I think the Classical Arabic question is harder than that ... it did not emerge to 'correct' the Qur'an, it emerged as part of the process of systematically imposing order and ideology on an extremely diverse and complicated landscape of actual Arabic language use.
Think of it as modern standard written English, which is not the same as the many different spoken varieties of English. Classical Arabic is something similar, a 'high' literate language that was adopted and defined as a way of dealing with underlying linguistic complexity. In doing so, the classical language was defined in a way that reflected 8th/9th century AH ideology and language, and only obliquely represents the actual linguistic background of the base Qur'anic text (notice I say text rather than recitation).
But these are different issues. You have to ask what dialect(s)the Qur'anic rasm was written in, then what dialect(s) it was read in, and then how those dialect(s) were later defined as Classical Arabic.
What is particularly strange is how badly the traditional Arabic reading, in Classical Arabic, seems to fit the base orthography of the Qur'an -- the rasm. Here we have a text which on its face conflicts with so many of the defining features of Classical Arabic, which were later "written into" and on top of that basic rasm. For example, the rasm does not include the "I'rab" case endings of Classical Arabic (consistent with Arabic dialect, neo-Arabic, Nabatean Arabic, etc., which all lack case endings). More importantly, the rhyme scheme of the Qur'an only works when you don't pronounce the case endings; you pronounce them in the middle of the sentence, but not for the rhyming portion at the end. This is incomprehensible if the base orthography really was "Classical Arabic." Clearly it was originally written to rhyme in a language/dialect WITHOUT case endings. Notably, Classical Arabic poetry does the opposite, it only rhymes WITH the case endings pronounced, which is the only non-ridiculous way that you would write rhymes in such a language.
Another example, the base rasm orthography does not include a hamza to indicate medial glottal stops -- another defining feature of Classical Arabic -- but instead includes long vowels. As Donner puts it: "Hence the word mu’min is written starting with m followed by w as marker for long u, because the glottal stop of classical Arabic mu’min was elided in Meccan dialect to produce the
pronunciation mumin, which is how the word is written in the Qur’an (“mwmn”)."
Muslims explain this incongruity as reflecting the lack of a medial glottal stop in Hijazi dialect, written down in the text. So they basically concede that the basic Qur'anic text reflects a major linguistic deviation from its recitation in Classical Arabic on this point, but instead of reading the script in the (largely unknown!) dialect it was originally written in, they use additional markings to explain how you instead should read glottal stops when reciting the text, following Classical Arabic pronunciation ... even though the base rasm provides a different pronunciation! How do they justify this? By claiming that oral recitation is primary, and was securely transmitted from the start! Oddly enough, the traditional Muslim explanation for the Uthmanic text compilation is that it was done because people were reciting the Qur'an in so many different dialects .... but even more oddly, the Arabic script of that time was too rudimentary to allow such fixation anyways.
This is all very bizarre. Nothing about the base Qur'anic rasm suggests that it reflects the language which Muslims now recite it in. The 'complete' Qur'anic script and recitation (kitted out with full diacritics and markings) transforms the basic text with a swarm of extrinsic signs that essentially writes it into a different language, namely Classical Arabic. The mind-boggling complexity that results from this process of distortion was inevitable.
But all of this requires as an initial step one simple point: Recognizing that later Muslims did not retain a secure understanding of the language and context in which the base Qur'anic texts were composed and written down. Once you concede that point, which assumes a lack of a *secure oral tradition*, then the entire traditional Muslim interpretive apparatus crashes down.
Abu Lahab is a great example of how this works. Being a non-Muslim (as opposed to an ex-Muslim), when I read that surah, it never even occurred to me that Abu Lahab was anything other than a metaphorical figure; only somebody raised with the traditional Muslim interpretation would think of that when reading text. "Father of Flame" is obviously not a real name, and was never intended to be understood as a specific real person. This silly symbolic name was just part of a story about unbelievers who are destined for hellfire, hence the goofball symbolic names, hence the wife carrying firewood for her own burning. Yet later Muslims invented an elaborate biographical and historical context for this text which they no longer understood. It's all pretend. I later discovered that Gabriel Reynolds wrote an article making this exact point about the surah:
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/11/reading-the-quran-through-the-bible"Nonetheless, most scholars rely on these stories to explain the Qur’an. In Chapter 111, for example, the Qur’an refers to “The Father of Flame,” who will not benefit from his money but “roast in a burning fire,” and his wife, “who carries firewood and has a fiber rope around her neck.” Karen Armstrong (a former nun and popular writer on Islam) explains, “Abu Lahab’s wife, who fancied herself as a poet, liked to shout insulting verses at the Prophet when he passed by. On one occasion she hurled an armful of prickly firewood in his path.”
Armstrong relies on Muslim traditions that make Abu Lahab’s wife historical, but without these traditions the chapter would seem to be an artful metaphor of a foolish rich man and his wife who carries the wood that will fuel her own punishment in hell. Instead, we are given historical claims of a Meccan woman who attacked Muhammad by hurling firewood (Armstrong invents the prickly part) at him."
It is almost unbelievable to me that Western scholars ever took the traditional Muslim exegesis of this passage seriously. But that very strange lack of critical thought in previous Islamic studies is exactly why I find the field so exciting -- finally, over the last ten years, the old approach has collapsed and people are reading the Qur'an for what it is, in historical and linguistic context, not just through the lens of later Muslim tradition. Amazing discoveries and theories are coming out of the woodwork now.
Topic: Discussion about "My Ordeal with the Qur'an"