Mr Klingschor hits another six
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Did Memorisation Preserve the Qurʾān?During the Prophet Muḥammad’s lifetime, there arose amongst his followers many individuals who committed the Qurʾān to memory: The Reciters.* Unlike Muḥammad’s scribes (who recorded his various recitations in written form), the Reciters memorised and recited the Qurʾān orally, disseminating the revelation to the larger Muslim community by word of mouth.
Following the death of the Prophet, the Reciters assumed a role of great importance, being the primary custodians of Muḥammad’s revelations, commandments, precedents and general life-story. As the nascent Arab-Muslim Empire expanded, the Reciters joined the successive waves of Muslim colonists who settled in the newly-conquered territories, establishing themselves as religious authorities throughout the empire. The original Reciters—who gained their knowledge directly from the Prophet—gradually attracted students and disciples, coalescing into formative schools of recitation, law and theology centred in different cities and migrant communities.
Despite their initial pious intentions, the integrity of the Reciters became corrupted as they transformed into a self-serving political class. Seen as the possessors of Muḥammad’s revealed knowledge, the Reciters naturally assumed positions of influence over the lay Muslim masses, constituting a rival power structure to the authority of the early caliphs. The Reciters played a role in fomenting the 657 revolution against the caliph ʿUthmān, whose efforts to standardise the Qurʾān in written form threatened their monopoly over the possession and dissemination of the revelation, jeopardising their privileged position in early Muslim society. During the early Umayyad era, however, the Reciters seem to have lost much of their political clout and were subject alternately to bribery and repression from the state.[1]
The Umayyad Dynasty
As time passed by and the Reciters spread out across the Middle East, the different schools of recitation—based in city-centres such as Kūfah, Madīnah, Dimashq and Baṣrah—began to produce discrepant versions of the Qurʾān. Many of the original Reciters had also functioned as Muḥammad’s scribes, and in the years following the Prophet’s death they collected their own Qurʾānic manuscripts from various written sources and from their own memories.[2] Given the regional differences between the diverse schools of recitation and errors in memorisation, these early Qurʾānic codices differed significantly from one another in content, resulting in the rise of competing versions of the Qurʾān throughout the Arab-Muslim Empire. The most notable manuscripts and recitation-traditions of this nature were the Qurʾānic collections of Ibn Masʿūd (based in the Mesopotamian city of Kūfah), Ibn Kaʿb (based in Syrian city of Dimashq) and Al-Ashʿarī (based in the Mesopotamian city of Baṣrah). It was the Qurʾānic tradition based in Madīnah (in the Ḥijāz) that appears to have attained the status of orthodoxy, however, under the auspices of the caliph ʿUthmān – this was based ostensibly upon the manuscript of Zayd ibn Thābit, who had functioned as Muḥammad’s personal scribe and recorded many of the Prophet’s recitations in written form.[3]
Early schools of Recitation
The regional collections of the Qurʾān differed significantly from the ʿUthmānic Codex, not only in recitation and pronunciation but also in content and structure. Al-Ashʿarī (whose manuscript and teachings spawned the Baṣran School of Recitation) reportedly included two additional chapters in his Qurʾānic manuscript that were absent from the ʿUthmānic Codex, as well as other deviant verses and passages. When he received a copy of the ʿUthmānic Codex in Baṣrah, Al-Ashʿarī allegedly combined it was his own collection, retaining all of his additional heterodox materials in the resultant manuscript.[4]
Ibn Kaʿb’s Qurʾānic collection (which spawned the Dimashqī School of Recitation) also contained two chapters not found in the ʿUthmānic Codex, as well as variant verses and passages; the order of the Sūrahs in Ibn Kaʿb’s manuscript differed from the structure of the ʿUthmānic Codex,[5] and it is recorded that the second caliph ʿUmar chastised Ibn Kaʿb for the deviant content of his Qurʾānic recitation and collection.[6]
Of all the deviant Qurʾānic manuscripts, however, the collection of Ibn Masʿūd was the most notable and long-lasting; Ibn Masʿūd’s manuscript contained fewer chapters than the ʿUthmānic Codex, and also exhibited numerous textual deviations and discrepancies in its content.[7]
As well as Ibn Masʿūd, Ibn Kaʿb and Al-Ashʿarī, many other reciters and scribes from the life of the Prophet Muḥammad are said to have generated their own Qurʾānic manuscripts, including Al-Miqdād ibn ʿAmr (whose manuscript gained a following in the Syrian city of Ḥimṣ),[8] the early caliphs ʿUmar and ʿAlī, the Prophet’s widows Ḥafṣah, ʿĀʾishah and Hind, and the Prophet’s cousin Ibn ʿAbbās. Others included the Prophet’s companions Anas ibn Malik and ʿAbd Allāh ibn az-Zubayr, whose manuscripts—along with the collection attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās—seem to have been variations of the Madanī School of Recitation.[9]
Consequently, an important question arises: Did the process of memorisation preserve the Qurʾān? If Islāmic Tradition is to be trusted, the answer is a definite no. Aside from accounts of the various different Qurʾānic collections that arose throughout the expansive Arab-Muslim Empire, Islāmic Tradition also tells of specific chapters and verses that were lost or omitted from the ʿUthmānic Codex. Before these are discussed, however, it is worth examining the conventional Muslim account of how the Qurʾān was compiled and authenticated. According to Islāmic Tradition every verse in the Qurʾān that was collected during the compilation process had to be verified by a minimum of two witnesses or else the passage would be rejected as inauthentic,[10] bar one notable exception.[11] Although designed to preserve the integrity of the Qurʾān, this procedure nevertheless contained several salient flaws. Firstly, any two individuals working in tandem could easily have fabricated a Qurʾānic verse for any reason and testified to its validity, rendering the false verse valid according to the two-witness criterion. Secondly, many witnesses to Qurʾānic verses may have suffered from Memory Distortion and—whether by mistake or self-delusion—testified to the validity of fabricated or interpolated verses. Thirdly, this two-witness criterion discounts potentially authentic Qurʾānic passages that were unfortunately only preserved by single individuals. The renowned Muslim polymath As-Suyūṭī attempted to remedy the flaws in the two-witness criterion by claiming that authentic verses could be further identified by their “miraculous arrangement and exact syntax”, qualities that would “guarantee against any kind of forgery.”[12] Unfortunately for As-Suyūṭī, the variety and incoherence of the Qurʾān’s style, content and syntax[13] allows for greater breadth of fabrication and potentially indicates that—as per As-Suyūṭī’s own logic—parts of the standardised Qurʾān were fabricated. Clearly, As-Suyūṭī’s apologetics are unsuccessful and the two-witness criterion was an ineffective method to preserve the Qurʾān. Subsequently, the many lost Qurʾānic chapters and verses mentioned by Islāmic Tradition acquire a greater air of validity and warrant examination.
The mislaying of the Qurʾān began with Muḥammad himself, who reportedly forgot portions of his revelation and only remembered when listening to the recitations of his followers.[14] Islāmic Tradition asserts that the angel Jibrāʾīl annually refreshed Muḥammad’s memorisation of the Qurʾān,[15] but if we put aside Muslim religious presuppositions (such as the appeal to angels) it is evident that Muḥammad occasionally forgot portions of the Qurʾān, perhaps indefinitely. Despite this, it was only following the Prophet’s death that the loss of Qurʾānic chapters and verses became a major issue. It is recorded in Al-Bukhārī[16] and elsewhere that many Qurʾān-reciters died during the Caliph Abū Bakr’s aggressive wars, motivating serious efforts to collect and preserve the remaining Qurʾān. Presumably much of the memorised Qurʾān was irretrievably lost when these reciters died, as explicitly stated in As-Sijistānī’s Kitāb al-Maṣāḥif:
Zuhrī reports, “We have heard that many Qurʾān passages were revealed but that those who had memorised them fell in the Yamāmah fighting. Those passages had not been written down and, following the deaths of those who knew them, were no longer known; nor had Abū Bakr, nor ʿUmar nor ʿUthmān as yet collected the texts of the Qurʾān. Those lost passages were not to be found with anyone after the deaths of those who had memorised them.[17]
A salient example of such a lost Qurʾānic passage is the Āyat ar-Rajm, a verse that mandated the lapidation—stoning to death—of married adulterers and doesn’t appear in the modern, standardized Qurʾān. This is despite the fact that the Āyat ar-Rajm is well-attested in Islāmic Tradition[18] and explains the apparent discrepancy between the Qurʾānic punishment for illicit sexual intercourse and the punishments found in the Ḥadīth Literature: The Qurʾān prescribes lashing as a punishment for illicit sexual intercourse in general,[19] whilst the ḥadīth literature applies this only to unmarried fornicators[20] and demands lapidation for married adulterers.[21] If one takes into account the Āyat ar-Rajm, however, the issue is clarified: Sūrah 24:2 only applied to unmarried fornicators, whilst the Āyat ar-Rajm applied to married adulterers (and thus the Qurʾān was consistent with the sayings and actions of Muḥammad and the practices of the earliest Muslims). Consequently, it appears that there are certain verses that were ‘revealed’ to Muḥammad but failed to be incorporated into the Qurʾān—in the case of the Āyat ar-Rajm (according to Ibn Mājah), this was because the parchment on which the passage was recorded was eaten by a goat.[22] Another ḥadīth related by As-Suyūṭī states that only the caliph ʿUmar could recall the Āyat ar-Rajm when the Qurʾān was being compiled, thus failing the two-witness criterion for authenticity.[23] Islāmic Tradition (in the form of As-Suyūṭī) even tells us the original chapter to which the Āyat ar-Rajm belonged: Sūrat al-Aḥzāb. According to the Qurʾān reciter Ubayy ibn Kaʿb, the Āyat ar-Rajm was only one of many Qurʾānic verses omitted from Sūrah 33:
This famous Companion asked one of the Muslims, “How many verses in Sūrat al-Aḥzāb?” He said, “Seventy-three verses.” Ubayy told him, “It used to be almost equal to Sūrat al-Baqarah and included the Āyat ar-Rajm.”[24]
Another ḥadīth related by As-Suyūṭī records ʿĀʾishah specifying the exact number of verses in the original Sūrat al-Aḥzāb: 200, as opposed to its modern incarnation with only 73 verses.[25]
It wasn’t just Qurʾānic verses that went missing, however – according to some sources, entire chapters of the Qurʾān were lost. According to Islāmic Tradition, the Prophet Muḥammad once told a tale concerning the son of Adam and some valleys of gold.[26] Ibn ʿAbbās and Anas ibn Mālik (both of whom allegedly collected their own Qurʾānic manuscripts) were uncertain as to whether this tale was a Qurʾānic verse or merely a ḥadīth,[27] but the Qurʾān reciter and collector Al-Ashʿarī was certain: In the formative years of Islām he instructed the Arab-Muslim colonists of Baṣrah on how to correctly recite the Qurʾān, and in doing so he mentioned a lost Sūrah that contained (among other things) the story of Adam’s son and the valleys of gold, not to mention a further missing chapter that resembled one of the so-called Musabbiḥat Sūrahs.”[28] Ubayy ibn Kaʿb (considered to be the greatest Reciter of the Qurʾān amongst the Companions of Muḥammad[29]) seemed to contradict this claim,[30] but spoke of further discrepant Qurʾānic materials that he deemed to be authentic:
Narrated Ibn ʿAbbās: ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb said, “Ubayy was the best of us in the recitation (of the Qurʾān) yet we leave some of what he recites.” Ubayy said, “I have taken it from the mouth of Allah’s Apostle and will not leave for anything whatever.”[31]
As has been noted previously, Ubayy’s Qurʾānic manuscript contained content that deviated from the text of the official ʿUthmānic Codex (now considered to be the one true Qurʾān). To take but one example, the Musnad of Ibn Ḥanbal relates that Ubayy’s version of Sūrat al-Bayyinah (98) included a passage following Verse 4 that is absent from the modern Qurʾān.[32] Clearly, many of the greatest reciters and collectors of the Qurʾān considered some chapters and verses to be irretrievably lost, whilst others promulgated Qurʾānic passages that appear absent from the current standardised edition. It was for this reason that the caliph ʿUmar’s son ʿAbd Allāh once declared:
Let no one of you say that he has acquired the entire Qurʾān, for how does he know that it is all? Much of the Qurʾān has been lost, thus let him say, ‘I have acquired of it what is available.’[33]
If we trust the veracity of these early Reciters and Companions, it would seem that the Qurʾān was not preserved via the process of memorisation – instead, large parts of the original recitations were lost or distorted, and no two Reciters could agree on the content of the text. Consequently, it is evident that the Qurʾān was not perfectly preserved in recitation or text, if the earliest and greatest collectors and memorisers of the Qurʾān are to be trusted. Instead, Islāmic Tradition tells us that much of the Qurʾān is lost forever.
* The Reciters were known in Arabic as the Qurrāʾ in plural form and Qāriʾ in the singular.
[1] Leone Caetani, ‘ʿUthman and the Recension of the Koran’, in Ibn Warraq (ed.), The Origins of the Koran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book (Amherst, N.Y: Prometheus Books, 1998), pp.72-74. Also see: Christopher Melchert and Asma Afsaruddin, ‘The Reciters of the Qurʾān’, in Jane Dammen McAuliffe (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, Volume 4: P–Sh (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill N.V., 2004), pp.386-387.
[2] Gregor Schoeler, ‘The Codification of the Qurʾan: A Comment on the Hypotheses of Burton and Wansbrough’, in Angelika Neurwirth, Nicolai Sinai & Michael Marx (eds.), The Qurʾān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qurʾānic Milieu (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill N.V., 2010), pp.781-782.
[3] A. T. Welch, ‘Al-Ḳurʾān’, in C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, B. Lewis & C. Pellat (eds.), The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume 5: Khe — Mahi (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill N.V., 1986), pp.404-406.
[4] Welch, p.406.
[5] Welch, p.407. Also see: A. Rippin, ‘Ubayy b. Kaʿb’, in P. J. Bearman, T. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel & W. P. Heinrichs (eds.), The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume 10: T — U (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill N.V., 2000), pp.764-765.
[6] Bukhārī 6:61:527.
[7] Welch, pp.406-407.
[8] G. H. A. Juynboll, ‘Al-Miḳdād b. ʿAmr’, in E. J. Donzel, C. E. Bosworth, W. P. Heinrichs & C. Pellat (eds.), The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume 7: Mif — Naz (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill N.V., 1998), p.32.
[9] Welch, p.406.
[10] ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān as-Suyūṭī (Translated by Ḥamid Algar, Michael Schub & Ayman A. Ḥaleem), The Perfect Guide to the Sciences of the Qurʾān, Volume 1: Al-Itqān fi ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān, Volume 1 (Reading, U.K: Garnet Publishing Ltd., 2011), pp.139-140.
[11] Bukhārī 4:52:62.
[12] As-Suyūṭī, Vol. 1, p.140.
[13] For an example of the Qurʾān’s topical incoherence, see a thematic overview Sūrat al-Baqarah. For the variations in the Qurʾān’s style, compare the so-called Makkī and Madanī verses – the former are largely sajʿ prose, whilst the latter are largely prosaic diction. For an example of verbose Qurʾānic syntax, see Sūrah 24:61.
[14] Bukhārī 6:61:556, Bukhārī 6:61:557, Bukhārī 6:61:558, Bukhārī 6:61:559, Muslim 4:1720, Muslim 4:1721.
[15] Bukhārī 6:61:520.
[16] Bukhārī 6:61:509, Bukhārī 9:89:301, Bukhārī 6:60:201.
[17] Ibn Warraq, ‘The Importance of Variants: Introduction to Which Koran?’, in Ibn Warraq (ed.), Virgins? What Virgins? And Other Essays (Amherst, N.Y: Prometheus Books, 2010), p.198.
[18] Bukhārī 8:82:817, Bukhārī 9:92:424, Muslim 17:4194.
[19] Qurʾān 24:2.
[20] Bukhārī 3:48:817, Bukhārī 8:82:818, Bukhārī 8:82:819, Muslim 17:4191, Muslim 17:4192, Muslim 17:4193.
[21] Bukhārī 6:60:134, Bukhārī 8:82:816, Bukhārī 8:82:817, Bukhārī 9:83:17, Bukhārī 9:83:37, Muslim 17:4191, Muslim 17:4192, Muslim 17:4193, Muslim 17:4194, Muslim 17:4195, Abū Dāwūd 38:4421, Abū Dāwūd 38:4424.
[22] Muḥammad ibn Yazīd ibn Mājah (Translated by Muḥammad T. Ansari), Sunan ibn-i-Majah, Volume 3 (Lahore, Pakistan: Kazi Publications, 1996), pp.171-172: “1944. ʿĀʾishah is reported to have said. “The verse concerning stoning the fornicator to death (rajm) and ten sucklings of a young man have been revealed. Indeed it was recorded on a piece of paper lying under my cushion. When Allah’s Messenger (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) breathed his last, we were occupied by his death, a domestic goat entered and ate it up (swallowed it).”” Although only recorded in the Sunan ibn Mājah hadīth collection, this anecdote nevertheless explains the fate of the Āyat ar-Rajm.
[23] As-Suyūṭī, Vol. 1, p.140.
[24] Cited in Ibn Warraq, ‘Introduction’, in Ibn Warraq (ed.), The Origins of the Koran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book (Amherst, N.Y: Prometheus Books, 1998), p.14.
[25] Cited in Ibn Warraq, ‘Introduction’, p.14.
[26] Bukhārī 8:76:430, Bukhārī 8:76:444, Bukhārī 8:76:447, Muslim 5:2282, Muslim 5:2284, Tirmidhī 4:10:2337.
[27] Bukhārī 8:76:445, Muslim 5:2283, Muslim 5:2285.
[28] Muslim 5:2286.
[29] Bukhārī 6:60:8, Bukhārī 6:61:527.
[30] Bukhārī 8:76:446.
[31] Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī Volume 6, Book 61, Number 527. Also see: Bukhārī 6:60:8.
[32] Cited in Louay Fatoohi, Abrogation in the Qurʾan and Islamic Law: A Critical Study of the Concept of “Naskh” and its Impact (New York, N.Y: Routledge, 2013), p.142.
[33] Cited in Ibn Warraq, ‘Introduction’, p.14.
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