By examining 14 early Quranic manuscripts, it is shown that this phrase is consistently spelled using only one of the two spellings in the same position in all of these different manuscripts. It is argued that such consistency can only be explained by assuming that all these manuscripts come from a single written archetype, meaning there must have been a codification project sometime in the first century. Quran manuscripts in general, were copied from written exemplars since the earliest days.
Introduction
With the discovery and description of many early Quranic manuscripts that are clearly earlier than the late date proposed by Wansbrough, it is now clear that this position in its most extreme form is to be discarded. This paper aims to show not only that all the early Quran manuscripts descend from a single written archetype, but also that the text was clearly spread through the copying of a written exemplar, and not by copying through dictation or transcriptions of an oral tradition. Considering the early date of some of the many Quranic manuscripts discussed here (many of which must date from the early Umayyad period), it seems highly unlikely that this written archetype was standardized much later than the time of ʿUthmān’s reign, and therefore the data can be seen to corroborate very precisely the traditional Muslim account.
Uthmanic text type
Sadeghi defines the Uthmanic text type as agreeing with the text of the 1924 Cairo Edition of the Quran, a tradition that “reportedly began with the codices ʿUthmān disseminated as the ancestors of all the manuscripts in the textual tradition”. These codices all agree on: 1. the order of the surahs; 2. the order of the verses within each surah; and 3. the content of these verses in terms of individual words (Sadeghi and Bergmann 2010: 347). The vast majority of known Quranic manuscripts (all but the Sanaa palimpsest, in fact) are of the Uthmanic text type, and only minor variations are present in this text type. Larger disagreements on how to read the consonantal skeleton of the Quran have developed in the reading traditions, but these have little consequence in the overall clear and consistent unity of the Uthmanic text type.
- Donner (2008: 31) suggested that one of the five most consequential questions currently presented to Quran scholars is whether or not there was an early textual archetype for the present Quran. Burton (1977) argued that it had been compiled by the Prophet himself rather than by ʿUthmān. Motzki (2001) set out to prove the traditional narrative by tracing back the accounts of this collection through the isnad-cum-matn method, and expresses pessimism about the usefulness of manuscripts in helping to date the codification of the Quran, asserting that “the fragmentary character of most of the oldest Qurʾānic manuscripts does not allow us to conclude with certainty that the earliest Qurʾāns must have had the exact same form, size and content as the later ones. Thus manuscripts do not seem to be helpful (as yet) concerning our issue” (Motzki 2001: 2, “The collection of the Qurʾān: a reconsideration of Western views in light of recent methodological developments”, Der Islam 78, 1–34).
- In recent years authors have advanced several strong arguments that speak in favour of an early redaction of the Uthmanic text type. The traditional literature on the rasm of the Uthmanic codex is right about many minute details. According to Sadeghi, it is highly unlikely that it is wrong about its main underlying assumption: the compilation of the Quran by ʿUthmān (Sadeghi and Bergmann 2010: 366 f.). This argument relies largely on the path-breaking article by Cook (2004), which shows that the variants in the rasm reported for the different regional codices of Kufa, Basra, Damascus and Medina by al-Dānī in his al-Muqniʿ fī Rasm Maṣāḥif al-ʾAmṣār form a stemma. Cook shows, for example, that the Damascene muṣḥaf has several unique readings, and shares several others with the Medinan Muṣḥaf, but never shares variants with the Kufan or Basran. These patterns clearly indicate that the transmission and introduction of these variants point to only about seven different possible stemmata, and that they agree with the account of the transmission of the text. As medieval Muslim scholars had no concept of stemmatics, the very fact that such a pattern arises leads Cook to conclude that “we have to do with genuine transmission from an archetype” (2004: 104). Since they are not based on actual manuscripts and Cook does not compare them to the manuscrpts, the reports al-Dānī produced could be about any group of interdependent manuscripts copied from each other, and may not necessarily have had anything to do with the actual maṣāḥif al-ʾamṣār, if these existed at all.
However, that the archetype posited by Cook must have been very early is certainly clear from Dutton’s work on the Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus and Or. 2165, both early Hijazi Quranic manuscripts which show all the variants of the Syrian muṣḥaf, but none attributed to the other muṣḥafs, as reported by al-Dānī (Dutton 2001; 2004, “An early Muṣḥaf according to the reading of Ibn ʿĀmir”, Journal of Quranic Studies 3/1, 71–89, “Some notes on the British Library’s ‘oldest Qurʾan manuscript’ (Or. 2165)”, Journal of Quranic Studies 6/1, 43–71). Cook’s arguments, combined with their confirmation in the manuscript evidence, make a strong case for an extremely early codification and distribution of the Uthmanic text type. It is then consistent with the traditional account of the codification and distribution of the four regional codices.
Orthographic idiosyncrasies
- As noted in the previous section, in terms of surah order, verse order and even the specific wording, all Quranic manuscripts, with one exception, belong to the same Uthmanic text type. What remains unclear, however, is how this text type was transmitted and when it was established in its fixed form. If two manuscripts do not descend from copies of a single archetype, we would not expect the same spelling to occur in the exact same location time and time again. However, this is exactly what we find: highly idiosyncratic spellings occur again and again in the same spelling in the exact same location across all early Quranic manuscripts. Such variation can only be the result of precise written transmission.
- A good place to show that the orthographic idiosyncrasies point to a single written archetype is through the feminine nouns in the construct state. While in Quranic orthography, feminine nouns in construct are usually written with a final ـه, as is the case in Classical Arabic orthography, a rather large proportion (about 22 per cent) of the feminine constructs are written with ـت instead. For some common phrases, the distribution between these two forms is almost equal, and for some lexical items ـت is the only attested spelling. The items where the two forms are equally predominant are a particularly good place to show that orthographic idiosyncrasies are consistently reproduced. Table 1 gives an overview of the feminine nouns in construct that have alternation between ـه and ـت spellings, or have only a ـت spelling.
- Manuscripts
The spelling of niʿmah in construct in its 23 occurrences in the Quran has been examined across 14 Quranic manuscripts.
Examples:
Table 2 shows the spellings of niʿmat as attested in the manuscripts examined. The sigla of the Quran manuscripts are given on the horizontal axis, where C stands for the Cairo edition, and vertically are the 15 locations of the spelling of niʿmat. ـه and ـت denote the spellings نعمه and نعمت respectively
As can be seen in Table 2, there is an extremely strong correlation between the position of the idiosyncratic spellings in the Cairo edition and earlier Quranic manuscripts. With only two locations, Q 16:144 and Q 37:57, showing any disagreement at all. This great consistency cannot be attributable to chance. For Q 16:114, only one manuscript disagrees with the general pattern, while the other seven manuscripts examined that have this form attested all employ the spelling found in the Cairo edition. As for Q 37:57, two manuscripts have the same pattern as the Cairo edition, but the four others all have the spelling نعمت. It seems that here the Cairo edition is innovative along with W and Zid. Zid has the same issue of a much later hand at Q 35:3, but in this case its spelling does agree with the other manuscripts.
Implications
There is only one possible explanation for the strong agreement across the many different Quran manuscripts with the two possible spellings of niʿmat: there must have been a single written archetype from which all Quranic manuscripts of the Uthmanic text type are descended. Considering the early likely date of many of these manuscripts (second half of the seventh century), it is unlikely that the archetype of the “Uthmanic” text type postdates the canonical date assigned to it in the tradition – during ʿUthmān’s reign (24–34 AH). Even an attribution of the Uthmanic text type to the so-called “second maṣāḥif project” during the governorship of al-Ḥajjāj (75–95 AH) is difficult to accept. None of the narratives suggest such a radical change during this project, and several of the manuscripts examined here have upper date ranges in their carbon dating that precede al-Ḥajjāj’s governorship by several decades, Namely, Ma VI 165 (53 AH) and Qāf 47 (30 AH).
This example gives more than enough evidence that there is an original written copy from which all other Quranic manuscripts stem, and that all Quranic manuscripts of the Uthmanic text type have been committed to writing not from memory, or copying from dictation, but copied from a previous written copy. نعمه/نعمت is not the only phrase whose spelling correlates strongly across many different Quranic manuscripts. All other phrases with the construct feminine that have either spelling likewise correlate consistently, e.g. ، رحمه/رحمت .etc لعنه/لعنت There are other types of orthographic idiosyncrasies such as the spelling of jazāʾu in construct, which is normally spelled جزا, but appears spelled as جزاو time and time again in five specific places: Q 5:29, 33, Q 42:40, Q 20:76 and Q 39:34.
Spelling of ibad:
Spelling of mi’ah:
Spelling of yabisdt, If we examine the spelling of this word in old Quranic manuscripts, we find the exact same pattern. The general orthographic rule clearly predicts a defective spelling, but it is not found for this one word in any early Quranic manuscript, as can be seen in Table 5. Therefore, one should conclude that the Uthmanic archetype certainly had يابست, as there is no way of accounting for such an idiosyncratic spelling otherwise.