Ali Ataie – The Sound Narrative The Preservation of the Qur’an in Sunni Islam
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Yeah. So ulum al Quran may be defined
as and this is Muhammad Ali Sabuni. So
this is in atibyanf irulum in the Quran.
Studies concerned with the book of Revelation sent
down upon the last prophet Muhammad, salallahu alaihi
wasalam.
There's another definition. I don't have it on
the screen here,
but this is by Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani
where he
says, Ullam ul Quran,
he describes Ullam ul Quran as studies concerning
the words of God sent down upon the
messenger, written down in manuscripts, and transmitted to
us continuously without any doubt.
So so what are these,
what are these topics or areas of study?
So So here's just a few of them.
Right?
So we have the Quran's concept and process
of revelation called.
Then we have the collection of the Quran,
Jam'il Quran, the arrangement
and order of the Quran, the composition of
the Quran,
the coherent structure or nazm of the Quran,
the 7 modes, the aharuf and canonical readings,
the qira'at of the Quran,
the study of the transmissional,
chains of narration, the asanid of the Quran,
the manuscripts, the masahif of the Quran, the
occasions of revelation called as Babu Nuzul,
the abrogative
aspect of the Quran called nazkh,
etcetera etcetera,
okay, among other things.
Okay.
So most Muslims have abandoned the study of
traditional texts
concerning these uloom, these disciplines, these areas or
topics of knowledge,
and have rather relied on certain amateur preachers
and apologists
to teach them about their scripture.
And this has led to Muslims abandoning the
Quran altogether.
Okay. And in the Quran, the prophet
is quoted by Allah saying,
that the prophet
is quoted as saying, oh my lord, indeed
my people have abandoned this Quran.
Right? So this is a perennial problem.
So I mentioned preachers and apologists.
Okay. So a preacher is called a wa'iv.
Right?
And a wa'iv is not necessarily
an Alem, a scholar.
Right?
So every Alem,
every scholar could be a preacher,
potentially, but not every preacher is an Alem.
Okay?
In fact, there could be a huge difference
between the 2.
Okay. So one of my colleagues is Zetuna.
He's a Catholic priest,
and this man is just brilliant. I mean,
he is a teacher of the trivium.
He's fluent in multiple languages, just an incredible
breadth and depth of knowledge.
And he's a Christian. Right?
Turn on the TV and you'll listen to
a televangelist,
he's also a Christian.
But there's a major difference between the 2.
Right? One is an alim, and one is
a preacher.
Right?
So there there's nothing wrong with being a
preacher who's not a scholar as long as
that preacher sort of stays in his lane.
Right?
As long as he's in contact or has
recourse to the ulama
and doesn't present himself as a scholar. So
he's not pretentious.
But the problem is that most laity, right,
the awam, the sort of, general Muslim masses,
they can't tell the difference
between a and an
because the,
the preacher looks and sounds the part.
Right?
So even if the preacher says something wrong,
the layperson
will tend to run with it.
Right? Why not? The preacher, you know, had
a beard. He had a kufi.
Quran and hadith are falling out of his
mouth.
Right?
In fact,
I don't know, maybe 99%
of Chutaba,
of of katibs on Friday, who deliver the
Friday sermons across the west, are not ulama.
They're preachers.
Again, this is okay as long as the
preachers are staying in their lane. Right?
And this is why, by the way, this
is just me personally.
You know, I I almost never wear, like,
a turban or even a kufi.
I don't wear a jubba, you know, when
I give lectures or hootbas. This is my
personal
preference. I don't want to give people the
wrong impression. So I'm not an alim in
the traditional sense.
A traditional alim is someone who studied sacred
sciences for
25 to 30 years full time.
Right?
So then why should you listen to me?
Why are you here?
Well, because I will present to you what
the ulama have said.
Okay? Also, some of what I will present
to you will be from the standpoint of
an academic in in the more sort of
Western sense, which is useful as long as
we ground ourselves
in the foundations and frameworks of our traditional
scholarship.
I also use the word apologist.
An apologist is like a dai,
right, basically someone who calls to Allah and
his messenger, which is obviously good. But, again,
there is the danger of conflating
the with the.
Right?
It's like Ahmedidat
Rahimahullah.
He was not an.
Right? He admitted this. This is not slandering
him.
He was a dahi. He was an apologist,
and the word apologist comes from the Greek,
which means a defense.
So an apologist is someone who defends the
dean.
Right? And we need apologists. I consider myself
an apologist
and a preacher to some extent.
But an apologist, again, has to stay in
his or her lane, as it were. Right?
Like I gave a talk one time,
and I said something very flippant about another
religion,
like, sort of disrespectful.
And one of my teachers who is an
alim,
he pulled me into a room, and he
censured me. Right? He, like, really kind of
checked me.
And I said, okay, khalas. I'll be more
careful. Right? I didn't say, oh, Yeah, Sheykh.
You don't know what you're saying, and the
Quran says this, and the Hadith says that.
Right? No.
Right?
And if, you know, we make mistakes, we
should try
to correct ourselves. But the hadith says, honor
the scholars for they are the inheritors of
the prophets.
Right? So we must tread lightly around the
ulama. Now one of the signs of the
sa'a, and this is a major fitna,
is is when the scholars become less and
less accessible
or when the scholars become corrupt. And both
of these both of both of these things
are mentioned in the hadith.
Right? These are signs of the sa'a,
the,
the,
like, the seizing of the scholars and the
prevalence of the,
like the evil scholars. So the secret of
this ummah is the sanad,
the chain of transmission. Right? So if someone
is claiming scholarship but has no sanad, then
be careful.
So anyway, this is a problem as I
see it.
Muslims have relied on amateur preachers and apologists
to teach them about their scripture, and in
fact, they were miseducated
by these preachers and apologists who, in their
zeal to repudiate the Bible
and draw a sharp distinction between the Bible
and the Quran,
they began to assert that the text of
the Quran was
uniformic in nature from its very inception,
that, that unlike the Bible that has numerous
textual variants,
we were told that the Quran has no
textual variants.
And this is, of course, not exactly true.
Okay. This is an inaccurate
sort of a
reductionist,
which is to say simplistic
understanding of the Quran,
that I think has harmed our community. So
basically, these preachers and apologists,
they sacrificed
academic rigor and nuance
for the sake of this sort of inter
religious
one upmanship.
Right? They wanted to score points against the
Christians, basically.
So what is accurate then? What do we
learn from our traditional literature
written by our traditional ulama?
Well, we learn that the Quran has never
been a uniformic text, but rather a multiformic
text.
Okay? And it does have textual variance,
but these are not of the same kind
as those of the Bible.
Okay. Specifically the New Testament. There's a major
difference.
So let me explain this briefly just to
show you the difference. Okay. I hope this
isn't boring for people.
As long as I'm not bored, that's all
that matters. So
several of the textual variants of the New
Test what is the New Testament? The Christian
scriptures.
Right?
With 27 books written in Greek.
So several of the textual variants of the
New Testament
were deliberate changes,
okay, made to the text by scribes
many years after Isai alay salaam,
okay, that were,
that were motivated by theological
rivalries
among early Christian groups.
Okay. So they have theological significance,
and they were written well after the lives
of the autograph authors. Autograph authors means the
original authors.
Okay. And the textual critics know that these
that these were later changes because they have
access to earlier manuscripts, and they can track
these changes.
Now the vast majority of the differences in
the New Testament manuscripts
are accidental
scribal errors,
okay, due to, you know, misspellings.
There's something called parablexis.
That's a nice term for you. Parablexis means
the eye will skip, so a scribe is
copying something. He'll look at the page, he'll
go back, and then he's for example, he's
copying the word,
I don't know, god. Right? He sees the
word god, like theos in Greek. So we'll
write theos, and he'll go back to the
page and he'll see the word theos, but
it's on a different line.
So let's just continue from there, and he'll
skip a section. That's called parablexis. Very, very
common mistake.
There's didography
didography, which means that basically you repeat.
You accidentally repeat a line or a word.
There's something called assimilation of parallel passages,
which is where
a scribe is copying something
and then,
a very common sort of line in a
text, and then he's thinking it's actually another
text, and then he sort of assimilates them,
writes it down in that way.
However, some of the changes were deliberate and
made it into authorized versions of the New
Testament canon. So this is just an example
here. This is called the Johannine Coma.
Right? You see this up here, 1st John
5:7.
This is the only verse in the entire
New Testament that explicitly,
unambiguously
teaches the doctrine of the Trinity.
Okay?
This verse so there are 3 that bear
record in heaven, the father, the word, and
the holy ghost. These 3 are 1. Right?
This verse is not to be found in
the most ancient Greek manuscripts.
Okay. So this verse appeared in Saint Jerome's
Latin Vulgate in the 4th century,
which was eventually declared authentic by the Council
of Trent. This is one of the ecumenical
councils that was held in the 16th century.
This verse entered the Greek manuscript tradition 1522
with Erasmus.
You'll also find it in popular
English translations like the King James version, which
is also called the authorized version. It contains
this Johannine Coma.
But when more ancient Greek manuscripts were discovered
in the 19th 20th centuries,
they noticed that this verse was nowhere to
be found. Today, the major
Greek critical editions
do not contain
this verse.
So for centuries, Christians lived and died believing
that the Trinity was explicitly taught by the
New Testament.
It is not.
Okay. So by contrast then, the so called
textual variants of the Quran,
that are authorized
are firmly traceable
to the prophet Muhammad salallahu alayhi wasalam himself
and are a facet of the very revelatory
nature of the Quran.
Okay? In other words, the authorized Quranic variants
are part of the revelation given to the
prophet himself.
And the evidence of that is the ancient
and mass transmitted tradition of the 7 Ahruf.
So we're gonna talk about this, the 7
Ahruf. It's very, very important.
But but that is a big difference then,
I think, between the Quran and the New
Testament.
Okay? Now are there unauthorized
variants of the Quran?
Unauthorized. In other words, other things other other
versions of verses in the Quran that may
not be recited in prayer, for example? There
are. The answer is yes.
Why are they unauthorized?
Well, the answer is because
the change of their transmission
could not be verified
as being both widely recited
and having their origin in the prophet sallallahu
alaihi sallam. And we'll get into all of
that, Insha'Allah,
and I'll give you specific examples. This is
still the prologue, by the way. We haven't
actually gone to the now, now this is
where let me just finish the prologue. This
is where the enemies of Islam come into
the picture.
Okay. So you have these revisionists
and polemicists.
You see those terms at the bottom there?
Revisionists and polemicists. And and I'll just sit
on these two two terms for a minute.
I'll define them shortly.
So these aren't, like, agnostic, atheist, or Christian
opponents of Islam. So they've taken notice of
the average Muslim's ignorance of his own traditional
literature
and his claim of textual uniformity.
So what these critics they do, they they
dip into our traditional literature, and they pull
out these isolated narrations
that debunk the claim of textual uniformity,
a claim that no real Muslim alim ever
made,
and then they deceptively
present
this to their audiences as evidence that the
Quran is not preserved.
So they'll say something like, in your own
books,
it says that there are 3 versions
of, the 6th verse of Al Fatiha.
It says
with a sod, and then it says
with a seen,
and then it says,
with a za.
Right? So which one is correct?
And then the Muslim who doesn't know any
better says, well, this can't be true.
You must be reading some book authored by
an Israeli agent.
Is that you? That can't be true. Right?
But what the critics don't tell their audiences
is that the traditional Muslim authorities have always
believed that the Quran was revealed in a
multi formic fashion
and that this has nothing to do with
the Quran's preservation. All traditional authorities
maintain that the Quran was preserved
in light of its multiformic
nature.
In other words, these critics, they weaponize
our own literature against us.
Right?
They use our own traditional literature to tear
down these straw men
that ignorant Muslims constantly keep creating
with their misguided claims
of textual uniformity.
And I'll explain what I mean when I
say the Quran is multiformic.
This is an extremely important thing to understand.
What does it mean? Quranic multiformism.
Very, very important. Okay. So who are these
critics then? So these critics, let's start here.
Who is doing this? It seems to me
that it's really 2 groups. You have these
radical historical revisionists.
Okay? A radical historical revisionist. This is someone
who swims
against the tide
of the historical consensus.
Okay?
Like someone who says that, that Isa alaihi
salam never existed, for example. There are people
like this. Right? And they have PhDs of
history that are making this claim.
The second type is the hostile Christian polemicist.
A polemicist is someone who,
is very aggressively
attacks
another religion.
Right? It comes from the Greek,
which means war.
Right? And these two groups are not necessarily
mutually exclusive. In other words,
many of the radical revisionists are atheists and
they're agnostics. They hate religion in general. They're
called antitheists,
but some of them are also Christian polemicists.
Okay?
Okay. So but I wanna begin by talking
about the what's known as the external evidence
of the Quran in the 1st century of
the Hijra of the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi
sallam.
Okay. The Hijra, of course, is the migration
of the prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam and his
followers from Mecca to Medina in 6/22.
So to put it as a question, how
well is the Quran attested in manuscripts, physical
manuscripts that are dated to the 1st century
Hijri?
And again here, perhaps a comparison with the
New Testament will help us put things into
perspective. Comparisons help us understand.
Okay?
So So if if you don't know anything
about typing,
and I said that I could type 15
words per minute,
15 words,
you might say, well,
that's good I guess. Right? I don't know.
But then I said, well, the average is
40.
You say, okay, that's you suck. That's that's
pretty terrible.
Okay. So comparisons help us put things into
perspective. Right?
So this is not an attack on Christianity
or the Bible. This is what I'm gonna
tell you is completely factual.
Okay? If people are offended, then
facts are offensive.
But first of all, how how does a
textual scholar date a manuscript? How do you
date a manuscript?
So according to doctor Haytham Siddiqui, who's probably
the foremost scholar of Koranic manuscripts in the
world, He's the executive director of ICSA, which
is the International Choralonic Studies Association.
Last name is Sidki, s I d k
y.
So according to Siddky, textual scholars basically look
at 3 things, 3 main things.
Okay.
Let's see.
Get them.
Okay. Didn't put that on here.
So there's paleography, there's orthography, and radiocarbon
dating.
So paleography,
okay, looks at letter shapes.
How are words written?
Orthography looks at spelling conventions.
How are words spelled?
And then radiocarbon dating is a type of
scientific analysis
that gives age estimates for carbon based materials.
These are the three main things. Okay. So
paleography looks at what? How words are
what?
Written.
Orthography looks at how words are
spelled,
and radiocarbon dating is scientific analysis that dates
carbon based materials.
Now, Isa alaihis salam, Jesus peace be upon
him, was speaking and teaching the gospel in
the late twenties and early thirties of the
1st century CE.
So how much of the 27 book canon
of the New Testament is attested
in extant manuscripts
that are dated to the 1st century? What
does extant mean? Means we actually have them
in our possession.
Physical manuscripts from the 1st century. And keep
in mind that traditional Christians believe that all
of the books of the New Testament were
written in the 1st century
and that they were all authored by apostolic
authorities,
that is to say eyewitnesses
to Jesus's life and message.
And, of course, many Christian apologists who are
also anti Muslim polemicists continue to hold to
this view, the view that all of the
New Testament was written in the 1st century
by men who interacted with Isa alaihi salam,
peace be upon him, in some way. So
what percentage of extant New Testament manuscripts are
dated to the 1st century? The answer is
0%.
Literally 0.
Okay? The absolute oldest extant manuscript
of the New Testament is the size of
a credit card.
It's called John Ryland's Papyrus number 52.
It contains a few verses of John chapter
18. It's dated to, like, 125 to 150.
Okay?
So let me say it like this. Out
of the nearly 8,000 verses in the New
Testament,
0 are attested in manuscripts
dated to the 1st century.
There are no manuscripts in the New Testament
that are extent from the 1st century.
Okay?
Nothing from the 1st century of Christianity.
The earliest complete copies of the gospels are
from the 4th century.
That's 300 years after Jesus.
Okay. Keep that in mind. Now,
let's see here.
Oh, it's, we're not gonna talk about this.
Okay. Now we said that a radical revisionist
is someone who swims against the tide of
the historical consensus. Right?
Maybe he has good reasons for doing so,
maybe not.
Such a man was John Wansborough.
That's a name that you should be familiar
with. John Wansborough, who's a famous professor,
and vice chancellor
at the University of London's
School of Oriental and African Studies, also known
as SOAS,
from 1985 to 1992,
John Wansborough. And Wansborough had, many famous and
prolific students like Andrew Ripon and Patricia Cronay,
Michael Cook.
So here's here's the problem with these orientalists
and their students,
that they tend to make
and continue to make some very tenuous assumptions
about the Quran.
They assume that the Bible and the Quran
have have have similar literary histories.
This is a big mistake.
In my view, the Bible and the Quran
are in different universes.
There's no no disrespect.
And these orientalists even employed the same sort
of terminology.
Right? They call the Uthmani codex the Vulgate
or the Masoretic text or the Textus Receptus.
They want to draw these
analogs to the Islamic tradition.
Now one of the major critical assumptions of
these orientalists is the following.
They'll say that since the gospels were written
after Jesus, peace be upon him, the Quran
must have also been written after the prophet
Muhammad salallahu alaihi salam.
Okay?
Now most historians, whether they're confessional or non
confessional,
not all but most will place the composition
of the canonical gospels between 71100
of the common era
in the order of,
Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John.
Okay. That's that's pretty standard. That's a a
general consensus among new New Testament historians. This
is not controversial.
This is not revisionist. This is very standard,
very mainstream.
Now John Wansbrough gained worldwide popularity a few
decades ago
by positing the proposition that the Quran was
written in the second half of the 8th
century
in Iraq
by a committee of various authors from the
Abbasid court.
So he was saying that the Quran was
composed during this time. It was created during
this time.
There's no history before this time according to
him.
So Wansbrough basically conceded, when you think about
it, that a solitary, unlettered man living in
the Hejaz in the 7th century could not
have possibly
written such a literary masterpiece.
Right? It must have been a committee
of court theologians and poets and historians.
Now why was Wansburrow so influential
during his time several decades ago? I think
there are three reasons, and I've highlighted them
here on the slide. Generally, Western scholars tend
to underestimate the importance of oral transmission.
They require what's known as
external evidence, that is to say physical evidence,
physical manuscripts.
And during the days of Wansbrough,
advanced Western studies of Qur'anic manuscripts was just
starting to take off,
so many academics
sided with Wansburough due to the apparent lack
of extant Qur'anic manuscripts
that were dated to the 1st century of
the Hijra.
The second reason is again due to a
bad assumption.
Just as we don't have any extant,
New Testament manuscripts that are dated to the
1st century, the century of Jesus, peace be
upon him, there are also probably
no extent Qur'anic manuscripts from the 1st century
Ijdui, the century of the prophet Muhammad sallallahu
alaihi sallam.
And the third reason why I think Western
revisionism takes root when it comes to Islam
is because orientalists tend to employ
what's known as a hermeneutic of suspicion.
Okay? So this idea
that we as Westerners cannot really trust anything
that comes out of the East, and by
the East, I mean the Muslim East.
We must be suspicious about their claims.
Right? So, you know, according to the gospels,
Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem
to fulfill a prophecy.
Zechariah chapter 9, the king of Zion comes
to Jerusalem humbly seated upon a donkey.
But when the Quran highlights similarities
between Musa, alayhis salaam, and the prophet,
it's because the prophet must have been aware
of a prophecy of Deuteronomy chapter 18. A
prophet like Moses would come, and so he
claimed to be him and then tried to
imitate Moses
in order to convince the Jews of Yathrib
that he was a fulfillment of this prophecy.
So you see when Jesus, peace be upon
him, does something, he's authentically
fulfilling prophecy.
But when the prophet Muhammad
does something, he's deceptively
self fulfilling prophecies.
This is called a hermeneutic of suspicion
using a double standard.
Right? So they hear this a lot from,
like, a Christian apologist. They'll say, the prophet
said Islam cannot be a prophet because he
was a warrior,
and a true prophet wouldn't engage in a
war. Really?
You ever read the Bible?
Pick a page at random in the Old
Testament.
Right? According to the Old Testament book of
Exodus, Musa, alayhis salam, ordered 3,000 men killed
in a single day.
One day,
3,000 men put to the sword.
If you look if you ask our historians
about the gazawat of the prophet,
they'll say that maybe 1500 men total were
killed during the entire life of the prophet,
and this was in battle.
So something like a 1,000 mushrikeen
and 500 Sahaba
in 23 years,
1500
on the battlefield, all men.
Right? Compare that to 3,000 in one day,
put up a sword by Musa. But Musa
alayhi wasalam is a prophet, and the prophet
wasalam is not a prophet because he was
a warrior.
Right?
You see this double standard.
Even in New Testament, book of Revelation, chapter
19, we have this, you know, description of
Jesus, peace be upon him, in his second
coming. Right? He's waging war. He strikes down
the nations. His garment is soaked in the
blood of his enemies. This is how he's
described in the New Testament.
Okay.
So on one side, we have the narrative
in our in our sources, like the i'thkan
of Suyuti,
chapter 18 in particular, that the suar and
ayat of the Quran were first uttered by
the historical Muhammad salallahu alaihi salam of Arabia,
and then the text of the Quran was
standardized
by the Uthmanic codex committee around
6 50 of the common era,
less than 2 decades after the prophet.
On the other side, we have the revisionist
narrative
that the Quran is a later sort of
post prophetic,
that is to say 8th century
state sponsored production,
and that the historical Muslim narrative about the
Quran standardization
is wholly fictitious.
So whose narrative is supported by evidence?
Okay. Let's look at the evidence then.
Let's look at the Quran's attestation in its
1st century. So remember we said the New
Testament attestation in its 1st century is not
extant. There's nothing.
There are no manuscripts in the 1st century
of Christianity.
So so here we're looking at the Quran's
attestation
in its 1st century. So we're not talking
about the biography of the prophets, I said,
I'm not talking
about Sira, like biographical sources. I'm talking about
the Quran.
Okay?
So the 1st Islamic century corresponds roughly to
the years 6 22 to 7 22, but
I will limit things to only the 7th
century. So 6 99
of the common era is sort of the
latest date.
There are over 2 dozen
confirmed
1st century Hijri,
that is 7th century CE.
Manuscripts of the Quran extent right now
and many others out there waiting to be
identified.
Okay?
And scholars believe that this number will definitely
increase
as more manuscripts await to be analyzed
in their paleography,
orthography, and radiocarbon dating.
So maybe the most famous manuscript is called
Mingana 1572
a.
This is, that's this technical catalog name, but
you know it probably if you know about
this. The Birmingham manuscript.
Okay. So the Birmingham manuscript was, was initially
misdated
as a 2nd century Hijri manuscript,
primarily because the script was wrongly identified as
being Kufic.
It is in fact Hegazic.
So in in 2011,
a Hungarian graduate student named Alba Fedeli, she's
now doctor Fedeli,
she had the manuscript radiocarbon
dated on a hunch,
and the results were stunning.
It was dated no later than 645 of
the common era
with a 95.4%
accuracy. So that 13 years
after the death of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam. So that is right around the time
Uthman became the 3rd caliph.
Furthermore, manuscript
328 c
was identified as coming from the same codex
as the Birmingham manuscript.
Okay. So this comes out to about 8%
of the Quran,
8%,
dated to within 13 years of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam at the absolute latest.
I mean, based on this dating, one could
make the case
that Mingana 1572
a and manuscript 328 c was originally a
companion codex. In other words, a mushaf
of an unknown
companion
of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
And manuscript 1572 a, contains the beginning of
Surataha.
It's possible that this was a very manuscript
that our mother read and caused this conversion
if that story in the Sira is is
accurate. We have to take Sira with a
with a grain of
salt.
But is it just this 8%?
How much of the entire Quran is attested
in manuscript witnesses from the 1st century Hijri?
The answer is the entirety of the Uthmanic
text.
Okay. There's a website called Islamic awareness. It's
a pretty good website,
and it's listed all Qur'anic manuscripts that are
dated within the 1st Islamic century, and there's
pictures of them.
And according to the researchers who run this
site, Islamic awareness,
these manuscripts constitute up to 96% of the
Quran. However, doctor
believes that this data is outdated
and that it's closer to 100%
of the Quran.
We have 100%
of the Quran in extent
manuscripts,
from the 1st Islamic century.
Okay?
This is the opinion of doctor Haytham Sikli,
doctor Marine van Putten, doctor Sean Anthony, and
these are Western scholars.
And, you know, I obviously
hope they obviously hold certain opinions that that
we won't agree with,
and I'll talk about that. But when it
comes to the attestation of the Quran, we
are all in agreement.
Okay? The entirety of the text is attested
in the 1st century Hijri.
This is without question.
And furthermore,
modern stylometric
analysis
was conducted on the Quran
revealing that the Quran had one author.
It's one man, one person.
So John Wansbrough and his ilk have been,
what,
Definitively
falsified.
Right? They were wrong.
Right? But as they say,
people like this don't die easily. You know,
Marx is still alive. Right? So you know
what the revisionists
are saying now?
They're saying that the Quran must have been
written before
the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. So they
swing to the other extreme.
Right?
So they're saying something like, I don't know,
the prophet found the Quran,
in Mecca sometime, and he liked it, and
then he claimed that he received it as
a revelation.
So this is nothing but wishful thinking.
There's no good evidence for this, but they
have to say something. Right?
So first, the Quran was written after, now
it's before, but it can't be during the
life of the prophet.
Right? So you see this is called emad.
This and the Quran talks about this obstinacy.
Right? It's like a child who says, I
want some jelly beans,
And the parents say, you have to eat
dinner first. No. I want the bag of
jelly beans. I want the whole bag now.
No. You have to eat dinner. No. I
want the jelly beans. No. You have to
eat dinner. Okay. Fine. So the kid eats
dinner and say, here's some jelly beans. I
don't want any now.
Right?
Just vacillating between extremes.
That was the best analogy you can come
up with.
Okay. So according to doctor Sittley, the process
of manuscript dating has become much more accurate
in in recent years.
So some manuscripts, platonic manuscripts, have been reconsidered
and dated earlier because the scientific testing is
getting better. It's improving. So there are a
lot of manuscripts that were considered 2nd century
that are now being moved into the 1st
century of the Hijra.
Okay. For example, doctor Sikki mentions a manuscript
called Sarai Medina 1 a. It's in Turkey,
and it it was believed to be 2nd
century, but now the the dominant opinion is
that it's a 1st century manuscript
written in Hejazic and Kufic, which is more
or less the entire Quran.
Other first century manuscripts, they're listed here at
the the top copy
manuscript in Turkey, which 99%
of the Koran. There's something called the Tubingen
manuscript,
which is 26% of the Koran dated no
later than 6/75.
There's something called the Codex Pericino Petropolitanis,
kind of a mouthful,
46%.
You have Codex BL, that's British Library OR
2 165.
Codex Meshhead, codex 331, codex 331, codex 330g,
and then the the Marcell codices.
And then you have something called the sun
a palimpsest. You see that at the bottom
towards the bottom there?
The San'a Palimpsest. This is also called San'a
1 or c 1,
which is 41% of the Quran,
but a different textual tradition than the other
manuscripts.
And I'll explain what I mean by that.
But by and large, it's identical to the
Uthmani textual tradition.
But we have to talk about why it's
slightly different,
and this is a great topic.
And this is a topic that's being exploited
by anti Muslim polemicists.
This would have demonstrate the Quran is not
preserved. But this this this discovery only supports
the Muslim narrative.
I'll show you how it completely backfired
on the polemices.
Keep that in mind. We're gonna we have
to talk about that later. C 1, the
Sun a Palimpsest. This was a man this
was a manuscript of the Quran that was
discovered in 1972 in Yemen.
That is slightly different than the Uthmani textual
tradition. Okay?
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Some of them destroyed. Some some of them
were written on they they were written on,
in in codices that just sort of wear
over time.
Some of them were probably divided amongst a
lot of these are probably family
Qurans that were divided amongst family members.
Some of them are are just partial Qurans
because at this point, and we'll talk about
this,
orality to precedence over actual written text.
So if you had something memorized, there's no
need to write it down. So basically, the
written text was a memory aid in in
the first generation.
Okay. So there's so so,
Western scholars, they make the another critical assumption
that if a companion did not write something
down, then he must not have believed it
was the Quran. That's a bad assumption,
and we'll we'll talk about that. You
know?
Just to give you an example, there's
apparently, the Mus'haf of ibn Mas'ud did not
have al Fatiha
or the last 2,
of 113 and 114.
So western scholars say then he didn't believe
that these were Surah.
But it's interesting that's the first and the
last page of his musaf,
which are the first pages to get destroyed
over wear and tear. Right?
But we'll talk about that. That's a that's
a very
important topic
that is constantly brought up.
Yeah. Any more questions?
Good question. Yes.
So you're saying that if we take the
revisionist position,
how would a revisionist explain
specific people mentioned in the Quran like the
prophet and Zaid who's a companion?
Exactly.
You know, it's it doesn't it's it that's
why it's a radical revisionist position.
You know?
So Wansburrow, I mean, his
his his insanity doesn't really end there. He'll
say that there never was
a historical Muhammad,
That
this entire thing is fictitious. It was invented
as a political sort of strategy to sort
of take over that part of the world.
Right? Unite sort of Jews, Christians,
and together in this
Jewish Christian movement sort of coalesced into this
new movement called Islam.
Right?
So they would say that these stories are
just invented.
They're they're claiming that there's someone named Zaid
or Mohammed or whoever.
And these stories about
specific sort of events in the Quran,
these are just invented by the authors to
make to give the impression that this is
actually historical
information.
No one believes this anymore except the
radical radical revisionist.
But you'll get people like this. Right? You'll
have people who have really strange opinions,
and they have PhDs, some of them.
That doesn't mean anything.
Anyway, we'll talk more about that if you
follow.
Alright. So
moving on here.
Let's talk about the arof and the taraa.
So
this is very, very important.
This is, like, the essence of it right
here. Okay?
So if you've been sleeping up to this
point, now is the time to wake up
in trouble. So I would translate
as recitational
variations.
It's very difficult to translate.
Okay?
And
is canonical
reading traditions.
Okay. So the very important topic,
And this word is being now weaponized
by anti Muslim Christian polemicists in a major
way.
They are the ones that are presenting this
topic to many Muslims for the first time.
That's a that's not good.
When a Christian polemicist, an anti Muslim
Christian polemicist who's trying to convert you to
Christianity
is is is the first person you hear
about these these things from, then that's that's
not a good sign. Right?
Okay. It's it's well established in our tradition
that the Quran was revealed to the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
upon 7 letters literally.
Sometimes translated as 7 modes. Again, I prefer
7 types of recitational
variations.
From our perspective, the akhruf are revelation. They
are by design. They're not by accident.
The essential purpose of these akhruf, these variations,
is twofold.
The first is theological.
The akhruf enrich our understanding
of the kalam of Allah.
So by making the Quran a multiformic
text,
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala opened up different meanings
for us. We're enriched intellectually and spiritually
by the aharuf.
The aharuf give us a a deeper engagement
with the kalam of Allah. I'll give you
examples inshallah.
The second purpose of the aharuf is practical.
The aharuf are a means of taisir.
They make the Quran's recitation and memorization
easier for us. They give us options.
Okay?
There are multiple correct readings. There is recitational
latitude,
and this is out of God's mercy. Again,
this is by design,
not accident.
The presence of the 7 akhruf is.
This is something as well known and established
in the religion.
It cannot be denied. It's not some secret.
It's mentioned in numerous ahadith
across multiple volumes, Bukhari, Muslim, Tilmidi al Nisayid,
Muslim Ahmed, Muwata Matic,
Musannath ibn Abi Sheba, etcetera, etcetera. Over 20
Sahaba
mentioned this in our hadith corpus.
It's considered by many mutawaterlahvi.
What is mutawaterlahvi?
It means mass transmitted
in its very wording.
And the most eminent secular
textual critics and historians of today maintain
that the tradition of the 7 akhruf likely
goes back most likely goes back directly to
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam himself
because of the popularity and antiquity of this
tradition. In other words, the tradition of the
7 akhruv was not invented by later Muslim
scholars
as a way of explaining why there's recitational
variance
in the Quran.
Historically,
the source of the tradition
of the akhruv was the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam, and he used it as a
way of explaining
why there was recitational variance in the Quran.
So that is very important.
So just a couple of hadith here.
The prophet said according to Ibn Abbas recorded
by
He said
that Gabriel read the Quran to me in
in one haruf,
one mode,
and I continue to ask for increase
until it reached 7 aharuf.
The other hadith here from Imam Ahmad, this
is probably the most famous one, There was
a dispute between
Umar and Hisham.
So Umar and
Hisham Ibn Hakim
They each read the same verse from Suratul
Furqan differently.
Okay? There was a slight difference. They went
to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
And in fact, the Hadith says that Omar
dragged Hisham
by his collar to the prophet, sallallahu alaihi
salam. So you see the Muslims from the
very beginning were very intent
on getting the Quran exactly right,
okay, and investigating readings that were quest questionable.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam asked Umar
to recite.
So Umar recited and the prophet said,
Like this it was revealed.
And then the prophet
asked Hisham to recite. So Hisham recited.
And the prophet said,
Like this it was revealed.
And then he concluded by clarifying
a famous statement,
Indeed, the Quran was revealed in 7 modes
or 7.
So recite what is easy for you.
And just a third report, Imam Muslim reports,
that Ubay ibn Nukab said that he entered
the mosque,
and he heard the recitation of 2 other
companions that were different from each other, as
well as different from his own.
So even So even a great companion like
Ubayy ibn Kab was initially puzzled
by this multiformic
aspect of the Quran. It's very unique to
the Quran.
Then the prophet said he explained the akhruf
and their purpose to him and the doubt
left him.
So this hadith actually supports our narrative that
there were several
companion reading traditions
before the standardization
of the text by the Uthmani Codex Committee.
Okay? This was what the committee had to
work with, and we'll talk about that, inshallah.
Very important.
The Uthmanic Codex Committee.
There are many other reports as well, but
here's the main point I want to emphasize
again is that it is most probable
historically
historically
that the Prophet
himself is the source of these recitational variations
in the Quran,
that he recited the Quran in various ways,
and that he claimed that the reason for
this was the 7 aroof. Now a Christian
or an atheist or a secular historian will
say that he doesn't believe that the prophet
is receiving these words from God.
That's fine. Whether the prophet is receiving revelation
or not, it makes the most sense historically
to attribute at least a portion of these
textual variations
to the Prophet himself.
Okay? Now a historian might claim
that other recitational
variations that Muslims regard as authentic
sprang up after the prophet as well.
Okay? I mean, I don't agree with this,
and I'll show you why, but I think
it must be acknowledged by historians that the
recitation of the Quran as a multiformic
phenomenon
has a prophetic
provenance, that is to say a prophetic origin,
that at the very least the starting point
of these variations
is not in the post prophetic period.
Okay? So I think that the most an
unbeliever or skeptic could say is, okay, fine.
The prophet invented the concept of the akhruv
because he couldn't remember everything he had previously
said.
Of course, again, this is not a historical
argument, but rather highly subjective, wishful thinking.
So I think that denying the prophetic origin
of the akhruv
is historically
dishonest.
And as I said, many imminent
non Muslim
historians of the Quran will say, yeah, it
probably started with him because it's such an
ancient and well attested tradition of the 7
Ahrof.
Okay. Now anti Muslim polemicists
love to give Muslim laypeople, like the general
masses, the impression
that the traditional ulama were not forthright about
these things, like the 7 aroof,
that the ulama were sort of
keeping these things a secret because they were
afraid or embarrassed or something,
that this would somehow compromise the preservation of
the Quran
or that the ulama lied to them
and said that the Quran was a uniformic
text. This is totally false. All of the
seminal qutub
on the topic of Ulumul Quran, all of
them written by traditional ulama of Ahlus Sunamal
Jamaa,
all of them have a section on aharuf
and qara'at.
Okay?
So this is not some secret teaching that
Muslim scholars have been covering up
only to be uncovered by these honest and
brave neo orientalists,
these textual Indiana Joneses.
Thank God for that.
No, the 7 Ahroof
has nothing to do with the preservation of
the Quran. None of the ulama who wrote
about the Ahroof
said that the Quran was not preserved.
Traditional scholars are very proud of the fact
that the Quran was revealed
They praise and thank Allah
that the Quran was revealed.
This is an amazing
and beautiful
and elegant
and unique aspect of the Quran. You'll see
what I mean when I give you examples.
Okay? So the problem was never the ulama.
The problem is the ill informed
preachers and apologists
who create straw men narratives that anti Muslim
elements exploit.
That's the problem.
Miseducation,
not education.
Okay. So here's a quote from M. M.
Al Adami
This is a fantastic book, by the way.
It's called the History of the Qur'anic Text.
I actually brought
this version of it is old. You're not
gonna find it like this anymore. There's a
new version of it, but
m m Al Avami.
This is a text in English that it's
probably the best text in English on this
topic, the history of the Qur'anic text from
Revelation to compilation.
And he he also does a comparative study
with the Old and New Testaments.
Make that comparison.
This is what he says. He says although
contemporary scholars outside this the Islamic context have
offered a range
of imaginative interpretations to get to the quote
real Quran. Those unfamiliar with the Islamic intellectual
tradition should remember that every last quote variant
or quote alternate reading used as evidence that
the classical Islamic account is inaccurate comes out
from the Islamic intellectual tradition itself.
Right?
So what he's saying here is basically what
we said before is that you have you
have critics of Islam weaponizing our own our
own literature against us
by presenting these things to ignorant Muslim masses
and saying the Quran is not preserved,
as if these things were not mentioned by
the ulama.
Okay.
Now there is a difference of opinion as
to what exactly the akhruf are. Busy reading.
Okay.
But they are there. There's no doubt about
this.
And some opinions are stronger than others. So
Imam Suyuti, he lays out all of these
opinions in his masterpiece, Al Iqan, il Umul
Qur'an.
But, essentially, there are 3 opinions,
and there's overlap.
The one opinion is
that the 7 akhruf are 7 dialects of
Arabic.
This is the opinion of, Abu Urbayd Qasim
ibn Salam,
that the 7 Ahruf are 7 dialects of
Arabic.
This is not a strong opinion, however. The
explanatory
power of this opinion is not is not
sufficient.
The second opinion is that the akhruf are
7 potential variations
to any one word in the Quran. That
any one word
can have a maximum of 7 different forms.
For example,
That's one form.
That's the second one.
That's so that's 3
of of Sirat.
It can have up to 7. That's another
opinion. I believe this is Imam Al Tabari's
opinion. For other things too The third opinion
is that the for 7 categories of recitational
variance in the Quran.
This is opinion of Abu Fadl al Razi,
even Qutayba,
Imam al Jazari.
The akhruf are 7 categories
of recitational variance
in the Quran, although different scholars have some
slight differences in their final categorizations.
And this is perhaps the strongest opinion. I
think this has the strongest
explanatory power.
Again, the Akhrufar, 7 categories of recitational variants
in the Quran that were all recited by
the prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam or approved
by the prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam. Homeschool.
I have 10 and 7 And we'll demonstrate
that inshallah. Whenever I go to the library,
I feel like Let's look at some examples.
One moment when you
The first harf is nominal variation.
Okay?
Nominal variation.
In other words, variations in in nouns.
So this is one harf. Here's a classic
example. Right? In al fatiha.
Right? Everyone knows this one
and they mean different things. Right?
Malic owner. Malic king. What's the difference? Well,
you see a king may rule
and set laws over a kingdom, but he
may not necessarily own everything.
An owner may own something, but he may
not necessarily rule over anything.
So Allah
is both owner and king. He rules and
owns everything. One of my teachers gave the
analogy, the king of Morocco imagine the king
there's a king in Morocco, but this king,
even though he's the king, he can't just
go into somebody's house and start taking pizza
out of his fridge.
That's not his. Even though he's the king,
he doesn't own that pizza.
Right?
An owner you might own your house,
but does that mean you can build a
little masjid on your front lawn? If you
own a house in San Ramon, can you
build a little masjid on your front lawn?
No. You can't do that.
HOA will
destroy you. Right? But you say I own
this house.
Right? You're you're the owner, but you're not
the king of it. Right? In other words,
you you don't you don't set the rules.
You don't make the laws.
Okay? Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is king and
owner. So the prophet recited it both ways.
We know this.
He recited it both ways. But the radical
skeptic will say, how do you know that?
How do you know?
The prophet recited it both ways.
This just seems like Muslims are trying to
cover up a discrepancy
in their book.
Okay? So this can be answered using common
sense.
We don't have to rattle off
like chains of transmission
for this.
So my contention is the statement the Prophet
recited it both ways is as factual as
saying that Thomas Jefferson was the 3rd president
or that Caesar Augustus was the 1st Roman
emperor. It's just a fact.
And people can question these things that they
want, and again, like I said, there's people
who always do. Like one of my teachers
said that a Hindu graduate student wrote a
PhD dissertation
on how the Taj Mahal was actually built
by Hindus,
and it's a Hindu temple.
So he wrote a PhD on this in
the past. PhD.
So it's always gonna be people like this.
So let's ask a basic question. How many
times
did the companions hear the prophet recite al
Fatiha?
Okay?
Let's think about this. I did the math.
I mentioned this in the clip a few
weeks ago.
So the 5 daily prayers are mandated in
the 8th year of the Meccan period. The
al Fatiha must be recited, as you know,
in every prayer cycle. Everyone knows this. So
the prophet led the Sahaba in prayer for
15 years.
15 times 354
days, that's the lunar year, is 5,310
days.
3 of the daily prayers are audible in
their first two cycles,
Fajr, Maghrib, and Isha.
So they would have heard the Fatiha 6
times a day from the prophet, say, salam.
So 5,310
times 6 recitations a day is 32,000
recitations.
The Sahaba heard the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam recite al Fatiha
32,000
times
over the course of 15 years, and this
is not counting,
the times that he recited it in Salatul
Juma, Salatul 'id,
or in outside of prayer and conversations and
lectures and sermons.
So did the companions of the prophet really
get al Fatiha wrong?
Was there really a difference of opinion as
to whether the prophet said Malik or Melek
and
that they transfer this uncertainty to their students?
So this is just ridiculous.
It's ridiculous.
Right? He obviously recited it both ways.
The Quran was and continues to be a
mass transmitted living tradition.
It was constantly
heard, recited, and memorized.
Like, some people would say, well, in the
pre modern world, there was an oral culture,
and, you know, people were just sort of
they memorized everything.
Right?
And some modern historians will say that's not
true. People made mistake back then, and I
agree they made mistakes. But the Quran was
constantly
heard,
recited, and memorized,
Constantly. Every single day since its inception
by dozens, 100, 1,000, 1,000,000, 1,000,000, billions of
people.
But the madness doesn't end there. Some orientalists
and modern Christian polemicists even go further into
the twilight zone.
And they claim that Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, the
great companion, did not even believe that al
Fatiha was part of the Quran.
So this is ridiculous beyond comprehension, and we'll
get there inshallah.
But there's a Harvard professor who makes this
claim.
I'll come back to this issue.
Okay. So I mentioned nominal variation as one
haraf.
Right? There's also inflectional variation.
This is another haraf
inflectional variation.
So and this has a theological and practical
purpose. So so with respect to practice, Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala says,
right?
Anoint or wipe your heads and wash your
feet
for.
This verse also can be read
in the genitive.
You guys see the difference?
Oh, yeah. There's no Arabic here, but
in the transliteration. Right? Is
with a
is called accusative
direct object.
With a kasra indirect object,
genitive case ending.
So the first one says, wipe your heads
and wash your feet. The second one says,
wipe your heads and wipe your feet.
You see? So generally we wash our feet
during wudu,
but there are circumstances where we can wipe
our feet.
When do we do that?
Well, we have to look to the sunnah,
the normative practice of the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam.
Okay? So Allah,
he could have revealed another verse that said
wipe your feet, but he didn't do that.
He inspired the prophet, salallahu alaihi wa sallam,
to recite the same verse, but with a
slight adjustment.
He inspired the prophet, say, salam, with another
form of the verse. This other form gives
us an additional meaning.
This is a testament to the distinctiveness
and elegance of the Quran.
Right? This is one of the reasons why
the Quran is a sui generis. It was
one of a kind. No other book is
like this.
Now with with respect to belief, here's another
example at the bottom of the page here
of a slide.
1934 of the Quran says,
Such was Jesus, the son of Mary.
It is the word of truth about which
they vainly dispute.
You see, qaula,
la with a fatah.
So here the word qaul is in the
accusative, meaning the aforementioned
statement about Jesus.
What we just mentioned about Jesus is the
true account,
qaul al haqq.
The Christological
teaching found in the preceding ayat
represents the true Jesus,
that he is what? Nabiullah,
prophet of God,
Abdullah,
slave of God, not the son
of God. That he's Mubarak, he's blessed, he's
not as
Paul says in Galatians. He calls Jesus
accursed.
He's not a deceiver or a blasphemer as
the Talmud says.
Right? None of these things. Now this verse
can also be read that it can't isaubnomeriam
kaululhak.
You see kaulu with damma.
Now it's nominative.
Okay? So now the verse means, such was
Jesus.
He is the word of truth,
That Jesus is the word of truth about
whom they are vainly disputing.
Okay? So now Jesus is the word of
alhaqq, the word of Allah,
which is an honorific title. It's Taqrimi, as
Imam al Razi
explains. If someone is known for their generosity,
you can say, he is generosity itself.
So in other words, the Quran is highlighting
the truthful speech of Isa,
that everything he said was wahi.
He only spoke the words of God.
Therefore, he's called the word of God as
a way of honoring
and praising him. So why does the Quran
praise him in this way and emphasize his
truthfulness?
Probably because the New Testament ascribes to Jesus
false prophecies,
that is to say falsifiable
predictions
and blasphemy,
while the Talmud describes to him deception and
sorcery.
Okay?
So we see how the akhruv enrich
the meanings of the ajat.
Just a slight difference of a vowel.
So this is an aspect of the utter
uniqueness of the Quran.
Okay.
Any questions so far?
Mhmm.
No. Whenever you want to ask questions. Okay.
Yeah. I have a question. Yeah. Go ahead.
Well, not not every verse has. So that's
taking the other opinion that
that every verse or word of the Quran
can have 7 different variations.
So
no. I mean, I think the the ayat
were revealed to the prophet
in different ways.
It's possible that he received different forms of
the same ayat at the same time, but
it's also possible that if he came into
contact with Arabs that were of a different
dialect, and we'll talk about that. His dialect
does have something to do with the,
that he would recite it in a different
dialect, and that's also a form of.
So I think these things happen sort of
more organically.
Yeah.
Mhmm. Yeah.
Which one?
This one? No.
This one?
Oh, I see.
No. No. No. They're completely different.
Yeah. We'll talk about that. That's that's a
common
mistake
that the after synonymous.
So warash is a kara'a,
but this this kara'a of warash
is is drawn from the 7 aroof, the
pool of the 7 aroof.
Okay? So I'll I'll clarify. We're gonna get
to that inshallah. It's a very good topic,
And we actually know the source of the
confusion,
why that happened, why Muslims started conflating.
Mhmm.
Yeah. We'll get to that, Shama. Yeah. That's
good. Good question.
Yeah. We'll talk about the Uthmani
codex committee and what happened after. How do
we go from the Masahif to the Qara'at?
Okay.
But going back here to the Ahroof,
so here's a third type of Ahroof. It's
called dialectical variation.
Okay? So for example, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
says,
What we said?
Why? You see the Arab was the first
standard bearer of the religion.
So Allah
naturally facilitated
things for the Arab
and certain, revealed certain words and phrases in
different Arab dialects.
Okay? So the Arab is gonna take this
message to the world. So this is the
wisdom behind this harf.
Okay?
Thus, we have revealed to you in Arabic
Quran recital in order for you to admonish
the mother of the cities, Mecca, and those
around it.
Okay.
So this is
this is
dialectical variation.
1 of my favorite dialectical variations is in
Surat Ibrahim
verse 35.
So it says
but there's a variation that says
Ibrahim and Ibrahim. And it's only in this
ayah.
Okay. The 4th haraf out of 7 is
called synonymic variation.
So here's an ayah in number
6.
Oh, you believe if an immoral person brings
you any news, investigate the truth.
This verse is also read
as,
If an immoral person brings you any news,
ascertain the truth. This is called synonymic variation.
Investigate the matter,
ascertain the truth. Both are true, miktab'in
and miktathbit.
Either one can be read in prayer because
they both conform
to the Uthmani Rasam, the continental skeleton,
the shorthand text of the Uthmani codices,
and are both authorized through senate, through transmission.
So you see the original Uthmani codices, and
we'll get into the narrative here, did not
have dots or vowel notations.
No dots, no vowels,
no fatha kasra,
bamma, no zerzabrtesh.
So Fata Bayenu and Fata Thad Batu are
2 authorized renditions
of the continental skeleton of the Uthmani textual
tradition.
Those are all right.
All of those are right. All of those
are correct. All of those are correct Arabic.
Yeah. That's that's that's what they say, but
that's incorrect.
Yeah. So all 3 of those are authorized
readings of of the that
all have that go back to the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
So it's it's that's exactly the point I
was making earlier
is that
generally when Muslims hear this difference, they'll think,
well, which one is right?
Because we've been sort of trained into thinking
in in a sort of in a certain
type of way, but the Quran is is
different than that.
The form of the Quran is very unique.
It's multiformic.
There's different ways of reading the same ayat,
right, that are all authorized.
Okay. So it's all correct. It's all Arabic
and it all has suned.
Now if you if you would have said,
I don't know.
This is obviously why is it wrong?
Because there's no senate for this. It comes
out of nowhere.
It's spurious. It's isolated. It has no chain
of transmission.
It's not even correct Arabic.
Right?
Yeah.
Okay.
The other
yes.
No. This this doesn't change the meaning. Dialectical
variations don't change the meaning, but other variations
do. Nominal variation changes the meaning. Malik and
melek mean 2 different things. It comes from
the same root, but they they have 2
different meanings.
Yeah. So it's also a misnomer to say,
well, the the the don't change the meaning.
They do change the meaning. That's the point
of it, is to change the meaning. That
we can wash and wipe the feet. That's
a difference in meaning.
That can't be dialectical.
So sometimes they change the meaning, but the
dialectical ones, they don't change the meaning. It's
just a different pronunciation.
Yeah. The the sad some was different was
difficult on some Arabs.
So prophet was inspired by Allah
to to recite it in their dialect, which
is which is okay. It's it's it's it's
classical Arabic, and it's authorized.
Okay. Let's see here.
So the remaining are verbal, particular, and syntactical,
but I think these examples are sufficient. So
nominal, inflectional,
dialectical, synonymic,
verbal, particular, and syntactical.
Those are the 7 akhrof inshallah.
And something very close, there might be some
slight differences in these categorizations. That's basically it.
Now Muslim scholars have described at length in
the books of Ulmul Quran
that there were several readings in pre Uthmanic
companion codices
that differed in their rasam,
in their textual traditions from the Uthmani rasam.
Okay. So let's let's talk about the history
of the of the Uthmanic
textual tradition
and make sense of these companion codices.
These masahif of individual sahaba.
Okay?
So what happened between
the revelation of the Quran and the standardization
of the Uthmani textual tradition? So the prophet
he recited
the Quran in prayers and lectures for 23
years,
upon 7 Ahrof.
He recited the Quran as a multi formic
text.
Various companions went home and they recorded what
they heard from him
in their personal codices.
Okay?
These included,
Abdullah ibn Mas'ud,
and Ubay ibn Nukab
and Abdullah ibn
Abbas and the author of c one, the
sunnah palimpsest. We'll call him companion x.
Okay? And others. So these are the companion
codices.
Okay?
So we have these various text types or
textual traditions. This is the term that's used
by textual scholars. So the textual tradition of
Ibn Mas'ud,
the textual tradition of Ibn Kaab, the textual
tradition
of Abdullah ibn Abbas, the textual tradition of
companion x.
So according to the Muslim sources, during the
prophet's time,
there was widespread memorization of the Quran,
there were scribal recordings of the Quran,
and there was an annual review of the
Quran every Ramadan
with the angel Gabriel alaihi salam. This review
is called al Mu'araba.
Now if historians
are hesitant
to accept the latter, that's fine, but, certainly,
it is a fact that in the prophet's
time,
the recitation of the Quran was widespread
and it was being written down.
Okay? That he had Kuttab al Wahi, and
even very critical academics, they admit this, that
he had scribes, official scribes.
Now the vast vast majority of the texts
of these companion codices were in total agreement.
However, according to our literary tradition, there were
some minor differences between them.
Okay? And our traditional scholars wrote at length
about these differences.
So they did not see this as a
problem of preservation at all.
So our classical tradition can easily account for
these differences.
So we can say that they differed because
of 4 things.
Okay. The companion codices differed because of 4
things, various orthographies.
In other words, the companion spelled words in
different ways.
Okay?
Using they use different spelling conventions. So, like,
in if I write
if I spell the word color on my
in Microsoft Word as color, that's fine, but
if I put a u in there, it'll
underline it in red. It's misspelled. But in
England, that's that's the correct spelling.
Right? Different dialect.
Okay? This does not affect the meaning whatsoever.
Number 2, variance due to the revealed aharuf
where the rasam was different.
And I'll give you possible examples of this.
Scribal errors, I e misremembering
the exact syntax or the exact wording,
and I'll give you possible examples.
And then differences due to exegetical
glosses or notes made by companions in their
personal codices,
and I'll give you possible examples.
Insha
Allah.
Okay. But let's continue the narrative here. So
okay. So various companions,
they go out into the Muslim world. Right?
The newly conquered lands. This was before the
Uthmanic standardization,
so prior to 6 50 of the common
era,
and these companions, they take their textual traditions
with them. So Ibn Mas'ud goes to Iraq,
and Ubay ibn Kab goes to Syria, and
companion x goes to Yemen.
So multitudes of people are becoming Muslim in
these lands, and at some point, the Muslims
in these lands outside of Medina
begin to become aware of or come into
contact with other textual traditions,
textual traditions that they did not know about,
and these textual traditions are slightly different than
what they were taught by their teachers. So
this causes a bit of unrest in the
provinces.
So the caliph Uthman, Radhi Allahu Anhu,
he's informed of this unrest.
So he forms a codex committee in Medina
around 650 of the common era,
maybe a few years earlier.
So he then attempted to recall all of
these various
manuscripts floating around the provinces
because he's going to standardize the text
based upon the dominant readings of the Quran
in Medina
at that time.
In other words, the most prevalent readings of
the companions.
Okay? He's also going to write the Rasam,
the continental skeleton, the shorthand text of the
Quran
in the orthography
of the Quraysh,
the Qurayshi dialect of Arabic because this was
the prophet's tribe and the majority of the
Quran was revealed in this dialect.
So these actions more or less stabilize the
text once and for all.
Now different scholars, they suggest that the Uthmani
textual tradition
was likely a critical addition itself, and I
think this is consistent with our narrative.
In other words, the Omani textual tradition was
drawn out
from the various
companion textual traditions
that were present in Medina.
So the companion Zayd ibnufabit
Radhi Allahu Anhu, he called for these manuscripts,
and they were checked against each other,
and then checked against the memories of the
hafav
who served on the codex committee.
And only those readings that were the most
widespread and popular
were recorded
in the various Uthmani codices
that would be sent out into the regional
provinces, into the Amzar.
Okay.
His diagram will help us a little bit.
So according to Sitri and Van Kooten and
Sean Anthony and others, all extant Qur'anic manuscripts
today
descend from a single text type,
the Uthmani text type, the Uthmani textual tradition.
That is their textual stemma. That's the sort
of technical term, textual family.
All extant manuscripts except for 1, the lower
text of c one, the the Yemeni palimpsest,
and we have to talk about that.
Okay? But all of these scholars maintain that
c one
and the Uthmani texts share a common ancestor,
and a scholar named Saad Ali calls this
ancestor
the prophetic archetype.
C one was a very important discovery. Okay.
We'll see more about it later
inshallah. But I think that with the discovery
of c 1, which is likely a companion
codex, we can say now with a strong
degree of confidence
that the verse order in the companion codices
was very fixed. In other words, the structure
of the Suras was stable, but not necessarily
the Sura order.
Okay? Although the Surah order is generally longest
to shortest,
but this doesn't really matter. So the word
Surah in Arabic
means a fence or an enclosure.
Each Surah in the Quran is a stand
alone
coherent literary unit.
So the the order of the Surah is
not essential.
So in c one, we'll talk more about
c one, 2 verses are transposed, and one
verse was clearly accidentally skipped. So these were
squirreable errors. We'll come back to that inshallah.
But look at the the diagram on the
slide here.
So the letter p at the top
stands for the prophetic archetype.
This represents all of the Quranic recitations
of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, Al Asabaati
Ahroof.
Okay? Everything that was recited by the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
There are various arrows shooting down from the
letter p.
At the end of one arrow, we see
I m, that's.
At the end of another arrow, we see
c one, that's the
and then c 2, c 3, etcetera.
These represent the companion codices.
These are the various companion
textual traditions
that contain minor differences
due to various spelling conventions,
variations in the aharuf,
possible scribal errors, and possible exegetical
notes.
So this is what Zaid had to work
with.
Now under each companion textual tradition, there are
arrows shooting down but converging upon a single
point. We can call this point the Uthmani
textual tradition.
Okay?
So the Uthmani textual tradition
is a critical edition that incorporated the strongest
readings
from the existing companion textual traditions,
which were themselves eyewitness recordings of the prophetic
archetype.
So in essence,
what we recite today is an eclectic compilation
of the most widely attested readings
of the prophetic archetype,
the best of the best,
gathered from the companion textual traditions in Medina
and checked against the memories of the Quran
memorizers
and masters.
Okay?
How long does it take, please?
How long do they take?
I I I don't know. I can check
on that, fella. Mhmm.
Oh, definitely. Yeah. Yes. It was started and
completed during his lifetime. Yeah. Yes.
Probably
more. Yeah.
So, yeah, we'll we'll get there. Yeah.
Okay.
So the committee could not have done a
better job when you think about it.
The the master Uthmani codex is called the
Imam manuscript.
So this this,
the the master codex was copied at least
3 times and sent to the Amzar, the
regional provinces.
There's an Andalusian scholar named Abu Amradd Dani
who wrote a book called Al Muknir, which
is a major reference when it comes to
and Masahif.
And he's he's cited several times by Imam
Su'uti. And according to Adani, there were 4
Uthmani codices,
Medina, Kufa, Basra, and Syria,
but he mentions there could have been up
to 7.
And then, doctor Sify conducted
something called phylogenetic
analysis.
Okay. So this is something that's used in
biology
to track evolutionary sort of history of organisms,
and this analysis generated these various stemmas or
family trees of manuscripts. I don't know exactly
how it all works, but he does. This
is some really, like, cutting edge stuff. But
basically, doctor Siddiqui analyzed and aggregated
all of the extant Platonic manuscripts that he
can get his hands on,
and he concluded that all of them go
back to 4 ancestral
codices.
Okay? With the exception of c one. We'll
talk about that.
So all extant manuscripts go back to Medina,
Basra, Kufa, and Syria.
And then based on the carbon dating, he
says,
the the the time window is consistent with
650 of the common era,
the time of the caliph Uthman. So Sittky
concludes, as does others, then Putin and Nikolai
Sinai,
that the broad strokes, as it were, of
the traditional Muslim narrative of the Quran standardization
by Uthman
around 650 is historically accurate.
This is what the physical manuscript evidence points
to. The physical manuscript evidence points to the
historicity
of the standard Muslim narrative.
So John Wansburrow is
refuted again.
Doctor Nazir Khan, there's a there's a beautiful,
essay. You can look it up. Nazir Khan
on
on the, variance in the Quran. He says
that the the traditional Muslim narrative is true
because, quote, the absence of any of any
compelling evidence to challenge it as well as,
quote, the presence of considerable data in its
support.
And then Siddiqui further says that the algorithm
suggests that the Madinan Codex is likely the
Uthmanic archetype.
In other words, the Basvin, Kufin, and Syrian
codices were copied from the Medinan.
The Medinan codex were the first codex that
was produced. This is what the evidence shows,
physical evidence.
Okay.
Now let's look a bit closer at this.
I said there are four reasons for differences
in the companion codices.
Oh, whoops. I I think I skipped this
slide.
So here's what I was saying earlier.
The ifmonic textual tradition is a critical addition
that took the strongest readings from existing companion
textual traditions, which were themselves eyewitness recordings
of the prophetic archetype.
And then a note here, Abu Amr Adani
in his
book Al Muqnir,
that there were 4 Ahwani Kodises, Medina Kufa
Basra in Syria, and then doctor Sidky's phylogenetic
analysis confirms the Muslim narrative.
And now the sort of general historical consensus
among secular historians
is to confirm the sort of essential historical
veracity
of the standard Muslim narrative.
So here's something interesting here. So
the top of this says skeletal, that is
a variance
in the textual tradition of Ibn Mas'ud
versus the textual tradition of Uthman.
Okay? So we don't have the mushaf of
ibn Mas'ud.
It's not extent.
We only read about it.
Okay?
The the the only potential companion codices that
we have are c one that was discovered
in Yemen and the Birmingham manuscript.
Okay? But we have no external evidence of
Ibn Mas'ud's Mus'af,
his codex, and c one is definitely not
his codex.
Now I should mention some
contemporary Muslim scholars have argued that there never
was a Mus'af of Ibn Mas'ud.
Okay. So like Avami in this book, he
explains this argument
in chapter 13.
Chapter 13 is called the so called Mus'af
of Ibn Mas'ud
and the alleged variances therein.
Personally, I'm not convinced by this argument.
I don't I think it's an interesting argument
when you engage it, but it's not very
compelling
in my opinion. I think Ibn Mas'ud definitely
did have a mus'af.
What happened to his codex? What happened to
his mus'af?
Was it recalled by Uthman?
Probably not. I mean, one of the students
of Imam al Qisai,
named Yahya al Farah in Pufa,
He actually said that he saw a code
a physical copy of the codex of Ibn
Mas'ud at the end of the 2nd century.
So we have eyewitness
testimony to to his existence
way after Uthman.
Now was this a fake or a fabrication?
Was it the original or a copy?
But, anyway,
there there is a report in Ibn Abu
Dawud that Uthman did decree that all personal
fragments of the Quran that differed from the
Uthmani Mus'af
be destroyed.
But ibn Hajar al Anani, he mentioned that
it was possible that people erased the ink
rather than burned or destroyed their manuscripts. And,
of course, the lower text we'll see of
c one was actually erased.
However, Ibn Mas'ud's codex apparently survived well into
the 8th century, who nonetheless
we'll just,
suppose that it existed. It is reported that
in the textual tradition of Ibn Mas'ud,
Ibn Mas'ud read surah 101 like this,
So
Okay?
So far so good.
And what does the Uthmani textual tradition say?
So Ibn Mas'ud says, the mountains will be
like carded suf.
Usman says, the mountains will be like carded.
Yeah. So what what can account for this
difference? Why is there a difference? Number 1.
There are three possible reasons. Number 1,
this was an example of synonymic variation, one
of the 7 akhruv.
In other words, at times, in order to
facilitate comprehension
and retention
for various Arab tribes, the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam would recite verses in various ways,
and sometimes a word with a similar meaning
would be used for another word
because the latter was not known or not
popular among a given tribe.
So suf and Ihin are synonymous. They both
mean wool. Wool.
Okay? It doesn't make a difference at all
which word is used in the context of
this verse.
So the prophet recited it both ways. This
was a function of the aharuf.
At times, the Prophet's readings had this type
of recitational
latitude
for the sake of taisir alfahan, for the
sake of facilitating understanding.
That's one possibility. Another possibility
that I intimated earlier is that this is
simply an error that Ibn Mas'ud erroneously wrote
down the wrong word. He remembered it wrong.
The Sahaba were not infallible.
A third possibility
is that he wrote suf somewhere in his
codex.
Of course, we don't have the codex. We're
speculating. But he wrote the word suf somewhere
in his codex.
Okay?
Maybe above or below the verse as a
tafsiri note, an exegetical note.
In other words, to remind himself
that Ehin means suf, maybe because he wasn't
familiar with the word Ihinn,
and so he wrote down a synonym.
But then later, some of his students maybe
thought that he was correcting the mus'af,
or that he was saying that either one
could be recited
as a function of the akhruf.
Okay. We do know that, I mean, Imam
al Baqilani, he mentioned that
that that Sahaba did write tafsiri notes in
their masahid. Imam al Jazari mentioned this as
well,
that they would clarify things for themselves in
their masahid.
So these were their personal codices.
Right? And so they would write their personal
notes in their personal codices, just like you
write notes in your books.
Sometimes people annotate their books.
So these notes in the Companion Codices were
really the first form of tafsir,
Qur'anic exegesis, in Islam.
Okay. So in in the in the sun
appalimpsest that we'll look at, the author wrote
at the beginning of the 9th Surah, he
said,
is what he wrote. It's obviously not he's
not writing the Quran here. This is obviously
a note to himself to remind himself not
to say bismillah
before reading Surat At Tawba.
Right? But for the sake of argument, let's
go with the first possibility.
Let's say that Ibn Mas'ud recited it as
suf because this is what he heard the
prophet recite.
Okay? Okay. Fine. And there are reports that
Ibn Mas'ud refused to submit his mus'af because
he said that he learned these readings from
the prophet himself. That's fine. Now even though
Ibn Mas'ud's textual tradition
was popular in Iraq,
okay,
it's very likely
that there were several companions in Medina
who learned the Quran from him.
So he was a great teacher of the
Quran.
So it's very likely that there were companions
in Medina
who recited verse 5 of Surah 101
as kasuf al manfush.
So why does the Uthmani textual tradition
say Ehin and not suf?
Why?
It's very simple.
This is very, very simple.
The latter reading with Suf was just not
widely attested in Medina
at the time of the codex committee.
So suf, okay, fine, was revealed to the
prophet, but
for the sake of stabilizing the text, it
was abandoned by the codex committee. Now you
might say,
how can they abandon something from the Quran?
That's a good question.
How is this not?
How is this not textual corruption? How is
this not
abrogation?
So let's start with the latter. So with
respect to nazq, no one other than the
prophet can abrogate anything from the Quran,
okay, by Allah's leave.
Perhaps Suf was abrogated by the prophet
in his final with Jibril alaihi salam, in
his final review with Gabriel, and Zaid and
his committee knew about this. So then Ehan
reflects the prophet's final recension with Gabriel.
But again, let's say for argument's sake that
it was not abrogated,
that both readings were valid.
How can the codex committee abandon the suf
reading?
Again, this is very, very simple.
So the aharuf
are a form of ruksa.
Okay? Ruksa means what?
Concession,
alleviation,
special permission.
Okay? So the Quran was revealed in 7
akhruf to make understanding easier.
And a ruxa, by rule, may be abandoned.
For example, if you travel during Ramadan,
right, You do not have to fast. Right?
You can take that rufsa
and not fast,
or not take it and fast.
It's your choice.
So the codex committee made the choice to
stabilize the rasam upon one harf when it
came to this verse
rather than to have one Uthmani codex say
suf and another Uthmani codex say Ehin because
this would have potentially led the very same
type of unrest in the provinces that the
codex committee was specifically formed to quell. It
would have defeated the purpose.
Okay. So this was not nazk. This was
not abrogation of the Quran. This was abandoning
a concession, abandoning a ruxa.
Neither was this tahrif textual corruption.
Tahrif would have meant to change a word
to another word that was not found in
any companion codex
or any manuscript recited by a known companion.
For example, if the if the codex committee,
wrote
also means wool basically.
Just an example of a word that is
totally unattested in this verse.
So this would have been tahrif. This would
have been textual corruption.
But if the but if the codex committee
had decided to fabricate
or or corrupt the Quran,
then they would have been confronted
by dozens and dozens and hundreds of other
Sahaba,
right, who would have made life very difficult
for the committee.
Right? Somebody might say, well, Osman was assassinated.
Right?
Yes, he was. 6 years later, he was
killed by foreign rebels who accused him of
nepotism,
so it was it was political. Now there
are some biographers who do mention that some
people were upset with him because of his
standardization of the Quran.
But I think this is just natural. I
mean, you can't make everyone happy.
Right? So there but there's no strong evidence
whatsoever that any companions were upset with him
regarding the codex. The Sahaba were universally pleased
with the actions of the committee.
Mhmm.
That
possibly.
That's that's possible.
That's one possibility.
The other possibility is that this is simply
an error that he made. He he remembered
the wrong word. Another possibility is that he
wrote the word suf in the margin of
his codex to remind him that Ehin means
suf, but then over time his students,
believed that he would maybe was correcting the
codex, or he was saying you can recite
either one. We don't really know.
Right? So I'm taking I'm taking the position
I'm taking the position that okay, for argument's
sake, it was revealed both ways. We don't
know that for certain. We don't even have
his mus'af.
This is all things that we're reading about
his mus'af.
Yeah. It it seems like it. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So this is this is a type
of thing that these Christian polemicists this this
is the hill they wanna die on.
Right? This is, I mean, it's it's really
desperation.
Right?
And again, this is
this
With
No. There's there's several differences.
Yeah. There's several differences.
But by and large, it's exactly the same.
But there are a few differences,
and we can explain these differences the differences,
through our tradition.
Right?
But here's here's, here's just to compare this
to a variant reading in the New Testament.
John 118, no one has ever seen God,
the only begotten son.
No one has ever seen God, the only
begotten God. So you can see how that's
a big difference.
Is he the only begotten son of God,
or is he the only begotten God?
Right?
This is very different than Suf and Ehin.
Right?
Completely different.
Now what about the hadith? So
this is a hadith that Christian polemicists love
to quote. It's in Bukhari,
and this hadith is supposed to, like, shatter
our narrative. Right? But, again, it actually supports
our narrative.
So the hadith that says, the prophet said,
Take the Quran from 4.
Ibn Mas'ud, and then Saadim, Mu'ad, and Ubay
ibn Nukab. So first thing, he did not
say only these 4.
The prophet said he mentioned these 4 because
they were the most imminent
teachers of the Quran in his day.
Okay? But here the Christian polemicist says,
The prophet said, take the Quran from Ibn
Mas'ud, yet the codex committee abandoned many of
his readings.
Gotcha, mister Muslim.
So this is just a
a stupid argument. Let's let's think about this.
When the prophet made this statement, what did
the companions do?
Did they just ignore him?
No. They obviously listened to him and learned
the Quran from Ibn Mas'ud.
Not all of them. Some went to Ubay,
some went to Mu'adh,
etcetera.
The companions who learned from Ibn Mas'ud probably
wrote down
what they learned.
So when Zaid asked the generality of the
companions
to bring
their manuscripts to the masjid during the standardization
process,
those manuscripts were probably present,
And I already said that the Uthmani textual
tradition was a critical edition that assimilated
the strongest readings from the existing companion textual
traditions. In other words, much of the textual
tradition of Ibn Mas'ud
was incorporated
into the Uthmani textual tradition.
So the codex committee did take from Ibn
Mas'ud, and Ibn Ka'b,
and Sanim,
and Mu'adh, and others.
The codex committee was in total conformity
with this hadith.
This hadith absolutely
works against the Christian polemices.
Okay.
Let's move on here.
Some orientalists and many modern Christian polemicists claim
that since there are reports that Ibn Mas'ud's
codex did not contain al Fatiha, that Ibn
Mas'ud did not consider al Fatiha
a part of the Quran. So they're they're
trying to they're trying their best here. Right?
So they introduced this.
And for me, this this goes beyond ridiculous.
This is, like, ludicrous.
Right? Ludicrous is more strange anyway.
If this report about his codex is accurate,
it's obvious that Ibn Mas'ud
did not write al Fatiha in his codex
because al Fatiha was so ubiquitous.
There was no need to write it down.
And in fact, a scholar named Abu Bakr
al Anbari
is quoted by Imam Al Kortubi in Imam
Kortubi's tafsir.
So according to Anvari, ibn Mas'ud was asked
point blank, why didn't you write al Fatiha
in your Mus'af?
And Ibn Mas'ud responded,
that if I would have written it, I
would have written it before every Surah.
Right? So this is how Muslims pray. We
recite al Fatiha and then another Surah.
So al Anvari goes on to say that
Ibn Mas'ud did not write it because there
is no need. All the Muslims had it
memorized, and so he left it off for
the sake of brevity.
Okay. So the argument of the polemicist here
is a non sequitur a non sequitur. In
other words, an argument that that whose conclusions
does not follow.
So Ibn Mas'ud did not write a surah
down in his musaf,
therefore, he denied that it was revelation. No.
At this early
time in history,
orality took precedence overriding.
Okay? And here's a quote from doctor Nazir
Khan. The reality is
that
the Sahaba used the writings of the Quran
as memory aids for personal worship and recitation
and consequently never intended them as complete official
copies of the Quran.
And the Imam al Tabari, he actually,
in his tafsir
of this ayah 1587,
Indeed, we gave you the 7 oft repeated
verses and the great Quran.
You know, Tabari in his tafsir, he says
that
like, what is the oft repeated
oft repeated ones? What does that mean? And
he quotes a statement from Ibn Mas'ud where
he Ibn
Mas'ud said,
is a statement attributed to him, a sound
statement
that when the Quran says
it's referring to Al Fatiha. So how could
he reject Al Fatiha
as being part of the Quran?
Now a a critic here might say, well,
those traditions could have been fabricated and to
mitigate the controversy, and
it just seems so convenient.
Okay. But again, this is not a historical
argument. It's an argument
that a Christian apologist will use because he's
forced to because, you know, these traditions are
devastating to his case.
But fine. Let's forget about these statements of
Ibn Mas'ud. Let's use logic and common sense.
If Ibn Mas'ud did not consider al Fatiha
to be part of the Quran, then how
did he pray?
How did his students pray in Kufa?
Like, we know the names of his students,
Alakama ibn Nuqais,
Zir ibn Habesh.
How did their students pray? We know their
names. Ibrahim and Nakai,
Aasim ibn Abi Najood. How did their students
pray? Abu Hanifa. How did his students pray?
Muhammad al Shaybani.
If ibn Mas'ud did not believe in al
Fatiha, this causes a cascade
of unsolved mysteries.
Now in Bukhari, we're told that Ibn Mas'ud's
student, Al Khama, actually traveled to Syria
and met with a companion named Abu Darda,
and they talked about the textual tradition of
Ibn Mas'ud.
Did Alakama dispute with Abu Darda and his
hundreds of students
about the Quranic status of Al Fatiha?
No. He didn't.
If he did,
you better believe that we would have heard
about that. This would have made headlines.
Right?
Okay.
And the other question is
when,
when, the codex when the Uthmani codex came
into Kufa with al Fatiha written on the
first page, did the students of Ibn Mas'ud
that were in Kufa say that's not the
Quran
and deny the Fatiha?
Again, we would have heard about that. They
would have been brought up on charges
for blasphemy and put in prison or punished.
There's nothing like this.
Okay.
What's interesting also is,
Arthur Jeffrey, who was an Australian orientalist,
he points out that Ibn Abu Dawud mentions
in his Kitab al Musahef
that it is reported that Ibn Mas'ud used
to recite al Fatiha as
instead
of
And other critics are quick to point this
out as well. So our critics are our
our scholars were very, very transparent.
They mentioned all of these things. There's nothing
to hide.
But here's the problem for the critics, so
they can't have it both ways. Right?
So did Ibn Mas'ud believe in al Fatiha
or not?
Right? Is it is it nothing or is
it arshidna?
We can't have it both ways.
Right?
So
I already mentioned that it is beyond obvious
that Ibn Masood considered al Fatiha to be
a surah of the Quran. But what about
this business of Arshidna? Was this an authentic
variant reading,
like mavic and medic?
Could it had have been revealed to the
prophet in this way in addition to
as a function of the aharuf? The answer
is yes. It's possible, although highly improbable,
therefore not plausible.
Right? Perhaps ibn Mas'ud meant this again to
be an explanatory
note, a tafsiri note to himself that Hidayah
in this verse means Irshad? Maybe
that's possible,
but it's anomalous. It's isolated. It has no
solid basis, and
come from mass transmitted
living traditions,
not from isolated or spurious reports and not
from remote possibilities.
Right? So the the bottom line is no
one denied al Fatiha.
This is just a smokescreen.
The other thing they bring up to create
another shukha
is a report that states that Ibn Mas'ud's
Mus'af lacked the last two surahs of the
Quran. Surah 113 and 114. It's called.
Okay?
Yeah. So Yuti mentions this,
and therefore, here comes the the wild nonsecretary
conclusion again. Ibn Mas'ud rejected these 2 surahs
as being the Quran,
and they cite some isolated reports where ibn
Mas'ud erased these surahs from his codex.
So my my response here has is has
4 parts.
Number 1, we've already established that for Ibn
Mas'ud,
if something was not written in his Mus'af,
it did not mean that he rejected it
as being the Quran.
Okay? Perhaps he only wrote it in his
mushaf perhaps he only wrote in his mushaf
what he heard the prophet recite in prayer,
so he didn't hear these 2 surahs
recited in prayer, but that doesn't mean that
he rejected them as the Quran. Of course,
the Fatiha would be an exception here because
it was so ubiquity ubiquitous.
Number 2,
our reading traditions come from mass transmission,
not from isolated reports.
Number 3, according to Imam Shem Saad Din
al Jazari in his famous book,
4 of the 10 mass transmitted reading traditions.
So we will talk about these, Asim,
Hamza, Al Kisai, and Khalaf, all in Iraq.
All of these can be traced,
to the prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam through Abdullah
ibn Mas'ud,
and all of them recite, so to the
113 and 114.
And number 4,
even if this were true, and this is
a point that Ibn Hajar makes, even if
this were true and Ibn Mas'ud erased these
2 surahs from his mushaf because he didn't
believe them to be the Quran,
it's clear from his students and their students
that he eventually did come to believe
in their Quranic status.
This is a point that Ibn Hajr al
Askalani makes. Even if the statement is true,
it's obvious that he changes his mind later.
So this is yet another red herring
that these polemicists want us to chase. This
is making a mountain out of a molehill,
basically.
Okay. Let's move to the mushaf of another
companion, Ubay ibn Nukab.
So the polemicists, they also absolutely love this
mushaf. Again, we don't actually have it. It's
not extent.
We only
have writings that describe it.
Any any questions so far?
So
okay. What's the big deal about this Mus'haf?
Well, there are reports that the Mus'af of
Ibn Kaab contained 2 additional surahs
that did not make it into the Uthmani
codex.
Okay?
So first of all, al-'Alami mentions in his
book, this book here, the history of the
Qur'anic text, that this report was first mentioned
by someone named Hamad ibn Nusolema
in 167 Hijra and that there's a major
gap in the of this report of at
least 2 or 3 generations.
So al Adami calls this report defective and
spurious.
Nonetheless, let's look at these so called Suras.
Okay?
The first so called Sura was called Sura
Al Khala,
and here it is. I'll read the
entire
Oh, Allah. We invoke you for help,
beg your forgiveness, and we believe in you
and trust in you and praise you the
best way we can, and we thank you,
and we are not ungrateful to you, and
we forsake and turn away from the one
who disobeys you. So that's it. This is
supposed to be a surah.
Not sure how many verses it is. The
second so called Surah is apparently called Surah
Al Haft.
O Allah, we worship you and prostrate ourselves
before you, and we hasten towards you and
serve you, and we hope to receive your
mercy, and we dread your torment. Surely the
disbelievers shall incur your torment.
Okay.
Now if you're listening to this right now,
especially if you're Hanafi,
you must have immediately recognized what I just
read as something called Dua Al Kunut.
Right? It's also called Al Kunut Al Hanafi'ah.
So this is a very popular prophetic invocation.
It was reported in numerous hadith
that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam would often
recite the supplication,
du al kunut, during the audible prayers.
And these are just a few examples here
of hadith that are graded as as a
strong hadith.
Like the first one says, an Ubay ibn
Nukab, on the authority of Ubay ibn Nuqaab,
the same Ubay ibn Nuqaab who wrote the
codex in question.
So the Messenger of God used to pray
witter and recite al Qunoot before bowing.
The second hadith in Sunan al Nasai on
the authority of Ubay ibn Nuqab, the Messenger
of God used to pray 3 cycles during
Salatul Huwitter, and he would recite in the
first, Surah 87, and the second, Surah 109,
and the third, Surah 112,
and then
before bowing.
And then the hadith in Talmadi,
from Bara'i ibn 'Azza, the prophet used to
recite in the morning in sunset prayer. So
this was something the Sahaba heard the prophet
say in prayer.
Right? Now doctor Sean Anthony, who's
a professor at the Ohio State University,
who's kind of, you know, an up and
coming
academic, secular scholar of the Quran, He's not
hostile. He's not a polemicist, but he's written
on this topic
of the alleged 2 lost surahs.
And he concludes, this is a quote from
him, a hoard of evidence strongly indicates not
merely obeyed dukab, but also other companions regarded
the surahs, he means these 2 surahs, as
part of the Quran and therefore part of
the prophetic revelation given to Muhammad salallahu alayhi
salam. Now
I don't necessarily disagree with him here.
I think it's certainly understandable
why some companions
could have thought that these were surahs.
The prophet used to recite them in prayer.
Okay. This is no doubt why Ubay ibn
Nukab and may and maybe others wrote these
supplications down in their mushafs because the prophet
will recite them in prayer.
But then Anthony says this, he says
that these surahs, quote, for whatever reason came
to be excluded from the canon by the
process of Uthman's collection and textual canonization of
the prophetic revelation.
For whatever reason
so I think the reason is is more
than obvious that these so called surahs were
not deemed genuine surahs
by the codex committee because the vast majority
of the companions always knew them to be
special supplications.
But the prophet would recite in prayer nonetheless,
but not as Quranic Suras,
and the companions who did regard them as
Suras were simply wrong. They were under a
misapprehension.
So again, the Uthmani textual tradition was the
most widely recited rendition
of the prophetic archetype because it was
culled from the most widely attested readings of
the companions.
So why else would the committee exclude them?
Right? Why would they exclude these so called
surahs? If they're surahs, do they contain some,
you know, aberrant or, you know, blasphemous teaching?
No.
Do they contain some,
you know, embarrassing grammatical errors?
No. Do their meanings contradict the rest of
the Quran in some way?
No.
Okay. So this is this is enough,
but
for what it's worth, let's look at the
internal evidence of these so called Suras.
Okay?
So there's a there's a scholar, doctor Van
Putten,
Marine Van Putten, who says that, no. I
think they sound like the Quran, and I
think they're surahs of the Quran. So I
I disagree with him. I actually don't think
that they sound like the Quran.
I think the style and diction of these
so called surahs contravene
the Quranic idiom. The reason is because they
are the words of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
salam.
So what I mean is they're in correct
Arabic,
the meanings are sound,
and they, agree with the theology and message
of the Quran, but stylistically,
they are not Quranic.
Okay?
So,
and I'll give you just two pieces of
internal evidence of that. So, like, the
both of these so called Suras begin with
Allahumma. Right?
Meaning, oh, God. But Allahumma never appears in
the Quran as the first word of any
verse
as it does in these so called Surahs.
In every occurrence in the Quran,
is preceded by either
or
something equivalent
like
Their cry therein will be. In other words,
god is quoting the people of paradise. So
this is equivalent to
saying Right? So it's it's contrary to the
to the, the diction of the Quran.
And then number 2 here,
and even Anthony calls this one compelling evidence,
in so called Surah Al Khala, it says,
right, we don't disbelieve in you. So if
you go back here,
you see that,
towards the end. Right?
Right? With with the verb,
and then there's a second person masculine singular,
pranominal suffix
as a direct object
However, in the idiom of the Quran, we
should have expected to see
The Quran always uses the preposition be before
the object of the verb kafara yakfuru.
In other words, this verb always takes an
indirect object,
and at the bottom of the slide, those
are just a few examples.
So 100 of examples like this, and every
single time this happens. So, no, this is.
It is the inspired speech of the prophet
It is not the verbatim or talaqi revealed
speech of God.
Okay? If Sean Anthony's contention is correct and
some of the companions believe these words to
be Quranak Suwar, then the codex committee corrected
their misunderstanding.
Again, the the solution is very simple.
Okay.
So here, I just make a point here.
I'll just go over this quickly
that I talk about the guilt complex of
some of the Christian polemices.
So you should be aware of this, I
think. This is a bit psychological.
So I'm I'm gonna just go over this
quickly,
Just kind of review
it. That according to the Quran, this is
in the Quran. Surah al Baqarah, Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala tells us
that there are some whose
desire
is to make you kufar
because the truth of Islam has been manifest
to them, and they have envy.
Right?
It's called the guilt complex.
In other words, I mean, if you take
a class on higher biblical criticism in the
academy,
they completely
rip the Bible to shreds,
and they actually have now, like, exit counseling.
Because you have people that go like Christians
who are very devout, they go to the
seminary
and, you know, they take these classes on
the Pentateuch and the 4 gospels and the
source criticism, redaction criticism,
and because they wanna get their, you know,
their
their their masters of divinity or something, their
MDiv, and then they end up losing faith.
This happens a lot.
So they have to have this, like, exit
counseling, like so a lot of them, they
become,
very bitter.
Right? And turn on the Quran suddenly. So
they have this attitude of, well, if my
book is going down in flames, I'm taking
your book down with it.
Right? So they want us to sort of
commiserate with them.
And this is why a lot of these
Christian apologists are probing into sort of the
pre othmanic
Quran and the companion codices and
drawing these wild conclusions by looking at these
reports in in in our traditional literature.
Anyway,
so
I think I'll just,
skip past this part.
But, basically, what they wanna do is
they're looking for
some sort of,
like, holy grail when it comes to platonic
manuscripts.
You know, like, in in
in in New Testament manuscripts,
like, they discovered that first John 5:7, I
mentioned earlier, the only verse that is that
describes the trinity is not found in the
best Greek manuscripts.
That's what they're looking for in our manuscript.
They're looking for an extra Surah somewhere.
There's a Surah, you know,
that's, you know,
clearly a surah, not a dua. Right?
Like, clearly, this is, like, you know, ayat
is is it's clearly a surah that, oh,
it's not in the Uthmani Codex.
Right? Or there's a there's a a version
of a verse that is completely different. The
wording is different and the the theology is
different. Something like that. Right? Because this is
what happened to their own text. This is
what's happening their own text.
Right? So this is why they're also obsessed
with the
that we'll talk about.
The the manuscript found in
and you'll see how they,
how they treat that manuscript.
Okay. So anyway, we'll skip over that.
Now what is the Uthmani textual tradition? So
we can break this down a little bit
more.
What is this so the Uthmani textual tradition
is the Quran we recite today.
What is it? It is a collection of
the dominant readings of the Quran
by the Sahaba in Medina in 6 50
of the common era.
Exactly. Yeah.
At the latest.
And the committee who who was on the
committee? Sahaba. Eyewitnesses, ear witnesses
to the prophet,
Shufad of the Quran.
You know, Ahlul Bayt of the prophet,
Zaid was the neighbor of the prophet.
Right? So eyewitnesses.
So when if when Uthman commissioned Zaid as
director, Zayd commanded that all Sahaba who had
any personal Qur'anic manuscripts, right, companion codices in
their homes to bring them to the masjid.
Okay. Again, we know that the prophet
had appointed scribes. These are called
And according to Muslim sources, for every portion
of the Quran presented,
Zay demanded 2 witnesses.
What does 2 witnesses mean? So
he says, I mean, says, 2 witnesses who
testified
that the verse or literally that which was
written was written verbatim
in the very presence of the prophet.
In other words, the 2 men who saw
it written in the very presence of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam.
So Al Adami clarifies. 2 men who saw
it written under the prophet's supervision.
2 of the official scribes, really,
And this was based on the verse in
the Quran that says that whenever we enter
into a contract, let 2 witnesses from your
men bear witness. Right?
So these men must witness the actual writing
of the contract.
So we can imagine then,
that there were many, many manuscripts submitted by
different companions that contain the same verses,
akhruv, that there were some variations of the
same verses
in the manuscripts of different companions.
So two witnesses does not mean that only
2 men were reciting those verses,
or that only 2 men remember hearing the
Prophet
recite those verses. It meant that 2 men
distinctly remember when those verses were ordered by
the Prophet himself to be transcribed.
Okay? Those verses could have been recited by
thousands of companions.
100 of whom heard the prophet recite them.
So why did Uthman choose Zayd to head
the committee? The answer is, in addition to
Zayd being the the prophet's close companion and
his neighbor, Zaid was also the chief scribe
of the prophet, sallai,
sallai, sallai, and he was also a hafath
of the Quran. And all men serving on
the codex committee were hafav.
So whenever a manuscript was witnessed for by
2 men,
okay, the committee then checked it against other
manuscripts
and then against their memories and the memories
of the well known hafad of the Quran.
And those readings that were deemed to be
the most widely recited among the hafad,
right, the Quran masters among the companions,
as well as among the generality of the
other companions,
those readings were officially transcribed
in the master of Omani codex.
So written and recited materials were collated against
each other
to determine
the most dominant readings.
Now now why did Zaid do all of
this? Why the 2 witnesses?
Why not just write down what the committee
was reciting?
Why look at the manuscripts?
And the answer is Zayed and the committee
wanted to reconcile the written Quran with the
recited Quran.
They wanted to make doubly sure that nothing
was left unaccounted for.
Okay?
So perhaps there were verses written down,
that were not being recited.
If so, why?
Perhaps there were, you know, verses being recited
that were not written down. If so, why?
He wanted to make he wanted to ensure
total agreement and accuracy.
Okay? So Zayd said, I gathered the Quran
from various manuscripts and from the memories of
men.
So let's say for instance
for instance that a that a manuscript or
2 was presented
that contained the dua and khunut, you know,
the 2 so called surahs that were found
in the Musafa of Ubayy ibn Nuqa'at least
as it's reported.
Why were these verses not transcribed
in the master codex by the committee?
Were they somehow theologically offensive? No. We already
covered that. Perhaps these verses lacked a single
witness among the scribes. In other words, they
could not verify
that the prophet himself considered these verses to
be the Quran.
That perhaps these verses were not widely recited
as surahs of the Quran. In the end,
the committee demanded or deemed that these verses
constituted a prophetic supplication,
not Quranic ayat,
and that the companions who considered them to
be Suras were simply wrong. So the committee
did their due diligence.
They really could not have done a better
job.
Now according to Muslim sources,
the last two verses of Surah At Tova
had only one witness.
Okay? Abu Khuzaima Al Ansari. Again, this did
not mean that only one man was reciting
those verses or that only one man heard
the prophet
recite those verses. It meant that only one
man remembered when these verses were transcribed
by order of the prophet, say, salam. So
Zayd and the committee, they went down and
wrote these two verses in the master codex
despite having only one witness
precisely because these verses were so widely recited
amongst many many Sahaba, and there really was
no doubt about them. So it appeared that
the rule of 2 was important to the
committee, but it was still secondary
to what the committee regarded as being widely
recited or mass transmitted
in recitation.
That's important. For the companions, the earliest Muslims,
the written word was important, but it took
a back seat to what was widespread in
recitation.
Okay.
So coming down the
rounding 3rd base here,
coming down home stretch, so
coming to the end.
Now many modern anti Muslim premises, they like
I said, they enjoy sort of raising doubts
and suspicions about
the actions of the codex committee under Uthman.
Right? And their claim is basically that the
Uthmani textual tradition,
you know, the Quran we recite today is
not what the prophet used to recite. That
the Uthmani text is somehow incorrect or corrupted.
Right?
And they'll appeal to 2 things to support
their position.
So number 1, they will appeal to some
of the radical claims of the extreme elements
of the leaders of the.
Right? The the
who claimed that Usman's committee corrupted the Quran.
And number 2, they will appeal to the
fact that many of the readings of the
Quran recorded in the various companion codices differed
from the standard of Omani codex.
So let's look at the first,
so called piece of evidence.
Now it is true that there have been
a few Shi'ite scholars,
okay,
who have claimed that Uthman's committee
manipulated
at least a couple of verses
that praise the at the prophet's family.
In other words, the committee did what the
Quran says that certain Jewish
scribes did to the Hebrew bible.
The Quran
says which literally means they they shifted words
out of their
proper
context.
So they decontextualized
the text, which is a form of textual
corruption.
And the Shiites actually identify these verses as,
what they call
and,
which appear in Surahs 5 and 33 of
the Uthmanic Quran, respectively.
So their claim is that there are statements
in these verses
which really belong in other surahs.
Right? And that by placing them
in the present surahs, 5 and 33,
the committee
altered their true context
and their true meanings.
So when these, you know, anti Muslim atheists
or Christian polemicists, they hear stuff like this,
they jump all over it. Right? It's music
to their ears. They say, ah, you see,
even other Muslims are saying that Uthman's,
codex is corrupted and unreliable,
so on and so forth. And, you know,
Wansbrough, he pointed out that Muslims went from
an interfaith
accusation of scriptural alteration to an intra faith
accusation
of scriptural alteration.
So basically, here's my twofold response to this.
Number 1, the vast majority of Shia do
not make this claim.
Okay. The vast, vast majority.
This claim actually clashes
with with clear cut texts within the Quran.
Surah Al Hajjar, I number 9.
We have revealed the vikr, and we will,
I mean, the Quran, and we will preserve
it.
I mean, one would have to interpret this
verse in very strange and very cryptic ways
in order to maintain
one's claim that the Quran has been corrupted.
Based upon the very clear and apparent meaning
of this verse, the Quran is preserved, and
to say otherwise is
is heresy.
So this is really a fringe opinion
among a few Shiite exegetes.
Okay? That the overwhelming majority do not endorse.
That that's important to mention.
That's the first part of my response. The
second part is that this that historically and
logically, this this claim, like, completely implodes
into oblivion.
Let me show you why you think about
this. If the if the codex committee of
Usman manipulated or changed or corrupted verses of
the Quran
that praised Ahl al Bayt, then surely this
would have run afoul of Sayna Ali.
Right?
So was Sayna Ali secretly reciting
some uncorrupted form of these verses,
in his home with Imam Hassan, Imam Hussain.
So if if certain Shiites should answer
this question with a yes,
then when Ali became caliph and moved to
the the capital of Kufa, why didn't he
call for another codex committee?
Right, to to quote correct the musaf?
He could have done that. He was Khalifatul
Muslimeen.
He was Amir Mu'tminin.
You know, why didn't he form a second
committee to restore,
you know, these verses and correct the Uthmani
codex?
But what did Ali actually do? He actually
led the prayers in Kufa every day
by reciting the Uthmani textual tradition.
You know?
So he recited exactly what was presented to
the Kufans 5 years earlier by Abdulrahman al
Sulami who actually brought the Uthmani codex in
the Kufa.
So
so the claim that the committee corrupted the
Quran because they wanted to, like, disparage
or delegitimize
the family of the prophet is is absolute
garbage. It's total garbage.
Okay?
And, again, I think that the the few
Shiite leaders that make this claim,
you know, there's something else happening with them.
There's something
there's something else happening.
Now the second piece of evidence that these
anti Muslim polemicists will use in order to
throw suspicion
upon the codex committee is the fact that
some of the readings and the companion codices
differ from the Uthmani codex. And we talked
about this. We talked about Ibn Mas'rud. We
talked about Ubayb Nukab, but now let's talk
about
the sunnah palimpsest.
Okay. So this is sort of the the
the final part of this presentation.
This is the,
what this is something we really have to,
be aware of. Okay?
This is the only manuscript ever found of
the Quran
that is deaf different in its textual tradition
than the Uthmani
codex.
Okay. So we talked about Ibn Mas'ud and
Ibn Ka'b. Now the lower text of the
Yemeni palimpsest is another example. What do I
mean by lower text? Okay. So
1972, the Grand Mosque in Sana'a in Yemen
was being renovated,
and up in the roof they found this
huge Mus'af
and they brought it down
and it's about 41% of the Quran
and they read it and it's the Uthmani
Codex.
It's it's just the Uthmani Codex.
And then they brought in scholars from Europe,
German scholars,
and they took it back and they analyzed
it. They noticed that there's actually an under
text.
Right? So the word palimpsest
this is a technical term. Palimpsest means an
ancient sort of whiteboard.
Right? So so,
like,
to make a codex a codex is a
book, like a keytab,
right, of parchment, of leather. To make 1
Quran, 1 Mus'af, you have to slaughter 300
animals
for one book.
300 animals.
So you can see how expensive it is
to make one book. So what you what
you can actually do with a parchment is
you can erase it and write over it.
And when that happens,
the name of this
text, this most often called a palimpsest,
an ancient sort of whiteboard. Okay? So when
they took it back to the wherever they
took it back,
they noticed under sort of ultraviolet light that
there's an under text.
Okay?
And that this under text is slightly different
than the Uthmani textual tradition that was written
over it.
Okay?
Yeah. They would. Yeah. It yeah. Because it's
just very expensive.
You know? They reuse things.
Might have one artist who had, like, 3
canvases his whole life, and he's just
painting over them. You know? So they would
definitely do this with manuscripts.
Okay.
Now according to the most authoritative academic study
done on the palimpsest so this was by
2 scholars named Sadiri and Gudarzi,
and one's Stanford and one was at Harvard.
The lower text of the Yemeni palimpsest
was most likely a companion codex.
It was a codex that belonged to a
Sahabi.
So sadly calls it c 1. Right? The
the codex of an unknown companion.
Let me see.
Yes. Here it is.
Okay. So it is the only manuscript, as
I mentioned, the only manuscript in the Quran
ever discovered that is not part of the
Uthmanite textual tradition
or Uthmanite textual stemma or family.
So c one is,
as I said, 41% of the Quran. It's
most likely written between 617 and 647, obviously,
before the codex committee, like, right before the
codex committee.
Now I've already explained why there are some
differences among
the companion textual traditions,
according to our traditional sources. So remember we
said there's 4 reasons why.
Different spelling conventions.
Number 2, variance due to the revealed ahoruf
with a rasim is slightly different. Number 3,
possible scribal errors. Number 4, possible exegetical glosses
or notes made by the companions.
So the lower text of c one is
no different. So just as our tradition perfectly
explains
the variance
in the textual traditions of Ibn Mas'ud
and Ubay ibn Nukab. It also perfectly explains
the variance
in the textual tradition of c one. So
at the end of the day, c one
is,
you know, what one of my colleagues referred
to as a big and nothing burger.
That it's, that the discovery of c one
actually supports the Muslim narrative.
So so anti Muslim polemicists, they wanted
something so bad. They wanted to find some
additional verses, additional surahs,
or
highly theologically
significant material
in c one when compared to the Uthmani
textual tradition, and there there was really nothing
significant.
Okay. So let's look at some
of the differences here.
Okay.
So
there there's a by the way, there's a
really nice
short video on YouTube that explains
basically all of the differences. It's like 15
minutes
long. It's called what do these manuscripts tell
us about the Quran. It's by Al Muqaddima.
Just put Al Muqaddima and then manuscript
or something, and it should come up. It's
a very good video.
I'll just summarize the major findings here.
Okay. There are there are 35
minor textual differences
between c one and the Uthmani text,
where instead of, like, a, it says fa,
instead of a, it says,
or a definite article is missing from a
word like that. These are differences in, like,
prepositions, particles, and definite articles.
There are also another 25 or so differences
in nouns and verbs. Like, 18 of the
25 are with similar sounding words. So these
are very easily explained away as human error.
Like sometimes a word in c one is
missing when compared to
This is again likely human error, so people
are much more likely to leave a word
out when writing from memory
than than add a word.
There are a few instances, however, where c
one has an extra word when compared to
Uthman,
but even these can be explained away as
textual assimilation, which is another form of human
error. So for example, in the Uthmani tradition,
Surat Al Baqarah verse 193 says,
c one says,
So c one as this extra word
So you say, where did c one get
this word from? Well, it's very likely that
the scribe confused
2193
with 839.
Because in
verse 39,
we do have
This is called textual assimilation of parallel verses.
This is very common, and if you ever
memorize Quran, you probably do this all the
time, that you confuse in your mind similar
sounding verses.
Right? Because many of the ayaat are very
similar. There might be a slight difference. So
think was it is it this one or
is it that one? That's that's very clearly
what's happening here.
Yeah.
So almost all of these additions in c
one can be explained by textual assimilation of
parallel verses.
There are more instances where the Uthmani text
has additional words that are not in c
one. And according to Sadhgli and Bergman, they
have a paper they wrote on this called
the codex of a companion of the prophet
and the Quran of the prophet. They say
this means that the Uthmani tradition is closer
to the prophetic archetype
than c 1 or Ibn Mas'ud.
Okay.
Now from our perspective as Muslims, we have
sort of no problem saying that it is
possible
that many of these differences between c one
and the Uthmani codex
are due to the revealed 7.
In other words, it's possible that 193
was also revealed as
that the Uthmani
committee stabilized the rasam based upon the most
prevalent reading.
But with this verse specifically, it just seems
like a scribal error,
you know. So so here's the conclusion of
Behnam Sadeghi and and Yewi Bergman about the
Yemeni palimpsest.
This is this again, the most
rigorous academic study ever done
on
secular study on on the Yemeni Palimpsest. This
is their conclusion.
In any case, textual criticism suggests
a standard version what do they mean by
standard version? The Omani textual tradition.
The standard version is the most faithful representation
among the known codices of the Quran as
recited by the prophet.
This appears at first as a curious coincidence,
but on second thought, it's not surprising.
If anyone had the resources to ensure that
a reliable version be chosen, it would have
been the caliph.
And if anyone had more to lose by
botching up the task, again, it would have
been Usman,
whose political legitimacy and efficacy as caliph dependent
completely on the goodwill of fellow distinguished associates
of the prophet. The remarkable few and minor
skeletal morphemic differences among the codices
Uthman sent to the cities is another indication
of the care that was put into the
process of standardization.
And I'll talk about those, quote, minor skeletal
and morphemic differences.
But that's the Yemeni palimpsest. Any questions on
the Yemeni palimpsest?
It's just,
you know, it's it's everything can be explained
away,
through our tradition. There's nothing new. There's nothing
mysterious. Nothing dramatic.
Okay.
Okay. So let's see here. Yeah. We're coming
coming down to the end of. I wanna
talk a little bit here about
let's see.
Yeah.
Okay. So there's a little bit left here,
but I wanna talk about the canonical reading
traditions.
It's the next topic that's really, really important.
So how do we go from the Uthmani
Masahif to the 10 authorized qra'at?
In other words, how do we go from
the Uthmani textual tradition
to the canonical reading traditions?
What are the canonical reading traditions? Like hafs
and a'asem
and so on and so forth.
Okay?
Or Hafsa.
And and so on and so forth. So
so the caliph Uthman,
he sent out 4 or 5 or 7
up to 11 copies of the Medinan master
codex
to these major Muslim cities. There are various
reports.
According to Suyuti, the most popular report states
that Uthman made 5 copies
of the master codex. Made 5 copies. That's
the most popular report, and he sent them
to Mecca, Basra, Kufa, Damascus, and then another
one in Medina.
Okay?
But remember, we said these codices are not
voweled.
Right? The diacritical system had not even been
invented yet.
Right?
Abu Aswar Adewali
would would develop an early form of it
a bit later.
So these,
these codices were unvoweled. They're also dotless. There
are no dots, and dots were used by
the Arabs at that time. So why didn't
Uthman dot his codices?
Well, the answer answer again is very simple.
By leaving the rusum, right, the continental skeletons
of these of these codices undotted,
Qthman allowed for the aharuf to be accommodated
by the reciters.
Right? So reciters in these amsar, these major
cities, these regional areas could plug into the
text the divinely revealed,
the the recitational variances
given to the prophet,
and definitively dotting the text would have severely
limited their abilities to do this. So, again,
the text of the Quran had always been
multiformic,
not uniformic
since the time of the prophet,
and so Uthman wanted that key aspect of
the Quran
to be transmitted to the next generation.
Does that make sense? Why he chose not
to dot anything? There's no vowels. Right?
But why did he dot things? It would
have it would have limited,
right, the aharuf.
Now I said earlier that Uthman's community stabilized
the text once and for all, and this
is true,
but how would all of the aroof in
their totality be accommodated,
okay, by the Uthmani codices?
Okay. Hence, the Uthmani textual tradition. So the
the most coherent answer is that they were
not all accommodated in their totality. So it
is not the opinion
of our classical scholars
that the totality of the akhruf must be
preserved and recited
in order for the Quran to be preserved.
Okay? As long as at least one haraf
is presented of any given verse, then the
Quran is preserved.
And this is Imam Al Jazari, ibn ibn
Hajil Al Skalani, etcetera.
Not all of the akhruv
in their totality
are contained
within the Uthmani textual tradition.
This is not necessary.
Okay. So as we said earlier, we said
maybe
would have been revealed, but we're not reciting
it. We don't need to recite it, because
we have one heart for that ayah and
that's sufficient.
Okay.
So remember, the the forgiven as a concession,
a ruxa,
and so one may, abandon a concession.
As we said, this is why, for example,
all of the Uthmani codices read
in surah 101
verse 5.
If
was revealed as a haraf, it did not
need to be reasonably accommodated,
and having again that were at odds would
have caused more turmoil in the provinces.
We talked about that. So the committee chose
because that was a more popular reading, and
so that's what they wrote in all of
the regional codices.
Okay.
But here's another question. Oh, sorry. But even
with this said, Osman did allow
for a slight variance in the rasum of
his codices when it came to some particular
variations.
So prepositions,
particles,
but not words or phrases.
So according to, Abu Urbeid, Usman's 6 codices
were in 99.999
percent agreement in the rusum.
Okay? There was a difference of 43 characters
out of almost
374,000
characters,
and this was intentional. So the committee did
accommodate for a few of the well attested
particular variations
that very slightly altered the Rus'um. For example,
in the Meccan codex, there's an additional preposition
min in verse 100 of Surat Atova.
Okay. So that does not appear in the
other codices. So that's 2 characters, and there
are a few more like this totaling 43
characters across 6 codices.
So again, these were intentional. They were accommodating
various authorized readings.
But the other question is, how did the
reciters
living in these
regional,
cities,
how did they know how to plug the
akhruf into the rasam?
Right? How did they know how to read
an unvoweled,
undotted text? How did they know how to
read it? Was it just guesswork?
Saying, well, they were they were Arabs and
they knew that that doesn't cut it. That
means nothing.
Right?
You give
a newspaper that's unbowed to an average Arab,
he's gonna struggle a bit trying to read
it. Those are words that he's very familiar
with.
So classical orientalists, like, you know, Gold Zeyer
and Arthur Jeffery,
they used to claim that indeed reciters were
at total liberty to vowel and dot the
text however they wanted. Right? As long as
the text sort of made sense to them,
it was all good. Right?
And this is why there are different reading
traditions
this is why the different reading traditions eventually
developed according to the orientalists.
And today, some neo orientalists and Christian polemicists
will say this. So this is demonstrably false,
and I'll and I'll show you why.
My clicker
okay. So
but first, how what else do our sources
say about what Uthman did? So Uthman, he
did an incredible service
for this religion.
He did not simply send these codices to
these cities without guidance.
So he sent with each codex a master
who was trained a trained reciter of the
Quran,
who is either a companion of the prophet
or a student of a companion, who had
mastered how to read his respective codex
upon all of its possible and authentically transmitted.
So for example, he sent al what al
Muhayr ibn Shihab
to Syria with the damascene codex. He sent
Abdul Rahman al Sunami to Kufa with the
Kufan codex.
So it was these
committee appointed Quran
who taught the regional reciters,
the regional Quran, how to read the codices.
And I'll demonstrate this in a minute. Okay?
But Imam Suyuti quoted Zayd ibn Thabit who
said,
very important.
Recitation is sunnah, I e it is from
the prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam. So all
of this was talaqi.
The recitation of the Quran was passed down
verbatim from teacher to student, teacher to student
until it reached us. So how does this
work? So imagine that Abdulhaman al Sulami arrives
in Kufa with his codex.
Ibn Mas'ud's textual tradition was already popular in
Kufa, right, when a Sulami arrived.
However, many of the readings of Ibn Mas'ud
were either abrogated by the prophet during his
final
with Gabriel
or they were abandoned by the committee because
they were not strongly backed by the majority
of the companions in Medina,
and Uthman wanted to stabilize the text. However,
by and large, the Uthmani textual tradition and
the textual tradition of ibn Mas'ud were in
total agreement.
In fact, as we said, the Uthmani textual
tradition was based upon the strongest readings of
the companions,
including many of the readings of Ibn Mas'ud.
So this is why Abdullah ibn Mas'ud is
mentioned in the Isnad of Hafs and Asim
along with other Sahaba. So the Isna begins
with the prophet sallallahu alaihi salam,
then Ali ibn Abi Talib and Abdul ibn
Mas'ud and Ubayb Nukab and Zayb Nukhab and
others, but these are the most imminent.
And Abdul then Abdul Rahman al Sulami, he
was the master Qari who brought the Kufin
codex, the Kufa.
Then his most prominent student, Asim, and then
his most prominent students one of his most
prominent students, Hafs ibn Sulayman.
So how did Assam vowel and dot his
regional codex?
Like, Assam, when he when he was
reading the Quran,
learning the Quran, how did he dot and
vowel it?
Did he have absolute free reign to vowel
and dot whatever he wanted
as long as the text made sense, or
did he have no choice
whatsoever? So the answer is in the middle,
he had something called Ikhdiar al Khari. So
he had he had a choice.
He had the ability to choose, but only
from among a fixed number of variants
that all had origin in the prophetic archetype.
In other words, variants that were taught to
him by his teacher.
Right? Abdul Rahman al Sulami, who mastered the
Uthmani textual tradition
with all of its various.
So these are variants that have strong and
connected chains of transmission.
Okay? So
so the regional reciters were obligated to fulfill
3 conditions,
okay, when they chose their readings.
In order for their readings to be correct
and authorized,
they must fulfill 3 conditions.
Number 1, their readings must be in agreement
with the Rasam of at least 1 Uthmani
codex.
Number 2, their readings must be mass transmitted
that is transmitted through generations after generations of
reciters
with uninterrupted chains of transmission tracing back to
the prophet,
and number 3, which is more secondary, their
readings must be incorrect Arabic, and I say
secondary because there's nothing mass transmitted that agrees
with the Uthmani textual tradition that is not
in that is in incorrect Arabic. Everything's in
correct Arabic.
Of course, there's some
modern,
you know, the polemicists or critics of the
Quran that will point out certain things in
the Quran and say, this is a grammatical
error, but none of these things are actually
true, and we can look into that,
in the next seminar inshallah.
Now in the 4th century Hijri, an Iraqi
scholar named Abu Bakr ibn al Mujahid.
Okay. This is very important. He wrote a
famous book called Kitabu Saba for the Qara'at.
He died at 936 of the common era.
And during his time, there were many many
correct reading traditions, different Qara'at within the Uthmani
textual tradition.
Dozens of had risen to prominence over the
last couple of centuries. So ibn Mujjayi, he
chose 7 of these popular reading traditions
that he documented in his book, Kitabu Saba,
and these were ibn Amr, Abu Amr, ibn
Kifr, Nafi, Hamza, Al Kisai, in Assam.
Okay?
So two points here. Number 1, these reading
traditions were already
very popular even before ibn Mujahid was born.
Okay. So this fact is mentioned explicitly by
a suyuti in his i'thkan. This is why
ibn Mujahid chose them.
His choosing of them probably made them more
popular, but they were already very popular.
And Abu Ubaid ibn Salam made mention of
them
before ibn Mujahid.
So Yuti said that by the end of
the 2nd century, people were upon the readings
of Abu Amr, Hamza, Asim,
ibn Amr, ibn Kathir, and Nafir.
So that's one point. The second point is
that each one of these eponymous Qur'a
highlighted by Ibn Mujahid
had a multitude of students who have been
transmitting the Quran from them. Okay? So these
were huge vibrant reading traditions.
So one of these eponymous Qur'a, ibn Amar.
Right? Qari ibn Amar.
He learned the Quran under the Sahabi Abu
Darda. This is according to ibn Asakir in
Tariq Hudamashr.
Okay? And ibn Amar learned the Quran from
Abu Darda who had 1600 students.
So ibn Amr was one of the 1600
students of a companion named Abu Darda. One
companion had 1600 students.
So now imagine how many total students from
the Tawiyim there were from all the Sahaba
who transmitted and taught the Quran. So if
even if 10% of the Sahaba were transmitting
the Quran, that's 10,000 Sahaba.
If each one just had 50 students, that's
half a 1000000 students
in the 2nd generation. In reality, the numbers
are in the millions, but this is what
Tawat'u means. This is called mass transmission.
Okay.
Now this is very important to understand.
Over time,
many people erroneously conflated the 7 reading traditions.
The tira'at
in Ibn Mujahid's book
with the 7 aroof because it's the same
number.
Okay? And so many people started to say
that there are only 7 correct reading traditions
because the prophet said that the Quran was
revealed upon 7. So this, of course, was
a major misunderstanding.
This is very important. The
and the are not the same things,
but they started to say that Assem is
1 harf, and Nafir is 1 harf, and
Ibn Amer is 1 harf. No. Asim and
Nafi and ibn Amer are
that drew from the pool of the 7
aharaf.
So that's very important.
Okay? So if you go into, for example,
and in that
you'll find all 7
in that one all 7. Sorry. You'll find
examples of all 7
in this one.
These are not the same thing.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Exactly. All 7. So so there's so
there's actually 10. So we'll continue here. I'll
I'll get there inshallah. So then Abu Amr
Adani,
right,
of a few generations after Ibn Mujahid,
what he did was he chose 2 popular
students from each of the 7 eponymous Quran
and documented their readings.
So the so,
these are called the 2 Raawis or the
canonical transmitters. So okay. So in Kufa, the
reading tradition of Asim became popular. Okay. We
mentioned that. But how did it become popular?
It became popular through his 2 top students.
1 was and one was Hafs.
Okay? So the reading traditions of shurba and
havs were documented by Adani
and eventually standardized with voweling and dotting. So
this really makes 14 canonical and authorized reading
traditions.
So 7 eponymous Quran
through their
respective 2 Raawis. Right? So 7 times 2
is 14.
And then about 4 centuries after ibn Mujahid,
a scholar named,
Sham Imam Sham Sudin al Jazari, whom Suyuti
considered to be the greatest scholar ever in
the field of Quran.
He wrote a masterpiece called Kitabun Nasr fiqarahitil
Asar, where he died 1429.
So ibn Jazari, he said that in fact,
the reading traditions of Yaqub al Basri, Abu
Ja'far al Madani, and Khalaf al Baghdadi
were also transmitted,
were also,
correct and mass transmitted and multiply attested.
And so there are now 20 canonical reading
traditions.
So 10 eponymous Qur'a
through their respective 2 Ruweis.
Okay?
So today, about 95% of the Sunni world
reads Hafs and Asim.
That's the reading tradition of Qari Asim through
his Rahui Hafs.
3%
read warsh and nafir, and the remaining 2%
are divided between
Qalun and Nafir and probably Ibnudakwan,
Ibnu Abi,
and Ibi Amar,
and maybe Aduri
and Abi Amar.
So really only 5 are recited. The other
15 are studied and memorized
and known by Quran masters, but they're not
so much recited anymore in, like, public congregational
prayers.
There's a good website called nquran.com,
the letter n,
quran.com. It's in Arabic, but,
you can you can actually go on the
site and it shows you how all 20
transmitters
of the 10 reading traditions read every single
verse of the Quran.
Okay.
I think I'm gonna
yeah. Let me see.
Yeah. So another I'm I'm gonna sort of
skip around here.
I'm gonna mention one more potential shubha that's
mentioned by
western academics.
Let me see if we can find it
here.
Yeah. So
so here's something that these polemicists point out.
Okay.
It it's the fact that some traditional Muslim
scholars, they criticize Hafs
with respect to his knowledge of hadith. So,
like, 95%
of the Muslim that we said the Quran
according to who?
Hafs and Asim.
But there's also reports in our traditions that
Hafs was weak in Hadith,
okay, that he's rejected in Hadith.
So they say, see, we were signing from
someone who's weak in Hadith.
So the answer here is very basic.
Hadith was not his takhasos,
was not his specialty.
Okay? Many of the best Quran today,
the best in the world are not necessarily
masters
or scholars of hadith.
Okay? So they're masters. They're imma of the
Quran.
That's their focus, and the focus of Hafs
ibn al Suleiman. Right? Hafs Anasem was on
the, Quran.
That's number 1. He was an absolute master
of the Quran. Number 2, the hadith scholars
who actually criticized
his knowledge of hadith praised him
in his transmission and recitation of the Quran.
Right? So these are 2 separate disciplines. This
is not
there there is not a single example of
a traditional Sunni scholar
quoting a if imam hafs and then claiming
that it's fabricated or somehow,
falsified. So these polemicists are here really clutching
its straws.
Another thing they'll mention okay. Really coming out
to the end here, actually.
A a popular claim of monarcholymesis
is that ibn Mujahid,
okay, using the apparatus of the Abbasid government,
he used to prosecute anyone who read outside
of his chosen seven
traditions.
Okay. So this is a bit misleading. So
let me say 2 things about this.
It's true that the state authorities did prosecute
Surin Qura.
Okay? But only really 2 types of Qura.
The first type would deviate from the Uthmani
textual tradition
and would publicly recite according to the textual
traditions of individual companions,
such as ibn Mas'ud or ibn Kab and
others. For example, there was a man, Qari
Muhammad ibn Ahmed, ibn Ayub al Baghdadi,
who was more popularly known as ibnushanbud.
So he would recite akhruf that were,
that were known by solitary reports, which were
not accommodated
by the Uthmanic codices.
Okay? So he was lashed a few times
and he was released.
The second type was someone like Qari Abu
Bakr ibn Mirksam,
who stuck to the rasam of the Uthmanic
Mus'af,
and and he knew the canonical readings, but
he believed that it was permissible to vowel
and dot the rasam however he wanted as
long as the Arabic was correct and without
even the slightest consideration for isnad.
So he repented of this.
Okay.
So the the point here is that
authorized readings,
okay,
were investigated from the very beginning.
Right?
So this the claim of the
the claim of the orientalists
that, you know, any the the Qadi had
free range. He had an unvoweled text, undotted
text, so he can just make up readings
at will.
It doesn't make sense according to the evidence
because someone like Ibn Ushanbul or Ibn Mixtam
was actually prosecuted for doing that.
Right? That you were not allowed to use
your iz jihad when when voweling and dotting
the text. You had to stick to handed
down tradition.
There has to be a senate.
You cannot bypass oral tradition.
Okay.
Yes. So just to finish up here, I
wanna provide further evidence that the claim of
the orientalist
is simply wrong. So let me restate the
claim of the orientalist. Here's the claim. Right?
The big claim, the Quran in these regional
areas were absolutely free to vowel and dot
the text however they wanted without restriction.
Okay? As long as the context, meaning, and
grammar was sound, and that this is why
different reading traditions came into existence.
So let me let me show you why
this is false. So Asim al Qisai
Yaqob Khalaf read al Fatiha as malikhi omidim.
Right? The other 6 said malikhi omidim,
like nafir.
So it's a 60 40 split. So here
the orientalist says, you see the rasam allows
for both.
So some Qurachos madic
and some Qurachos malik.
They were free to make that choice,
and yes, this is true. They were free
to make this choice.
But here's the problem, in surah 3 verse
26,
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
All 10
Quran said
It's unanimous.
Why? Why didn't the 6th Quran who read
and Al Fatiha
recite this as?
Right? It makes total sense according to the
meaning. It's contextually valid, and it's in correct
Arabic.
Why didn't anyone choose this reading?
So it seems to me that they did
not have that choice. They were not authorized
to read this word in this verse as
medic.
Right? It did not have this recitational latitude
in this verse.
Why? What makes sense? It makes perfect sense
that the region of Qur'an were constrained by
the living oral transmission
of the Quran, the handed down the handed
down recitational tradition of the Quran. They were
constrained by the sunnah of Qura'a.
Another example. Right?
Have you ever heard anyone say, malikin nas?
Why not? If you were free to say
Malik or Malik like we do in Fratiha,
why didn't anyone do it here?
Why? It's it's never happened. There's no recitational
latitude in this verse. Why? Because readers were
constrained
by the sunnah of Gra'a.
Okay?
Here's another example here on the slide.
The underlined this is
chapter 6 verse 83. What's underlined is.
Right?
Okay? So again, the Uthmanic codices were dotless.
No dots. Yet all 10 Chora read these
two verbs
as first person common.
Here's the question though. If variant readings of
the Uthmani textual tradition
originated with the regional Quran, were voweling and
dotting these regional codices at will according to
their ijtihad,
Why didn't anyone read this as
with the verbs in the third person? This
makes total sense according to the context of
the verse,
yet no one read it like this.
Why? Because they're not authorized to do that.
They were constrained by the sunnah of Qara'a.
So here's the point. If reciters were free
to dot and vow the rasum
of the Uthmanic codices as they deemed appropriate,
then there would have been tens of thousands
of variant readings throughout the Quran. Tens of
thousands, and there really isn't. In reality, reciters
were extremely limited as to how to dot
and vowel the Rasam
because they were constrained by
the sunnah of Hira'ah.
This is the most convincing explanation.
But here's another question, and this is probably
the last slide.
The last slide. Yes.
Almost. 2nd to last slide.
How many variants exist in the canonical Uthmani
reading tradition? In other words, how many total
words in the Quran
are affected by the aharuf?
And by words, I mean nouns, verbs, and
particles. So not counting dialectical variations because those
don't change the meanings.
The answer is not very many, just a
fraction. According to Ibn Mujahid, it's about 700
words, which is less than 1% of the
Quran.
A Western scholar, Van Putten, he says that
number is too low. He puts it at
2,000, which is 2 and a half percent
of the Quran, which is still very minimal.
If reciters were free to dot and vowel
the rusum
of the Uthmanic codices however they wanted, according
to context, there would have been tens of
thousands
of words affected.
Tens of 1,000,
but we have about 700.
This means that they were they were very
much constricted as to what they were allowed
to read. What makes sense as to what
was constricting them
is a handed down tradition, a sunnah of.
I'll just give you one more example. I
think this this is a good one. This
will drive the point home. Right? This is
from the it's in the UK used this
example. It
strongly demonstrates our contention that Qur'a is sunnah.
So the first verse of Yaseen,
right, the first verse is Yaseen.
So look at the word Yaseen. Right? See
how it looks in Arabic?
Now, like, the you with the two dots
underneath connected to the letter c. Now remove
the dots.
Okay? Imagine
the what's known as the hei cal al
kalima, just the rasam
without the dots. The continental word, devoid of
dots. This is what the Uthmanic codices look
like.
Yet everyone,
without exception,
recited this as Yassin.
They could have recited it as what?
Nunsin,
Tassin,
Thasin, Nunsin,
Tashin,
Thasheen,
Bashin, and Yashin,
yet all recited
Yaseen.
They had 9 other choices,
Yet all Qur'a
and the Ruwais said Yasin. Why?
What are the chances of that? If they
were free to vowel it, what are the
chances of that? They were constrained by the
sunnah of Torah.
K?
Last slide,
and then we're done. Okay.
Just wanted to mention this really quickly. So
Yuthi mentions in the Ithkan what he learned
from Imam al Jazari
that there are, you know, several grades of
authenticity with respect to reported platonic recitations. So
I wanted to keep this simple. So broadly
speaking, there are 4 main grades of recitation.
So if any particular reading
fails to meet even one of those three
conditions mentioned earlier,
strong chain, agreement with 1 Uthmani Codex in
sound Arabic,
then it's not considered an authorized reading, and
it cannot be recited in prayer.
So let me get so let me look
at the first let's look at the first
example here. Mottawater means mass transmitted.
Okay? So Suyuti says most readings are of
this type.
By consensus by consensus,
these are the 10 canonical reading traditions as
transmitted by their 2 main Rawis.
So for nafiyyah, for example, it's qalun and
warash, for Asim, it's shuva and havs.
K. These were reported by groups and groups
of Muslim reciters with strong and verified change
of transmission that go back to the prophet
Then you have ahad readings. These are readings
that have strong chains, but too few reciters.
So they don't have sufficient number of authorities.
For example, in the Mustadrak,
Imam al Hakim said that on the authority
of Ibn Abbas, the prophet would recite Surah
9 verse 128
as
in addition to anfussicum.
Okay? There has come unto you a messenger
from the most noble among you.
In addition to the standard, there has come
unto you a messenger from among yourselves.
The Arabic is correct both ways. The meaning
is sound both ways, and both agree with
the Uthmani Rasam.
Now none of the canonical reading
traditions read this as anfasikum,
so you may not recite it in prayer.
Why? It was just not popular.
Could this have been revealed to the prophet
as a harf? Of course, it could have
been.
But since this haraf did not gain prevalence,
this reading only has a strength of a
sound hadith.
So it's not strong enough to be an
authorized dura'a of the Quran.
Because even a sound hadith is not considered
absolutely definitive,
there is still a chance of error. It's
not a dariel qata'i.
So for the Quran, we cannot take that
chance.
Do you understand the difference between and
means that absolutely sound agreed upon, mass transmitted,
can be recited in prayer.
Definitely the Quran.
Ahad is there's a chance of doubt. It's
a zanmi. It could have been revealed as
Quran, but as too few transmitters,
as a strength of a hadith. Still has
a sound chain.
Then there's shad. Shad means isolated, unsound, or
anomalous. So a shad reading may be incorrect
Arabic. It might have a it may even
have a sound meaning. And it might even
agree with the Uthmani codex, but the isnaad
is unsound or somehow defective.
For example, instead of saying,
someone says,
So instead of saying, only you we worship,
he says, only you are worshiped.
So he make he makes the verb into
the passive voice and makes it 3rd person.
Right?
So a reading like this has no transmissional
basis. So if if a reciter were to
recite like this, the the authorities would ask
him, where did you learn this? And he
says from so and so. The authorities would
go to so and so and ask him,
where did you learn this? And he would
say, I just heard it somewhere.
I vowed it myself.
Right? Or my brother used to recite like
this. Or I don't know where I heard
it from.
Right? So authorities were very, very rigorous on
about particular readings,
about
what reciters were reciting in public.
And then finally we have moldur, fabricated. So
these are readings that are deemed fabricated by
authorities.
So these readings have multiple problems. So in
addition to an unsound or non existent isnad,
there are other issues such as, you know,
disagreement with the Uthmani
rassam, grammatical errors, unacceptable meanings.
For example, Abu al Aswar al Duwali once
heard a man recite a verse in the
Quran, chapter 9 verse 3,
which says,
and he read it as
which gives it a unacceptable meaning.
Right? So when you hear that, if you
know Arabic, you think, woah. There's no way
that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said that.
Right? So he asked the man, who taught
you your qira'ah? And he said,
I I voweled it myself.
He said, you're you can't recite prayer. You
you have to learn how to recite.
So readings
are without question in Quran
and may be recited in prayer.
Ahad readings
may have been revealed as Quran.
They may have been revealed as aghruf, but
they're outside the Uthmani textual tradition.
So these are aghruf that were either abrogated
or abandoned,
so they may not be recited in prayer
but have the strength of a hadith.
It is possible, but very unlikely, that shad
readings
may also have been revealed as Quranic achruf,
but they were abandoned or abrogated.
These readings really don't have any type of
authority
other than perhaps a minor exegetical function, and
then moadu'a readings are definitely not Quranic and
have no authority whatsoever.
Alright. Well,
I think I'll end it here in Chevalho.
It's a little past 1.
No. That was a mouthful.
Hopefully, you can go back and watch it
back on tape and,
take some notes or,
slow things down and do some some research
and be free to ask me questions through
email. Yes, sir. Well, he was reciting, so
so
Assen would recite in public and Hafs al
Shurba would take what they heard from him.
Right? And and there and he would recite
in different ways because you have that sort
of that that latitude amongst the to do
that.
But generally, the the two Rauis are very,
very similar. Like, there's some differences between Haas
and Shortba, but
very rare will there be a difference. But
that difference will come from Asim. Why are
there only 2? It's to to simplify things.
Right? These are the 2 top Rawis, the
2 top students of the eponymous
Qur'an.
So to simplify things,
to sort of make things more manageable,
limit the number of Qur'a. Although there were
other Qara'a that were I mean, Imam Tabari
documents some 25 Qara'at during his time,
and they were all sound.
Right?
Yeah. They they you'd have to go to,
like, a Muslim bookstore somewhere in the Middle
East
or order something online. I guess I forgot
about the Internet.
Yeah. You can they do. They do. And
this is what Christians do. Like, they go
to they go to, what's that place called?
Hyde Park in England,
and they bring, like, 10 Quran Musaf.
They bring, like, a, like, a, you know,
Ibn Kathir, and they bring, like, a water
shed,
and they bring, like, a a hafs. I
say, look. There's different versions of the Quran.
And then a lot of Muslims there, they
don't even know about the ashram. They don't
even know about Quran.
Yeah. So so they're like, no. You you
you made this. This is a Quran you
invented.
I said, no. This is this is the
Quran. This is a it's a different version
of the Quran. You don't even know about
this. The Quran is different and, you know,
they so that's how they present it. And
the Muslims, suddenly, they have this sort of
faith crisis.
Like, oh, I think I was always taught
by,
you know, the
the the Khateem that and my dad and
my uncle that the Quran is every every
dot, every letter, every everything is exactly the
same. It's just not it it's just not
true. Right?
So, yeah, they have they have Masahif.
But like I said, 15 of them, 16
of them are really just not recited anymore.
They just kinda fell
out of use.
Hafsa and Asen, probably because of the Ottoman
Empire.
I'm guessing maybe they they they
sort of
preferred Hafsa and Asim, so it just sort
of blew up all over the world. So
the dominant opinion from the ulama is that
the that the the ordering of the Suras
was was was by the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam. That's the dominant opinion. Right? From
Fatihah to Nas, he ordered it. He ordered
everything.
There's a minority opinion that the ordering was
done by the the committee of Uthman,
and it's basically the longest to shortest, although
there's some exceptions to that.
Generally, books in antiquity, that's how they were
ordered. So if you look at, for example,
New Testament, it's basically longest to shortest. The
the Talmud is basically longest to shortest.
But,
with the companion codices,
it's basically, again, longest to shortest, although there
are some differences.
Like, ibn Mas'ud and Ubayb al Nukab. Yeah.
They have Baqarah, Al Imran, Nisa
somewhere in the beginning,
not necessarily in the exact order of the
Uthmani codex, but it's basically longest to shortest.
But the dominant opinion is, yeah, the prophet
every year would review the Quran with Jibril
alaihi salam, and that that
that was not just
the actual
content of each Surah, but the actual order
of all of the Surahs.
That's the dominant opinion. Yeah.
And there's a great book by,
his last name is Mir. It's called Coherence
in the Quran
by Mir. It's an excellent book. It's very
short. It's on the methodology
of,
of,
al Islahi,
who was
a a a great scholar of the Nazim
of the Quran,
the sort of coherence of the Quran. And
he makes a very strong argument that that
the order of the Suras in the Uthmani
codex,
has this miraculous
sort of aspect to it
that that that he has this concept of,
like, a surah pair that that this that
surahs are next to each other. They complement
each other in a really interesting way
that he'll ex that he explains in that
book.
Yeah. Probably. Yeah.
His last name is Mir. I forget his
first name, especially with an m. His last
name is coherence in the Quran.
It's it's basically on the on so there
was a scholar
named Islahi, who was a South Asian scholar
a few generations ago
who,
who looks who specializes in the the which
is sort of like the
the structure of the Quranic discourse.
Mhmm. You have a online question about that?
Yeah. Question for the online viewers. How did
the housecle
yeah. Become the most popular?
Yeah. It's a good question. So
some
some mentioned that that
the first sort of
printed Quran ever
was the Cairo edition of 1924,
and they happen to print Hafsa Nasim.
Right? So that's why it became popular because
it was the 1st printed edition ever, so
they're able to mass produce it, and it
just sort of
so that seems to be the answer. I
mean, I speculated
the the Ottomans. I don't know if that's
true or not, but that this seems to
seems to be the more sort of historical
response is that the first printed Qurans ever
were.
Yeah.
In the, they they also recite.
You know? So it's totally agreed upon. Some
of the don't believe in the in the.
Right? But they'll say that Hasan Asim is
accurate because
is in the chain.
So any of those any of those 10
that are at is is correct.
Any of
These days, there's so many people that are
trying to
change
Well, they can't they can't change it because
the text is,
the text is stabilized.
It's known by tradition.
Yeah. It's not it's not gonna work. It's
just impossible to do that.
Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, they they
they can't change they can't change the actual
rasam of the Quran. It's just it's it's
it's impossible,
but they they could mess with the meanings
of it. But even there, our belief is
that the meanings are preserved as well.
So there's always going to be,
you know, a, a.
And that's why we're.
Right?
Right? The the protection of Allah
is but the majority.
You know? So don't don't go after these
fringe elements because every every heretical group in
Islamic history
use the same Quran to justify their positions.
The Matazila, the Jabariya, the Qadariya, the Shia,
all of the groups, they use the Quran.
They take certain verses out of context in
the Quran. That's how they abuse the Quran.
Yeah.
Yeah. But but changing the text is just
not gonna happen.
Impossible.
Yeah.
Thank you so much. Thank you for your
patience. I know you're sitting on the floor
for a good 3 hours. I don't think
I can feel my legs.
Yeah. Please let me know if you think
of questions or things to email me.
Yeah.
Yes, sir.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. So that's that's the this this one
is,
this one was a bit technical because we're
we're establishing,
you know, textual credibility and things like that.
But the the next one is we're actually
going to look at the content of Quran.
How is the Quran,
inimitable? Like, how is it
how is it impossible to imitate? Like, what
does that even mean when we say that?
When the Quran says that, what does that
mean? How do we substantiate that claim?
Right? So we substantiate the claim the Quran
has been preserved, but how do we substantiate
the Quran as being
a literary masterpiece?
And then and then certain
stories mentioned in the Quran. Like, what is
the Quran doing to
the Bible, the biblical stories? Is it is
it confirming? Is it correcting? Is it doing
both?
You know, and how is it doing it?
What does that have to do with actual,
like, secular history
as far as
as far as what what secular historians are
saying about these stories of the past? How
does the Quran
engage with those stories? Like, intertextuality
is a very important concept.
The language of the Quran,
like, why were certain verses revealed in the
Quran. So actually looking at the text, now
that now that we've established the text, what
does it actually say?
Yeah.
But that's that's a
just as important, if not more important seminar.