SOURCE: Arthur Jeffery, "Introduction," in Materials for the History of the Text of The Qur'an: The Old Codices, E. J. Brill, 1937, pp. 1-11.

[In the following excerpt, Jeffery outlines the "orthodox Muslim theory" regarding the compilation of the text of the Koran and argues that, contrary to some accounts, there was no extant collection or arranged version of the text at the time of Muhammad's death. Jeffery further explains the suppression of various codices of the text following the compilation of the Uthmanic edition.]

Critical investigation of the text of the Qur'an is a study which is still in its infancy. Within the fold of Islam it seems never to have attracted much attention. The growth of the Qurra' is evidence that there was some interest in the question in the early days of Islam¹ but with the fixing of the text ne varietur by the Wazirs Ibn Muqla and Ibn 'Isa in 322 A.H. at the insistence and with the help of the savant Ibn Mujahid († 324)², and the examples made of Ibn Miqsam († 362) and the unfortunate Ibn Shanabudh († 328) who persisted in making use of the old readings after this fixing of the text³, such interest as there was seems to have come to an end. Variant readings within the limits of the Seven systems⁴ that were admitted as canonical by the decision of Ibn Mujahid naturally continued to be studied by a limited group of scholars, and the readings of the other uncanonical Readers occasionally received attention, more particularly the systems of the Ten⁵ and the Fourteen⁶, who were nearest to canonical position, though at times others also were included⁷. No definite attempt, however, was made to construct any type of critical text of the Qur'an⁸, and for the most part textual studies were confined to questions of orthography (rasm) and pause (waql). Thus the older variants, even though they were known to be represented in some of the older Codices, for the most part survived only in the works of two classes of savants, firstly certain exegetes who were interested in the theological implications of such variants, and secondly the philologers who quoted them as grammatical or lexical examples.

It is thus that in the Qur'an Commentaries of az-Zamakhshar († 538),⁹ of Abu Hayyan of Andalus († 745),¹⁰ and the more recent Yemenite writer ash-Shawkani († 1250)¹¹ who seems to have used some good old sources no longer available to Western scholars, we find recorded a goodly number of old variants representing a different type of consonantal text from that officially known as the 'Uthmanic text, and in the philological works of such writers as al-'Ukbari († 616) the blind philologer of Baghdad,¹² Ibn Khalawaih (t 370)¹³ the savant of the Hamdanid Court of Saif ad-Dawla at Aleppo, and the even more famous Ibn Jinni († 392),¹⁴ a not inconsiderable amount of such material has been preserved, which in some cases, indeed, proves to be one source from which it came to the Exegetes.

To apply this material to a critical investigation of the text of the Qur'an seems never to have occupied the attention of any Muslim writer. In the Itqan,¹⁵ as-Suyuti's great compendium of Muslim Qur'anic science, we have recorded a great deal that concerns matters of the Muslim Massora, matters of considerable interest for the history of the exegesis of the Qur'an, but very little that bears on the investigation of the text.

Nor has the subject attracted much attention in the West. Noldeke opened it up in 1860 in the first edition of his Geschichte des Qorâns, and Goldziher drew attention to its importance in the first lecture of his Richtungen,¹⁶ but it received no systematic treatment until Bergstrasser undertook his Geschichte des Qorantexts¹⁷ as the third part of the revised edition of Nödeke's work, and with characteristic thoroughness began to work down to bed-rock on the subject. It is an extraordinary thing that we still have no critical text of the Qur'an for common use. Fliugel's edition which has been so widely used and so often reprinted, is really a very poor text, for it neither represents any one pure type of Oriental text tradition, nor is the eclectic text he prints formed on any ascertainable scientific basis. Some of the Kazan lithographs¹⁸ make an attempt at giving the Seven canonical systems on the margin, but only very incompletely. The same is true of the curious Teheran lithograph of 1323, which prints parts of the text in Kufic script (with interlinear naskhi) and parts in ordinary script, with a selection of the Seven on the margins. The best text so far available is the Egyptian standard edition of 1342 (1923)¹⁹ of which there are several later prints. This edition attemps to present a pure type of text according to one tradition of the Kufan school as represented by Hafs 'an 'Asim, though unfortunately some corruptions have crept in owing to the use by its editors of younger authorities on the Kufan tradition instead of going back to older and better sources.²⁰

The orthodox Muslim theory of the text is well known. According to this theory the Prophet arranged to have the revelations written down immediately they were revealed and used to collate once every year with the Angel Gabriel the material that had thus far been revealed. In the last year of his life they so collated it twice.²¹ When the Prophet died the text of the Qur'an was thus already fixed, and all the material gathered in an orderly fashion though it had not yet been written out, at least not in book form. Under the Caliphate of Abu Bakr took place the writing of it out in a first official recension. Later, in the Caliphate of 'Uthman it was discovered that all sorts of dialectal peculiarities had crept into the recitation of the text, so 'Uthman formed a Committee, borrowed from Hafsa the copy made by Abu Bakr, and on its basis had a standard Codex written out in the pure dialect of Quraish. Copies of this were made and sent to the chief centres of the Muslim empire where they became Metropolitan Codices, and all other Codices that had been formed were ordered to be burned. This was the Second Recension and all modern editions produced in the East are supposed to be exact reproductions of the text (though not of the form) of this 'Uthmanic Recension.²²

Very little examination is needed to reveal the fact that this account is largely fictitious. Nothing is more certain than that when the Prophet died there was no collected, arranged, collated body of revelations. Recent research by Dr. Bell of Edinburgh and Prof. Torrey of Yale has suggested that there is internal evidence in the Qur'an itself that the Prophet kept in his own care a considerable mass of revelation material belonging to various periods of his activity, some of it in revised and some of it in unrevised form, and that this material was to form the basis of the Kitab he wished to give his community before he died. Death, however, overtook him before anything was done about the matter. If this is so we are at a loss to know what became of this material, which obviously would have been the community's most precious legacy.²³ The earliest strata of tradition available to us make it quite certain that there was no Qur'an left ready as a heritage for the community. The Prophet had proclaimed his messages orally, and, except in the latter period of his ministry, whether they were recorded or not was often a matter of chance. Some pieces of revelation material seem to have been used liturgically and so probably would have been written. Some pieces he himself caused to be written down in permanent form as they were of a definite legislative character.²⁴ Besides these there were numerous portions, generally small pieces, though sometimes pieces of considerable extent, that were in the possession of different members of the community, either memorized or written down on scraps of writing material that happened to be handy. Certain individuals among the early Muslims, perhaps even a little before the Prophet's death, had specialized in collecting or memorizing this revelation material. They and their successors became known as the Qurra'—the Reciters, later the Readers, who constituted as it were the depository of revelation. Tradition says that it was the slaughter of a great number of these at the Battle of Yamama in 12 A.H. that caused interest to be aroused in getting all the revelation material set down in permanent written form, lest with the passing away of the Qurra' much of it should be lost.²⁵

That Abu Bakr was one of those who collected revelation material was doubtless true. He may possibly have inherited material that the Prophet had stored away in preparation for the Kitab. That he ever made an official recension as the orthodox theory demands is exceedingly doubtful. His collection would have been a purely private affair, just as quite a number of other Companions of the Prophet had made personal collections as private affairs. It was after the death of the Prophet that these collections became important. We have well-known stories of how 'Ali, Salim, Abu Musa and others had collections, and there are traditions which give lists of those who had commenced making collections or memorizing during the lifetime of the Prophet. As no two of these lists agree with one another to any great extent one is driven to conclude that while it was known that such collections were made there was no accurate information, save with regard to a few names, as to who made them²⁶. Orthodox theory, even to the present day, has insisted that the word jama'a "to collect" used in these traditions means nothing more than "to memorize" and so does not imply that the collection was made in written form. As, however, 'Ali brought along what he had collected on the back of his camel, as some of the collections had come to have independent names, and as 'Uthman, after sending out his official copies to the Metropolitan cities, had to order all other copies to be burned, there cannot be the slightest doubt that there were written collections.

What we find in early Islam, as a matter of fact, is only what we might have expected to find. Different members of the community who where interested began to collect in written form so much as they could gather of the revelation material that had been proclaimed by the Prophet. Later, with the gradual expansion of the Muslim empire, some of these collections began to acquire notoriety as they came to be in some sort authoritative in different centres. Naturally it would be those collections that could claim some completeness that would attain to this position of eminence. Thus we read that the people of Homs and Damascus followed the Codex of Miqdad b. al-Aswad²⁷, the Kufans that of Ibn Mas'ud, the Basrans that of Abu Musa al-Ash'ari, and the Syrians in general that of Ubai' b. Ka'b (Ibn al-Athir, Kamil, III, 86). Here we have the beginning of Metropolitan Codices, each great centre following that collection, or perhaps we may say that type of text, which had local fame.

Now when we come to the accounts of 'Uthman's recension, it quickly becomes clear that his work was no mere matter of removing dialectal peculiarities in reading, but was a necessary stroke of policy to establish a standard text for the whole empire. Apparently there were wide divergences between the collections that had been digested into Codices in the great Metropolitan centres of Madina, Mecca, Basra, Kufa and Damascus, and for political reasons if for no other it was imperative to have one standard Codex accepted all over the empire. 'Uthman's solution was to canonize the Madinan Codex²⁸ and order all others to be destroyed. It is very significant that the Qurra' were violently opposed to 'Uthman because of this act²⁹, and there is evidence that for quite a while the Muslims in Kufa were divided into two factions, those who accepted the 'Uthmanic text, and those who stood by Ibn Mas'ud, who had refused to give up his Codex to be burned³⁰.

There can be little doubt that the text canonized by 'Uthman was only one among several types of text in existence at the time³¹. To canonize the Madinan text was doubtless the natural thing to do, since in spite of the fact that Kufa early came to have the reputation of being par excellence the centre of Qur'anic studies, the prestige of Madina, the Prophet's own city, must at that time have been enormous, and the living tradition would doubtless have been most abundant there. We may even say that a priori the Madinan text had all the chances in its favour of being the best text available. Nevertheless it is a question of the utmost importance for any study of the history of the Qur'anic text, whether we can glean any information as to the rival types of text that were suppressed in the interests of 'Uthman's standard edition.

In the works of the exegetes and the philologers we not infrequently come across variant readings that have been preserved from one or other of these displaced Codices. Sometimes the reference is merely to a "Codex of the Sahaba" or "a certain old Codex" or "in certain of the Codices" … or "in the former text".… At times it is to one of the cities "a Codex of Basra", "a Codex of Homs", "a Codex of Ahl al-'Aliya" (Baghawi II, 52). Sometimes it is to a Codex in the possession of some particular person, as "a Codex belonging to al-Hajjaj" (Khal. 122; Gin. 60), or "a Codex belonging to the grandfather of Malik b. Anas" (Muqni' 120), or a Codex used by Abu Hanifa (see Massignon's al-Hallaj, I, 243 n. 5), or one of Hammad b. az-Zibriqan (Khal. 55; Muzhir II, 187). Mostly, however, the references are to the well-known old Codices of Ibn Mas'ud, Ubai' b. Ka'b, etc., which were known to go back to the time before the canonization by 'Uthman of one standard type of text.

The amount of material preserved in this way is, of course, relatively small, but it is remarkable that any at all has been preserved. With the general acceptance of a standard text other types of text, even when they escaped the flames, would gradually cease being transmitted from sheer lack of interest in them. Such readings from them as would be remembered and quoted among the learned would be only the relatively few readings that had some theological or philological interest, so that the great mass of variants would early disappear. Moreover, even with regard to such variants as did survive there were definite efforts at suppression in the interests of orthodoxy. One may refer, for instance, to the case of the great Baghdad scholar Ibn Shanabudh (245-328), who was admitted to be an eminent Qur'anic authority, but who was forced to make public recantation of his use of readings from the Old Codices.

Ibn Shanabudh's was not the only case, and such treatment of famous scholars³² was not encouraging to the study of the variants from the pre-'Uthm nic period. That orthodoxy continued to exert this same pressure against uncanonical variants is revealed to us from many hints from the period subsequent to Ibn Shanabudh. For example, Abu Hayyan, Bahr VII, 268, referring to a notorious textual variant, expressly says that in his work, though it is perhaps the richest in uncanonical variants that we have, he does not mention those variants where there is too wide a divergence from the standard text of 'Uthman. In other words, when we have assembled all the variants from these earlier Codices that can be gleaned from the works of the exegetes and philologers, we have only such readings as were useful for purposes of Tafsir and were considered to be sufficiently near orthodoxy to be allowed to survive³³.

Modern Muslim savants almost invariably set aside the variants recorded from the Old Codices on the ground that they are Tafsir, or as we should say, explanatory glosses on the 'Uthmanic text, and they roundly condemn such ancient scholars as Ibn Khalawaih and Ibn Jinni for not knowing the difference between Qira'at and Tafsir. It is clear, however, that only such qira 'at as were of the kind that could be used for tafsîr had any likelihood of being preserved.

Notes

¹Fihrist 36 mentions a number of works on Ikhtilaf al-Masahif, such as those by Ibn 'Amir (t 118), al-Farra' († 207), Khalaf b. Hisham (t 229), al-Mada'ini (t 231), al-Warraq and one Muhammad b. 'Abd ar-Rahman. There was also a work with a similar title by Abu Hatim (t 248) cf. Fihrist59², a work derived from al-Kisa'i (t 189) entitled Kitab Ikhtilaf Masahif Ahl al-Madina wa Ahl al-Kufa wa Ahl al-Basra 'an al-Kisa 'i, and a Kitab al-Masahif wa 'l-Hija' by Muhammad b. 'Isa al-Isfahani (t 253). Ibn Miqsam (t 362) is also said to have composed a Kitab al-Masahif (Fihrist 33⁶), but the three famous Masahif-books were those of Ibn Abi Dawu d (t 316), Ibn al-Anbari (t 327) and Ibn Ashta al-Isfahani (t 360), cf. Itqan 13.

² Vide Massignon's al-Hallaj, I, 241 and Bergstrasser, Geschichte des Qorantexts, 152 ff. Some account of the man will be found in al-Khatib, Tarikh Baghdad, V, 144-148, Yaqut, Irshad, II, 116-119, and Ibn al-Jazari, Tabaqat, I, 139-142, No. 663.

³ On Ibn Miqsam see Yaqut, Irshad, VI, 499; Ibn al-Jazari, Tabaqat, No. 2945; Miskawaihi Tajarib (ed. Amedroz), I, 285; and on Ibn Shanabudh see Ibn Khallikan (tr. de Slane), III, 16-18; Yaqut, Irshad, VI, 302-304 and Ibn al-Jazari, Tabaqat, No. 2707.

⁴ The Seven were Nafi' of Madina (1 169), Ibn Kathir of Mecca (t 120), Ibn 'Amir of Damascus (t 118), Abu 'Amr of Basra (j 154), 'Asim of Kufa (t 128), Hamza of Kufa (t 158) and al-Kisa'i of Kufa (t 189).

⁵ To the Seven were added Abu Ja'far of Madina (t 130), Khalaf of Kufa (t 229) and Ya'qub of Basra (t 205) to make the Ten. Islamic scholarship is still divided over the question as to whether seven only or all ten are canonical.

⁶ To the Ten were added Ibn Muhaisin of Mecca (t 123), al-Yazidi of Basra (t 202), al-Hasan of Basra (t 110) and al-A'mash of Kufa (t 148) to make the Fourteen.

⁷ We hear of books composed on the Eight Readers, the Eleven Readers, the Thirteen Readers, and sometimes these included Readers not in the usual lists as given above. Thus the Raudat al-Huffaz of al-Mu'addil includes the readings of Humaid b. Qais, Ibn as-Samaifa' and Talha b. Musarrif (see Pretzl "Die Wissenschaft der Koranlesung" in Islamica, VI, p. 43). Also the Cairo MS of the Siiq al-'Arus of Abu Ma'shar at-Tabari contains numerous mukhtarat beyond the canonical authorities, and the lost Kamil of al-Hudhali, though it is a work on the Ten, is said to have contained readings of forty extra Readers (Nashr 1, 90).

⁸ A possible exception is the case of Abu Musa al-Qazwini to whom my attention has been drawn by Prof. Massignon, and who seems to have prepared a text in which varied coloured dots represented alternative readings in the text. Some samples of this process are actually found in some Kufic Codices of the Third and Fourth Centuries, but so far as I know never consistently carried out.

⁹ The Kashshaf ed. Nassau Lees, Calcutta, 1856.

¹⁰Al-Bahr al-Muhit, 8 vols., Cairo, 1328 A.H. printed at the charges of the Sultan of Morocco, and unfortunately in the latter volumes printed in great haste and consequent inaccuracy.

¹¹Fath al-Qadir, 5 vols., Cairo 1349. In his MS the author used the text of Warsh 'an Nafi', i.e. the Madinan text tradition, but in the printing of this edition the publishers have stupidly changed it in every case to the Kufan text tradition of Hafs 'an 'Asim which is the one current in Egypt at the present day.

¹²At-Tibyan fi 'I-I'rabwa 'l-Qira'at fi Jamin'al-Qur'an on the margin of Jamal's supercommentary to Jalalain, 4 vols., Cairo 1348. (It was also printed separately at Cairo in 1302 and 1306, and with Jamal at Teheran in 1860 A.D.). Of his I'rab al-Qura'at ash-Shadhdha there is a broken MS in the possession of Dr. Yahuda of London and a complete MS discovered by the present writer in the East and now in the Mingana collection at Selly Oak.

¹³Ibn Halawaih's Sammlung nichtkanonischer Koranlesarten, herausgegeben von G. Bergstrasser, Stambul 1934. (Bibliotheca Islamica, VII). There are also variants recorded in his I'rab Thalathin Suwar of which three MSS are known.

¹⁴Nichtkanonische Koranlesarten im Muhtasab des Ibn Ginni, von G. Bergstrasser, Miunchen 1933. (Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1933, Heft 2). There are good MSS of the Muhtasab now available and it is hoped that the complete text may be published shortly. It is probable that other works of Ibn Jinn would repay examination for there are not a few uncanonical variants quoted in the Commentaries from Ibn Jinn which do not figure in Bergstrasser's lists.

¹⁵Soyuti's Itqan on the Exegetical Sciences of the Qur'an, ed. A. Sprenger, Calcutta 1857. (Bibliotheca Indica).

The recent work of az-Zanjani, Tarikh al-Qur'an, Cairo 1935, may perhaps represent the beginning of a new day. The author is visibly inspired by Western work on the Qur'an, and although bound hand and foot by the necessity of defending the orthodox position, he has made a useful assemblage of material from which others may start.

¹⁶Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung, Leiden 1920, being the Olaus-Petri Lectures at Upsala, published as No. VI of the De-Goeje Foundation.

¹⁷ Erste Lieferung 1926: zweite Lieferung 1929: the third and concluding section has now been issued by his pupil and successor at Munchen, Dr. 0. Pretzl. Bergstrasser envisaged a much larger plan for a history of the text of the Qur'an based on an assemblage of materials on a vast scale, and of which the publication of a critical text of the Qur'an by the present writer was to form part. (See his preliminary statement, "Plan eines Apparatus Criticus zum Qoran" in the Sitzungsberichte of the Bavarian Academy, 1930, Heft 7). The tragedy of the summer of 1933 which deprived Germany of one of her finest Arabists and the writer of a close personal friend, has necessarily delayed this project and somewhat changed it. Dr. Pretzl, however, has undertaken to continue with the plan and a new scheme for it is being elaborated. (See Pretzl, "Die Fortfiihrung des apparatus criticus zum Koran" in Sitzb. Bayer. Akad. 1934, Heft 2).

¹⁸ E.g. the folio edition of 1857.

¹⁹ Bergstrasser has given an account of it in Der Islam, XX (1932), Heft I in his article "Koranlesung in Kairo".

²⁰ Two of these older sources have been made available in careful editions in the Bibliotheca Islamica by Dr. Otto Pretzl, viz. the Taisir and the Muqni of ad-Dani (t 144) the Spanish Muslim savant.—Das Lehrbuch der Sieben Koranlesungen von Abu 'Amr ad-Dani, 1930, and Orthographie und Punktierung des Korans: zwei Schriften von Abu 'Amr ad-Dani, 1932. In the "Anmerkungen" to this latter text Pretzl notes a number of cases where the editors of the Egyptian standard text have deviated from the older tradition.

²¹Itqan, 146.

²² Thus in the Preface to the above-mentioned Egyptian Standard edition (student's edition of 1344) we read—

Its consonantal text has been taken from what the Massoretes have handed down as to the Codices which 'Uthman b. 'Affan sent to Basra, Kufa, Damascus and Mecca, the Codex which he appointed for the people of Madina, and that which he kept for himself, and from the Codices which have been copied from them.

²³ There is a Shi'a tradition (Kashani, Sufi, p. 9) that before his death the Prophet called 'Al and told him that this material was hidden behind his couch written on leaves and silk and parchments, bidding him take it and publish it in Codex form. It is also sometimes suggested that this material assembled by the Prophet was the nucleus of Abu Bakr's collection. In neither case, however, can we feel much confidence in the statements.

²⁴ There are of course elaborate stories of the amanuenses of the Prophet, and there can be no doubt that he did employ amanuenses for his diplomatic correspondence. That certain of these amanuenses were at times called upon to write out special pieces of revelation is not at all impossible. It is difficult to take seriously, however, the theory that considers them as a body of prepared scribes waiting to take down revelations as they were uttered.

²⁵ Ya'qubi (ed. Houtsma), II, 152; Fihrist 24; ad-Dani, Muqni' 4 ff. and c.f. Nöldeke-Schwally II, II ff. There are many references to material that was lost at Yamama that should have formed part of the Qur'an.

²⁶ Ibn al-Jazari, Nashr I, 6; Fihrist, 27; Bukhari (ed. Krehl) III, 397; Ibn Sa'd Tabaqat, II, ii, 112-114. See also Nöldeke-Schwally II, 8-11.

²⁷ This name is probably a mistake for Mu'adh b. Jabal, as indeed Bergstrasser has noted, Qerantext, 173.

²⁸ Assuming that there was a Madinan Codex. The stories of 'Uthman's Committee in the Muqni' and in Ibn Abi Dawud certainly suggest that Madina had depended largely on oral tradition and that this Committee of 'Uthman made a first hand collection by taking down the material directly from the depositories and demanding two witnesses for every revelation accepted.

²⁹ It will be remembered that the Ibadites made the charge against 'Uthman that he had tampered with God's word.

³⁰ Ya'qubi, Historiae II, 197; Ibn al-Ath r III, 86, 87; Qurtubi I, 53.

³¹ Ibn Abi Dawud, p. 83 quotes from Abu Bakr b. 'Ayyash (t 194) the statement that many of the Companions of the Prophet had their own text of the Qur'an, but they had passed away and their texts had not survived. This same fact is evidenced by the recurring reference to al-harf al-awwal where what is meant is a reading from the time of the Prophet which is different from that in the 'Uthmanic text.

³² In the accounts of Ibn Shanabudh will be noticed the effort made to paint him as an ignoramus and a weak-minded person. This was the usual procedure with regard to all those suspected of unorthodox views and is not to be taken seriously. It is perfectly clear from the sources that he was a famous scholar and drew large numbers of students, who in those days as in these did not flock to listen to the ignorant and weak-minded.

³³ An interesting modern example occurred during the last visit of the late Prof. Bergstrasser to Cairo. He was engaged in taking photographs for the Archive and had photographed a number of the early Kufic Codices in the Egyptian Library when I drew his attention to one in the Azhar Library that possessed certain curious features. He sought permission to photograph that also, but permission was refused and the Codex withdrawn from access, as it was not consistent with orthodoxy to allow a Western scholar to have knowledge of such a text.