bench. You want to
read more about them.
So you'll see puts that puts that number
at
909100.
Not necessarily all at the same time, but
during the 11
year medeli period,
there was a 900,
Sahaba
whose main job was simply to write down
the revelation,
and also to write down the hadith of
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. Initially, the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam did not give
permission to write the hadith down.
He didn't want people to confuse them. Now,
if you know Arabic very very well,
it's almost you can be probably 95%
accurate,
when you hear a verse of the Quran
and you hear a hadith, it's just different.
However, the prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam wanted
to be extra cautious.
So later in the Mahdi period, he did,
give permission to certain Sahaba to write the
hadith,
his hadith down. One of them was Abdullah
ibn Amr ibn Aba'as, who wrote something called
a Sarifa Asaw Nikkaf,
where he collected some of the hadith of
the prophet And
Abdullah ibn Amalib Nata'as one time he said
to the prophet
he said, shall I write down from you
when you're angry? What if you say something
and you're angry? Should I write it down?
And the prophet,
the one who sent sent me in truth,
nothing comes out of my mouth except the
truth.
And then he said, I joke but I
always speak the truth.
Right?
Prophet had a sense of humor.
The the personality of the prophet
was that,
very easy going.
Right? Lehi Lou Jayib,
Jannib. So he was very, very easygoing person.
Daddy would be sharp. He was always he
always seemed like he was happy,
you know, so usually calls him the the
haqq, the smiling prophet.
Right? So easygoing disposition.
You know, did not even raise his voice
as Aisha says,
even in the marketplaces.
Just easy going. You know, some people you
who are an authority of sort of walk
on egg shells. You wanna set them off.
They might do something crazy. So how they
never they had fear of him, the prophet
of course.
And they were very,
careful around him, but, the prophet
was not he didn't have that type of
personality,
where you had to walk on eggshells. He
wasn't a loose cannon or anything like that.
He's he's very humble person.
Okay. There are tens of thousands of Sahaba,
and there's about a 124,
125,000
Sahaba.
So in the right amount, they they don't
insist on that number.
But they say that's around the number of
Sahaba,
125,000, which is
about the same as the number of Al
Anbiya according to the hadith. Again, we don't
insist on that number. There were 313
Sahaba
and a Gualdui Hadith,
313
or so, mursarin
or rusul.
Right?
And then there's 4 archangels. There's 4 Khorasar
Rashidim. Although Imam Masayuti in this book,
had a book on the history of the
rightly guided caliphs. He includes Imam Hassan ibn
Ali as the 5th 5th caliph. Because technically,
he was caliph
for 6 months,
when he, abdicated to Huawei and he's a
young.
And there's a idea that says, the rightly
guided Caleb
caliphate
will last for 30 years.
So when
when Sayed Ali was murdered, it was 29
years 6 months.
And, you know, Hassan was was the kiddo
for 6 months.
Okay.
So
the recitation of the Quran because so many
Sahaba recited
it, not just in Medina, you know, they
were Arabs, there were Bedouins that did not
live in Medina, but they were Muslim, they
were Sahaba.
They lived on the outskirts.
The the recitation of the Quran is.
It's multiply attested.
So this word Tawatr in Arabic means multiple
attestation.
So something that's Tawatr, like the Quran is
Tawatr. We have to believe in that report.
It's more of our aqidah to believe in
reports that are Tawato,
multiply
attested. It's just too big,
of an event
for it to have been a lie,
you know.
So there's hadith of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam
There's about a 1,000 of them according in
the whole
definition of Tawato, that's also,
you know, up to much speculation.
So, or you might have different interpretations of
what constitutes multiple attestation.
But there's about a 1,000 or so hadith.
One such hadith is, whoever sees me in
a dream has truly saved me, for Shaitan
cannot take my form. So this is a
hadith we have to believe in.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, another example, the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he mentioned,
10 men that he promised paradise.
Now he promised many many people paradise
that are not on this list. Right?
His his daughter is not on this list,
but
we know she's the the master, the mistress
of the womb of paradise. Hassan and Hussain
are not of this. So why these 10?
Why do they bring them out and insist?
And tactically? Because
these
10, they they appear in traditions
or reports that are
multiple contested. So So it's part of our
Aqidah. So, Imam
Abu Jafar Taha'awi, he mentions these 10 men
in the creed, in his Aqidah.
We have to believe that that Abu Bakr
and Omar and Rahman and Ali and Abdul
Ahmed and
and one more
that is not coming to me. We have
to tell that
they are in paradise.
And if you notice, if you look at
that 10,
most of these 10
are men that stood in front of
blades and arrows at Barood.
I mean, they really
actualize.
The prophet's life is more important to the
believers than their own lives. So prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam emphasized these are men of paradise.
So many times that they defended them physically.
You know,
they say, you know, what you put they
put themselves on the line defending him with
life and limb. The prophet
reported, and it's to water that these men
are paradise.
Okay.
We did a well known story, in the
Seerah about the conversion of Sayidina Hormann. And
that story is interesting because
it testifies to the fact that the Quran
was being written down
in the Meccan period.
So this is around 615,
616.
So the Beharfell was 610. That's when the
revelation
started. The prophet says, I'm around 40 years
old. Right?
So we're told the 6th year of the
Bayatah,
saying, Naramal, he
he was going to Darul Al Hakam to
kill the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasalam. And then
Nur Ayur ibn Abdullah, he saw him, and
he said, where are you going? And he
said, I'm going to the house of Arakam.
I'm going to kill Muhammad.
So I'm glad he needed to buy some
time for the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
to tell them that Omar is coming. So
he said, don't you know your sister is
already Muslim?
He said, what? My sister Fatima? Yes. So
he goes to Fatima's husband his brother in
law's house. His name was Sahid.
So he goes there and he could hear
the Quran being recited. There was a scribe
in the house of him, Khabab, because Sahid
was illiterate. And he's reciting the Quran, and
that said no more breaks in. And we
know the story, Khabab, he hides under some
furniture or something. And then takes the,
the papyrus
that was that they were reading. It was
the actual manuscript
that they had written Quran on. And she
put it under her gown, and then Hormoran
Sahid, they tussle a little bit. He kinda
throws them down, Fatima comes and he strikes
her, and then she starts bleeding. We know
the story that he became full of remorse.
Then he said, let me look at that
thing that you were reciting.
So in in in she tells him, your
nudge is in your in your shirk.
You have to go wash yourself. He goes
wash yourself. So he reads it in Surah
Paha,
and it's interesting in Surah Paha because the
prophet
he said, is like Musa.
Armada is like Musa. They have a sort
of common temperament,
and they're they're very
just. They have a
And saying that Arman was so just,
he had Aidala in his physical body. He
was ambidextrous.
He could take a pen in each hand
and write equally at the same time like
this. That's how much Adar that he had
even in his physical body.
So you know the beginning of the surah
is about Musa alayhis salam.
You know,
Taha
is one of the names of the prophet,
but
according to the Metcen dialect according to ibn
Abbas, Taha also means, oh, reader, oh, man.
We do not we do not reveal this
for for it to be a source of
distress
for you. So say no more.
It's like it's very personal message and then
we have the story of Musa Alaihi Salam.
And he was reading about Musa Alaihi Salam.
That sounds he might like this guy. I
think it's Musa, alayhis salaam.
This is what converted it. You know, this
manuscript, we might actually have it, the very
manuscript.
The oldest manuscript of the Quran on earth
was recently discovered. It's called the Birmingham manuscript.
And I've actually spoken with the scholar that
founded.
She's,
her name is Alba Fadelli.
What country is she from?
She's from Germany,
I'd love to say.
She actually gave a lecture at UC Berkeley
and had a chance to talk to her.
So they've had the manuscript, but they've misidentified
it for years.
You know the guy you know, you remember
Cadbury Chalkas?
Cadbury Cream Egg. So mister Cadbury,
he was sort of
a very rich man and he would sometimes
fund these expeditions
into the Middle East.
So one such expedition, his group found these
Koranic manuscripts
that they took back to England.
So they they they saw this manuscript and
they mislabeled it. They thought it was much
later than they thought.
Recently, doctor Fidelity, she looked at the manuscript
and ran tests on it,
and she discovered that
the earliest date possible
for this text,
is 568
CE.
The latest is 645.
And that's a very big swing by the
way. 568 is before the birth of the
prophecy 7.
So I asked her, why is this gap
so large?
It's not that old. And comparatively speaking, I
mean, you have dinosaur bones that are millions
of millions. And she said, yeah, it is
kind of a large gap.
So I said, why is it why is
it such a large gap? And I said,
is it because maybe they want to add
some controversy to it and try to say
that it's a pre
Islamic
Christian manuscript or something.
And she has it. I don't know about
that, but it is it is kind of
a wide gap.
They have to add some controversy. There was
another professor that was there who
was almost falling out of her chair because
she was so excited about this manuscript. But
she wanted to ask, she to wait till
the very end. She said, so what's so
different about this manuscript?
Like, how what's what's different about it than
the Quran that Muslims have now? And then
doctor Fidelity was just like, you know, there's
no dots and there's no vowels. And she
was, well, I know that. What else?
So what? Nothing.
You got it. You got it. She's very
mad. She wanted something to, like, another sort
of or something.
Okay.
So this story, you know, it's it's interesting
because it does prove that the Quran was
written down in the Mecca period.
There's a hadith in Bukhari,
where
Zaydan Douthat so Zaydan Douthat was the chief
scribe of the prophet, Zohay Hassan.
He was the chief scribe. And
it's interesting. He was actually taught how to
read by a Mushrik who was taken his
captive at Badem.
So when the Muslims defeated the Mushrikim at
Badem,
some of them were taken as captive. And
the prophet said,
I I'll release you if you teach how
to if you teach 10 Muslims how to
read and write.
So Zay was one of the Muslims that
actually was taught how to read and write
from a bush lake that was caught captive
at Mattha, and he became the chief scribe
of the prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam. And he
spent time in the tribes of Mani and
Sarai, and he learned Hebrew
in 3 weeks or so.
Right? So he was multilingual,
and he would use
he would refute their their texts and their
theology.
So he was a chief. He said,
he relates to hadith and timidity. I was
the neighbor of the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam. So say he used to live right
next door to the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam.
Well, he says whenever the,
Wahi would descend upon the prophet,
he would send for me and I would
come and write it down for him.
Right?
And,
it says in a hadith and buhay
that the prophet
he kept an ink pot in a scapula
bone,
in his own house according to.
So scapula bone means something to write on,
like, something that you can write something. The
bones were used for, like, crude paper,
and the prophet would order him to write.
The Quran is also called that a keytab,
the book, which can have different meanings.
One meaning is something written.
Right? So even the word Kitab suggests, there's
Kitab
happening
at the time of the Quranic revelation. People
are writing it down even before Medina.
Kitab also means a proper book or codex.
So that was not at the time, but
probably says synonym. Some they were gonna say
this is a prophecy,
but eventually it would become a book.
Kitab is also synonymous with a revelation. So
Kitab, linguistically,
is a form 3 infinitive,
which simply means some sort of correspondence
between 2
entities.
So key tab doesn't necessarily mean something written,
but some sort of correspondence between 2 because
form 3 is associative.
Right? So for example,
to write to someone.
Just means to write.
You're writing to someone. You're corresponding.
Someone else is reading it or receiving it.
So not necessarily something written. Just like
means to kill someone.
Means to engage with another party, and you're
both mutually fighting.
However, there is a hadith in Bukhari and
Muslim. Very interesting hadith. The prophet said, because
if you if you go back in time,
if you were to meet the Sahaba,
and if you met a Sahabi at random,
you said, do you have the Quran?
Right? Do you have the Quran?
He would say yes, and you put your
hand up like this.
So what are you doing? You you want
some food or something?
No. Give me the Quran. I said, what?
Give you the Quran.
So when you say the Sahabi, you have
the Quran, he has it in his mind
to say what portion of the Quran do
you want? What do you want me to
recite to you?
Right? So this idea of writing down the
Quran, although it was happening at the time,
it's not like, you know, this is a
code and here's a book, here's the Quran.
Right? However, there is a hadith from Bukhari
Muslim.
Very interesting.
Do not take the Quran on a journey
with you.
For I am afraid, lest it should fall
into enemy hands.
So here he's not talking about don't take
your Quran in your memory with you. That's
not what he's obviously referring to. So he's
referring to anything
that you have that has Quran written on
it. He's not talking about Musaf. There's no
codex yet. That's later. That comes at the
table of Uthman. We'll talk about that. So
you go on a journey, don't have a
piece of paper. It's probably good for us
now. Right?
When you're traveling overseas, don't have anything.
There's a brother who, this was a long
time ago. We had he had a book,
2 Tabula Assasi,
book 1. Very basic book on Arabic.
The last lesson has a picture of the
United Nations building.
The last lesson is a picture. So he
said he was stopped at the airport and
he flipped through his book and they saw
that picture. And they said they they looked
at every page.
It took
hours. And so what is what is that?
That's the United Nations book. What's it doing
in this book? So I don't know. It's
a very big lesson.
And and he said, read it. He said,
I can't read it. It's the last lesson.
I'm like, no lesson 5.
So he refuses to read this. He said,
I can't read it. I don't know how
to read it. And they know how to
read
it. So they actually read it and said
it's harmless. They wanted to see what he
was going to say.
Anyway
And then,
so we come now to Jamrul Puran, the
collection of the Quran.
It's called Jamrul Puran.
And the Quran must say Jamrul Al Quran
has two meanings. One meaning is to memorize
the Quran, right, to collect it in your
mind. That's a form of Jamr.
And also to, write down the Quran and
preserve it.
Allah
says, it is upon us to collect it,
to collect the Quran. It is upon us
to collect the Quran.
17.
So what he says, the entire Quran was
written down at the time of the prophets
of Allah,
But it was written on rudimentary
materials.
It was written on crude paper
and parchment. So papyrus,
papyrus is like leaves
that's made into paper, is very fragile.
Parchment is animal skin.
So the Birmingham manuscript is written on parchment
that's why it lasted so long.
The virus just kind of to imagine holding
a leaf putting a leaf in your closet
for a 100 years, and then taking it
out and just
disintegrates. That's papyrus.
Right?
And, you know, parchment was expensive. To make
one codex, to make one of Usmani codex,
300 animals have to be slaughtered.
It takes 300 animals to have enough skin
to write one codex.
So they're very expensive.
Yeah. Sin Sin Arif Mahdi, we'll talk about
this. He had a few copies of the
Imam manuscript.
The Imam manuscript is his own personal copy
of the Quran. The archetype he had in
Medina.
You get 5 or 6 copies and he
sent them out into the provinces. And some
people say, why only 5 or 6?
You know, 6 times 300, that's like 2,000
animals. It's very difficult to make one codex.
There's no printing press.
Right? At least not in that part of
the world.
The Westerners get credit for everything.
Gutenberg invented the printing press. Actually, some China
man
invented the printing press long before Gutenberg. But
they get all the printing of Pascal's wager,
say daddy, so the same thing
much before that.
Anyway,
okay.
I
don't know if you saw the opening there,
this is off.
Opening ceremonies with Olympics in Brazil.
They have this guy with a long mustache
driving a flying a plane,
and the commentator comes out and says,
many people are 90 many Americans are confused
right now. So the Brazilians actually believe it
was Brazilian man who invented motorized flight.
It wasn't the Wright brothers.
Right? So they would contest that
in every country
of different people that would they would say,
there's evidence that the ancient Egyptians had electricity
in the pyramids, electricity.
Because they said there's no way they're gonna
build these things
inside of these pyramids.
It's just they wouldn't be able to see
anything. It's impossible. George's gonna work.
So they they have a lot of theories
as how they did that. Some of them
say they had some sort of crude
electrical system.
So there goes your commasadism.
Yes.
Okay. Now you go.
It's okay.
That's not that's not a big deal. As
long as we have that job, everything's in
in your mind.
So so the and so, you know, papyrus,
you have parchment, you have leaves, you have
animal bones.
It was not codified.
When I say codified, I mean bookified.
You know,
biblicized, if you will. It wasn't made into
a book of Quran until later.
It wasn't brought together
as a single codex or scroll until after
the passing of the prophet of Eliza.
So different companions at the time the prophet
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, they had different portions of
the written Quran.
And there were 100 if not 1000 of
Rafa'ah.
However, the prophet salam alaihi wasalam, according to
sacred sources,
himself fixed the arrangement of the Suras,
and would recite it as such. There's an
opinion, it's a mine it's a minority opinion
amongst Muslim ulama that say that Uthman actually
arranged the surah of the Quran. He basically
went from the largest to the smallest. Remember
I mentioned that,
maybe last time or the time before that.
So that's a minority opinion. That's sort of
the western the stent, the dominant opinion amongst
Western,
Islamicists,
Theo and Noldeke,
the history of the Quran, the standard Western
text.
Because all pre modern books were like that.
The Mishnah is like that. They have the
largest sections, and then as you read along,
it gets shorter and shorter. The New Testament
is like that.
But there are multiple hadith that say the
prophet the prophet of Eliphazim himself would recite
the Quran in this order. It's not a
big deal because the Surah is coherent
literary
unit. Right? So if you read a Surah
and you come to the end, that's the
end of the Surah.
Right? It's not like you have to read
the Surah after.
Right? It's not it's not a must to
do that. Although sometimes the prophet would
join Surah in prayer,
but it's not a must that you have
to do that. Like for example, if necessary,
we would always recite what Luha and in
the every
single time.
And he said that he got that from
the prophet.
There's nothing incumbent upon you to do that
though. If you're in prayer and recite Duhah,
you can recite it in the in the
next rakah. It's
okay. Right? So that's a sunnah of the
prophet said to do those 2 together.
Okay.
And the Hanafis have these
interesting rules about what to recite and which.
So one of the Hanafis, you can't skip
one Surah. I can't single a Surah out
like that. It isn't like that. So if
you do
the first Raqam, you can't do,
because you skipped 1 surah. It's considered Magru.
And at the Hanifa and the Hanafis, they
don't like it if you recite backwards.
So the first raga, you do Ikhlas,
and the second you do Topham,
because then you're moving backwards. They don't like
that. Even if you're going in chronological
order.
Right? If it's not in the what's known
as the canonical order of the Quran. Canonical.
So and so forth. And that's that's the
order we should we should follow according to
the high of these schools. We don't do
that.
Oh,
and prayer is still valid. Shadrach, but it's
considered something
that's a reprehensible
Dislike.
So there are multiple hadith. There are 3
hadith
that describe something called as Mo'araba.
Mo'araba
form 3 again,
means a mutual presentation.
This was witnessed by multiple Sahaba, including Fatima
and Zaid and Uthman ibn Mas'ud, that the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam on the last 10
nights of Ramadan,
he would go and Iftikaf in the Masjid.
He would have seclusion in the Masjid,
and Jibreel alaihi salaam would sit with him
and they would present Quran to each other.
So Jibreel alaihi salaam would in a sense
review his
recitation
every year. Jibreel alayhis salam recite the Quran,
the prophet would repeat. This was witnessed this
was inside the Masjid. So this was visit
this was witnessed by multiple Sahaba. The last
10 nights of Ramadan,
during the Mehdi period every year.
And in the final year of the prophet
said,
this happened twice. So he was 29th in
the Iqtaq, his final year, his final Ramadan.
So he reviewed the Quran twice, and the
Sahaba said, this is the order in which
he recited the Quran.
The canonical order is the way he recited
the Quran, not the chronological order. So he
didn't begin again with
and then end with whatever is at the
end, the last 2 eyes of Tovah or
something in Beltran. We'll talk about that.
He presided according to the common court
because the Quran is a
every sort of is a distinct literary unit.
Okay.
So there's 3 stages of collection.
Three stages of collection of the Quran. The
first stage is at the time of the
Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
So at the time of the Prophet Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam, the Quran was feastsuludines.
It was in the hearts of humanity.
In other words, they memorized it. This again
was an oral culture.
Right? Shefid was always primary over Kitabah.
Memory always took precedence over the written text.
Now it's the other way around.
But at the pre modern world, most cultures
were oral, and we said even in
Athens at the time of Socrates and Plato,
90% of the populace was literate.
And it was also written on various scattered
rudimentary materials.
Right? So the entire Quran was written,
and it was written on these
different types of materials and and 100 if
not 1000 of Sahaba
had the entire Quran collectively.
That wasn't such a big issue.
The big issue was they all had many
of them had it memorized.
Right? The recitation of the Quran is established
by oral transmission.
In an oral society, it is always primary.
Orality today is secondary.
So today, if you go to a masjid,
and you stand behind an imam, and he
leads the prayer, and he recites something that
you don't recognize, and you go home and
look in your mussaf, and you can't find
it, it's not Quran.
And the guy leading is probably a federal
agent.
So I found his batch number.
But at the time of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam, if you stand behind him
and he recites something, and you go home
and look into your papers, your leaves, and
your parchments, and your papyri, and you don't
find it there, your collection is
incomplete. He is right. So write it down.
That's why we have Masahif attributed to Ibn
Mas'ud and Ubayi Nukaab, Ibn Abbas that are
not complete.
If it's authentic, there's a big issue.
A very good book that I recommend
on this topic is by M. M. Al-'Alami.
It's called the,
the compilation of the pharaonic text.
It's a book I teach at Zaydunath to
the
sophomores.
It's a really comparison between
the compilation canonization of the Quran,
in comparison to the new and old testaments.
And he has a beautiful chapter, chapter 13
in the book, an appraisal of the so
called Mus'haf of the good maser.
So there's a lot of questions about this
is really like Ibn Mas'ar'ud. Anyway, Ibn Mas'ar'ud's
Mus'af,
quote unquote, is missing Al
So some Western Islamists say, look, Ibn
ibn Nasrud, he didn't believe that this Quran,
which is completely ludicrous.
Because 3 of the 7 canonized the Quran.
3 of the 7 come from Ibn Mas'rud.
And and all of those
that recite Al Fatiha.
So if the morality
of Suraj al Fatihah is without question, why
did he not write it down?
All the whole island?
Maybe he just thought it was axiomatically
obvious that this is Quran. Why should I
write it down? And this is almost half
in his own personal collection. And so Sahaba
have notes. They they put hadith in the
margin.
So Western scholars look at that and say,
look, they think this hadith is Quran.
Right? In the margin, and in all the
cases, oh, look, this is an extra surah
of the Quran.
We got
it. No. It's a dua. Because the prophet
says after fajr and after Maghrib, sometimes he
would raise his hands and make dua in
the prayer.
And this is what he would say, and
this is up, wrote it down. It doesn't
mean that this
is Quran.
Right? But they tried things. Right? It's like
the lady, you see, probably like,
what's wrong with them? What's the with the
men's group?
So there's certain things they look at.
They they just want you know, the the
Christians every so often they find this,
like, the Dead Sea Scrolls. Well, no, it's
not really Christian. The Nag Hammadi Library of
1945.
New gospels.
Right? That's what they discovered. The gospel of
Thomas.
Woah. This kind of blows the lid off
of what we have in the bible. Right?
It's so different. There's no passion. There's no
death of Christ
in the gospel of Thomas.
So they're looking for something like that. They
wanna find like, woah, you know, here's,
you know, I don't know.
Here it is.
The shia will write. You know, with Lan,
he took out these verses.
Not all Shia believe that. Very few minority.
We'll talk about that as well.
Again, this is one of those big conspiracy
theories. Right? Say that Rekman was able to
remove verses of what I had made, and
he was able to convince every single Muslim
in the world to do the same and
to
keep it too big of a lie to
be true.
A 9.
Okay.
Anyway,
so and then the second stage of collection.
So so the first stage of collection, feast
adoring mess. The second stage and and then
written on various rudimentary materials. The second stage
of collection during the time of the
first cave.
We're scattered portions of the Quran. We're gonna
talk about this process. Scattered scattered portions of
the Quran
were compiled,
and their contents were transcribed
upon
scrolls.
And these are papyri.
So before scrolls, this is no longer extent.
The vicissitudes of time have taken away the
scrolls from us.
We don't have them.
And then the 3rd stage
is the time of say Northman,
where the contents of the scrolls were transmitted
on parchment
and made into a mushaf,
a codex, a book,
a proper book. These scrolls are cumbersome because
you have to you have to open them
like this. You were meant to probably not,
but I have. That that you're a synagogue.
Probably not. Right?
Maybe. Yeah. I mean, I'm not many synagogues.
I do a lot interfaith work.
Don't get the wrong idea.
And so,
you know, they have this huge Torah scroll
which has a hole with these 2
large pieces of wood, and you just sort
of unwind it like that. That's a traditional
way of sort of reading the Torah.
So initially, the Quran was written on scrolls
and then the codex is so much nicer.
I mean, this is
this is a codex.
It's nothing. It's light. I can hide it.
I can sneak it out of the plane.
And look how much ink is on this
little book. It's amazing.
So it's really in the air mind that
we can have a codex.
So,
you know, codex at the time of Siggur
from our mind.
Okay.
If you look on
if you have a book, maybe you can
look on someone else.
Maybe you could share it. Page
36 and 37 of the Mount Denver.
36 and 37.
So let's talk about this a little bit.
There's a good job here, the chronology, the
written text.
So you have top left. Right? The prophet
says, prophet that commences, the Beata
around 610,
you move to the right first revelation of,
translated orally. Right? 610 to 632, we have
the promise, say, sallam, in Mecca and Medina.
So 6 10 to 6 22
is the Mecca period, about 85
Suwad or Mecca, 85 of them.
In 622
to 632,
you have the Madani period about 29 Suwar.
We go to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam We have continuous revelation on numerous occasions
to 114
surah,
about 62
36,600
36 verses in the Quran.
It's about the size roughly of the New
Testament.
Transmitted orally after memorization by many and writing
down revelation by various companions upon the direct
instruction
of the prophet SAWSAWSAWANAM,
we said that Soulti and Al Katadah, they
put the number of the people of the
bench around 900.
The chief scribe of the prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam, Zayd ibn Ufabbid.
632, the the death of the prophet, Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam.
Last revelation, a few days before this, the
last ayah of the Quran
according to Imam al Suyuti
is most likely Surat Al Baqarah verse 281.
So it's
not
This verse this day I have perfected your
religion.
Right? You know this in Al Maeda.
That's a portion of verse 3 of Surah
Al Maeda. This was revealed at Hajjatul Wada,
the farewell pilgrimage.
So there's more Quran revealed after that. The
word Hamasay, perhaps the meaning of
the Kamal of the Deen here means that
there's no more
Akham revealed after this Ayat. There are no
more verses
of the Quran to have jurisprudential,
effect to them.
Right? But there's still Quran coming to the
prophet, Subhanahu alaihi sallam.
The type of Ayat that will be classified
as Ma'ad,
and we talked
about,
the thematic categorization
of the Ayat of the Quran.
Ma'at was the most prevalent type of theme
of the early revelations,
and it also ended the revelation. So the
Quran comes full circle. So chapter 2 verse
281,
fear the day in which you will be
returned to Allah.
This is the final ayah of the Quran.
Some of the arelamas say, the last 2
ayahs of atorba or the last
ayaas.
This is a dominant opinion. It's 2281.
The last surah of the Quran complete chapter
is.
This is Madani but revealed at Mecca. So
anything after the hijrah is Madani.
But this was actually revealed to the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasalam when he was in Mecca
but after the hijrah, so it's considered Madani.
And
this is a reference to the Fat HaMecca
and,
Rebecca, when he heard the Surah, he began
to cry. They asked him why, he said
this means the the death of the prophet
said that is imminent.
Complete revelation left behind
in the memories of various companions as well
as on various written materials.
632 to 634, have the record's caliphate. 633,
we have a battle called the battle of
Yamama.
It's in 11 Hijri,
12 Hijri, something I think 11 Hijri.
So 633 Battle of Yamama, this was against
Mosay Leena Al Kaddal, a man who was
claiming to get profit.
He was killed in this battle by Washi.
So,
during this time,
many of the Rafaf
were also being killed in other military expeditions
as well.
And so,
saying Nar Hamari comes to say in Abu
Bakr, this is mentioned in Bukhari.
He said we should collect the Quran onto
scrolls.
And Abu Bakr's immediate
response
was, this is bida,
which you're suggesting.
This is an innovation. This is something the
prophet never did.
Right? We should how can we do that?
And then Sayidina Ahmad was able to convince
him. Now they have each jihad.
Right? They sit down and discuss what are
the pros and cons of this. So you
just get every there's an idea that every
bid dies in the in the fire. Islam
is a way of speaking.
Right? It's not to be taken literally.
Obviously, every Bida
that has no basis in religion.
Right? There's no basis in religion,
then those are to be rejected.
But this is something that,
has a basis,
because
you know the Sahaba want people to preserve
the Quran because it's followed to recite the
Quran in prayer.
Right? So he sat down and he was
able to convince of the prophet Sadiv that
this is indeed a good thing.
Right? So that her father being killed, and
that's a problem because hefib in this time
in this time, this pre modern time is
always
prioritize over Kitabah, over what's written.
So now, you know, the Chafa are dying,
We should use what they've remembered, memorized, and
finally write it down.
Right? So, however, Siddiqi agrees and then they
call for Zayd ibn Tabith.
And they say to Zayd, we have a
project for you.
You are going to
be in charge of
the transcription of the Quran on the scrolls.
Right? And then Zeyef's response is,
this is Bidah.
How can I do this? When Shadrach says,
I'll bid on bid that time.
This is dominant opinion. This is standard opinion.
Bida' is of 2
kinds. There's Bida' Hasala and Zarkasna.
There's good and bad Bida'ah.
Right? Technically, the teshqim,
you know,
what do you call it? Zeb, Zeb, Tesh,
Fatha, Kasra,
Bomma,
technically, that's Bridah.
You, look at any Uthmani manuscript. You won't
find? You know, there's other question.
So let's let's just, you know, forget about
it. No. It helps people read the Quran
correctly.
It's a good thing. The lines in the
last year, technically, they're not.
God. Those are the prophets mosque. Well, no.
No. I don't know. No. But at the
time the prophets said, I'm gonna go lions
in the mosque.
Right? But there's those people lying on. No
problem.
Okay.
So Zayd,
he goes to the Masjid and he calls
for all of the Sahaba who have any
piece of Quran to bring it to the
mosque.
He wants to know what the Sahaba are
considering to be Quran. What do you think
is Quran? What do you have in your
house that you think is Quran? Bring it
into the masjid.
And what does he do? He checks it
against his memory and the memory of his
memories of his committee.
So you have the entire Quran. So what's
the purpose of this? Is to ensure total
accuracy
to align the written Quran with its oral
recitation.
And based on the ayah, ayah of
Daym,
and, have 2 witnesses from your men to
bear witness. 2 men of good standing
were required, who were present at the time
when the prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam
was given
that portion of the Quran, whatever it is.
At the time it was revealed to him
2 witnesses who were there at the time
of the walking,
Or
they were in the Masjid for example, because
sometimes the Prophet said, receive Quran when he
was with Aisha or by himself or somewhere
else. The first time that the prophet said,
salam,
presented these ayahs in prayer in the Masjid.
Two witnesses for every piece of Quran that
was brought.
Okay?
So,
Zayd, he wrote down,
and then he he discovered that
that everything that was brought into the Musqid
matched what was in his memory, in the
memories of the Rafal.
The end of Tova, the last two eyes
I mentioned, there was only a singular attestation.
So Abu Hossein al Ansari,
he was actually,
the only witness they could find for the
those final 2 ayahs,
of at Tawba.
But many heard of those ayahs from the
prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Salam thereafter.
So even Hajar considered it.
So Zayd wrote it down in the Sorof.
The reason why there was only a single
active station probably because it was they were
the last Ayahs revealed or some of the
last Ayahs revealed. But many somehow have heard
it from the prophet
thereafter, later on,
from them.
Okay.
Now so
the,
Quran is written on these scrolls.
And during the caliphate of Sayidna Herma,
the Suruf
are
kept by Hafsa,
the daughter of Sayidna Umar, who's a widow
of the prophets of Elayza, is mentioned in
Bukhari.
Now we have the caliphate of Sayidna Umar,
644
to 56.
The shulkerf remain with Hafsa vid Irma.
653,
you have, military campaigns against Armenia,
and Azerbaijan, and other non Arab lands.
Khurulayfa
comes to say,
and he says to him there are serious
differences
amongst the Muslims in the provinces. They're making
errors
in the recitation.
So we have to understand,
the
the non Arabs,
right,
on the frontier,
cities that are being newly converted,
people that are becoming Muslim, non Arabs,
Farsi speaking peoples. They have fragmentary
manuscripts of the Quran written in shorthand.
Shorthand Arabic is extremely difficult to read even
if you're Arab.
Extremely difficult. There's no dots.
There's no vowel notations.
Right? It's very difficult to read. You can
actually look at the Birmingham manuscript if you
go on the website and just sit there
and try to read it. You'll be you
won't even recognize the best meta. That's how
difficult it is to read. Right?
So you have non arrows.
Right? That are trying to read this text
and they're making
grave errors.
So you're allowed some leeway with with
dialect,
and it doesn't change the meaning. It's okay.
For example,
some people refuse to correct their,
but if you say, what is Zama mean?
You know, okay.
You haven't changed the meaning.
Right? But that's not the very that's not
very good. It's not the best touch we
Izaja,
there's a brother one time, older man, we're
taking touch we classes.
And he said, Izaja, and then the the
grandma said, okay. I got it. John. He
just refused to take correction. So this is
how I was taught since I was
a kid.
And then the well, I was like, so
what? It's not correct. So we'll it's not
correct. Am I am I, you know, saying
something wrong? Is it against the 4? I
said, no. But but sometimes it does make
a difference. For
example, in in Yemen,
the Qaf is pronounced good.
Is it
And that's acceptable. It's okay. It's langja. It
doesn't change the meaning. It's acceptable
variance, if you will. Dialectical variance
within the acceptable dialectical parameters.
Right? But sometimes it it changes the meaning
completely.
Or sometimes people, you know, they think they
turn the into a
So Mohammed becomes Mohammed. Mohammed means something completely
different.
And they give Avan like that. Or they
make Avan and say,
shut down. Come to the farmer.
Come to the farmer.
But there was a man who was giving
a lot in the past,
and he said, and then he was stopped
by the authorities. So who taught you
Said, nobody. Said, don't ever make it again.
Because you made it into a question.
Oh, is God great?
Is God great? So they thought he was
trying to do something. He said, no. I
don't know what I'm doing.
Or I would ask what I do one
time you heard a man reciting the prayer.
And the man said,
and he went.
I just like to leave prayer. I said,
don't do it again.
Because he completely changed the meaning.
That's the correct reading.
So God and his prophet have dissolved all
obligations
from the moshakin.
Not God has dissolved all obligations from the
moshakin and the prophet.
That God
withdraws his trust from the prophet.
So,
you know,
that's the difference.
They say world of difference.
So there's acceptable variance.
The the house, they say
owner.
Right? Houses from the
Nafiyyah is reading in North Africa.
Means king. Owner king. Acceptable variants. Allah's both
of these. And both of these readings are
that go back to the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam.
Right?
Or we talked about the wudu verse.
Once
several, 1 is accusative, 1 is genitive. Wash
your feet, wipe your feet. Both are acceptable.
Wash your feet is the normal state.
Wipe your feet if you're having if you
wear a clothes thing, if you have socks
on. Both readings are.
That's interesting thing about Arabic
is that,
you know, in English, you sort of just
have to repeat the same thing and tweak
a little bit. In Arabic,
you can
move the teshil around and get a different
meaning with the same rasam,
the same continental skeleton.
Okay.
So this was happening with the non errors.
So you can imagine,
you
know, what if you took the continental skeleton
of one word?
This is what's in the manuscript.
These early manuscripts.
So
how do you read that?
Well if you're a half of the Quran
and you know it's before and after
you can probably make a very good guess
if you're half of the Quran, you don't
even need this If you've been top of
Quran, you've memorized it. If you're an Arab,
maybe you can get it.
Right? But what is what can this be?
It could be
he killed.
It could be
an elephant.
It's It's a big difference between he killed
an elephant.
It could be he was killed, past that
voice.
It could be
before
before.
It could it could be he massacred.
He was massacred.
He kissed.
He was kissed.
So this is a big problem.
Right?
And shorthand,
90 strokes.
They don't have yeah, John. Yeah. John are
these diacritical thoughts,
and they don't have Tashkhi,
vowel notations.
So non Arabs in these non Arab lands,
they're reciting
what we're on completely incorrect. They're changing words,
changing meanings.
Right?
Now what's happening in Arabic lands,
you have these fragmentary
manuscripts of the Quran
that are written,
with the spelling
of different Arab tribes.
Okay. Different Arab tribes.
So the Quran is revealed in the dialect
of Quresh
and there is a difference of opinion. What
are the 7
of the Quran? One opinion is the or
7 dialects of Arabic.
Another opinion is the Quran was only revealed
in Arabic,
but the Quran has 7
variations in its text.
We can talk about that later.
But you have these different manuscripts of the
Quran written in the in different
spelling conventions.
For example,
English has different their American English has 23
dialects.
Right? There's 23 dialects of American English.
And, you know, these are called like,
Northwest
Midland, and
Appalachian South
and Boston Urban
and like Bay Area, hippie or something.
But then you have in in England, you
have different dialects as well. Right? And and
English, British English and American English sometimes have
different spelling convention.
So the word color is spelled colour.
There's a u in there in British English.
If you try to write down your typewriter,
American English or typewriter
on your laptop,
it'll underline the word in red meaning you've
misspelled it. In America, it's misspelled, in English,
European.
Right? So it's the same with with Arabic,
you have these manuscripts written and written with
the orthography,
meaning spelling style and conventions
of different Arab tribes. Sometimes it doesn't change
the meaning or the tarot, but sometimes it
does.
So now and of course, the Arabs also
at this time were not trained by Sahaba.
They have these sort of,
they have this sort of tribal As Sabina.
Like this this is my tribe, this is
the only this is the correct recitation in
the Quran.
This is the only dialect that I'll accept
from the Quran.
Right?
So you have this idea. For example, the
word Tabut
mentioned in the hadith, the word tabut,
in Qurayshi
dialect is spelled ta alif,
ba, wow,
ta,
Tabut.
But in other dialects that you find in
early manuscripts,
it's spelled Tabut with a Tamabutah
at the end. Tamabutah.
Right? So this came into play during this
time. So Zayd went to Earthman and said,
which one should I write down?
The singer Earthman said, the Qureshi
the Qureshi guy. Tabutes, proper tab.
So what does Sigrid Raheem do?
Is that he
tries to recall all of these fragmentary manuscripts.
He does the best he can, you know.
It's not like, you know, he sent out
his army, you know, give up your manuscript
or, you know, no nothing like that. Right?
He tries to recall them from the major
metropolitan
areas.
Right? From the major massages, major centers, as
much as he can. Brings it back to
Medina, he destroys them, and then,
he has
Zayed,
copy
the Surah of onto a codex.
Okay. So remember Surah were done at the
time of Abu Bakr.
Right? It matches exactly the memories of the
Khafafaf, the early Sahaba.
So you take the Suraf now, and you
you transcribe it onto the Mus'af.
And then 5 or 6 copies
of the original Mus'haf called the Imam manuscript,
the archetype that stayed in Medina. Say that
Earth mom was reading this manuscript when he
was murdered.
And it might still be exited, there is
a there is a
manuscript
in museum in the museum in Istanbul
that that somebody or I must say there's
some markings.
They say that's the blood of Islam, a
lot will happen.
So what he does is then, he makes
5 or so copies
of that codex. These are called the Almsar.
Almsar
with a solid
Almsar.
And these copies are sent to Mecca, Damascus,
Kufa,
Basra,
another one in Medina, and some say one
in Cairo. There's at least 5, possibly 6
copies that were made of the Imam manuscript.
Now how does this solve the issue then?
Oh,
okay.
Do you hear the break?
I'm in the middle. Very okay. Yeah. We'll
come back, John.