Ancient Quranic Manuscripts from Sanaa

[MostafaM]

What do you people think about that?
I am a little confused!


Gerd R. Puin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"...My idea is that the Koran is a kind of cocktail of texts that were not all understood even at the time of Muhammad. Many of them may even be a hundred years older than Islam itself. Even within the Islamic traditions there is a huge body of contradictory information, including a significant Christian substrate; one can derive a whole Islamic anti-history from them if one wants. The Qur’an claims for itself that it is ‘mubeen,’ or clear, but if you look at it, you will notice that every fifth sentence or so simply doesn’t make sense. Many Muslims will tell you otherwise, of course, but the fact is that a fifth of the Qur’anic text is just incomprehensible. This is what has caused the traditional anxiety regarding translation. If the Qur’an is not comprehensible, if it can’t even be understood in Arabic, then it’s not translatable into any language. That is why Muslims are afraid. Since the Qur’an claims repeatedly to be clear but is not—there is an obvious and serious contradiction. Something else must be going on...."

‪The Oldest Quranic Manuscripts‬‏ - YouTube

[ScimitarXEdge]

[Jones] believes that the San'a Koran could just be a bad copy that was being used by people to whom the Uthmanic text had not reached yet. 'It's not inconceivable that after the promulgation of the Uthmanic text, it took a long time to filter down.'

[BarakzaiAbdali]

This is old news and manipulation of Islamic archeological resources by Puin. Toby Lester of the Atlantic Monthly wrote an article on this nearly a decade ago or so. The issue here was that Puin took such liberty with the sanaa manuscripts that he subsequently wrote this text that is as absurd as the Crone and Cook thesis called Hagarism:

http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Origins.../dp/1591026342

This text promotes the idea that the Prophet Muhammad was nearly the equivalent of a Christian Bishop of sorts and a Christian reformer whose message was distorted by the Caliphs (an obviously absurd contention).

Moreover, the idea of variant readings or Ahruf were well known in Bukhari itself. For instance, we now read Wa maa khalaaqazaqraa wal unsaa ( By the creation of man and woman) in suraah layl. In the Quranic literature in Bukhari, there are sound hadith that indicate Abdullah ibn Masud's listening to the ahruf conveyed the ayaah simply as wazzakaraa wal unsaa ( By the man and the woman).

Subsequently, in the same chapter of Bukhari, its noted that Ubay ibn Kaab was asked regarding the inclusion or exclusion of suraah 113/114, per the circulating myth that ibn masud did not include them... he disavowed the claim with a clear isnaad.

Professor Azami wrote a devastating critique of Puin's work:

http://rasheedgonzales.wordpress.com...-quranic-text/

The closest that the orientalists have come to even being able to provide a single piece of evidence corroborating anything from the sanaa manuscripts that match the mushaafs of Ubay and of Ibn Masud are found in a single sentence in this publication by A Fedeli:

A. Fedeli, "Early Evidences Of Variant Readings In Qur'ānic Manuscripts", in K-H. Ohlig & G-R. Puin (Eds.)

Moreover, the sanaa manuscripts were palimpsests and small kitaabs similar to the prayer books used around the world by Muslims that include odd arrangements of suraahs, with the order not necessarily reflecting that of the Uthmanic recension.

Even today, in various Hafiz schools they use this method of cleaning off boards onto which they write various suraahs and then rewrite them over old pieces.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

The only other attempt, besides Fedeli's to demonstrate any manuscript existence that accords with the hadith literatures reports on the extant variants of the companions is found here:

B. Sadeghi & U. Bergmann, "The Codex Of A Companion Of The Prophet And The Qurʾān Of The Prophet", Arabica, 2010, op. cit., p. 393.

Here is the article Mostafa:

http://www.madaninejad.com/docs/Sade...r_lecture9.pdf

My point is that Islamic history, as the scholars at the tail end of the video note, is rich in its historical traditions regarding Jamaa Al Quran.

Suyutis Itiqaan and a number of prized texts discuss the readings of the Holy Book well before Puin even came on the scene... in fact 1300 years before he did so.

The key is this statement from this landmark article that blows away Puin's attempts to map out a tradition for the Quranic recension in our hands today, with that of the sordid history of the Bible:

"The magnitude and number of the differences point to orality. Purely oral transmission, however, is unlikely, since differences among the codices remain the exception rather than the rule, even when it comes to minor elements of language. Nor does a scenario of deliberate redaction of a written text explain the differences... As for the status of non-

ʿUthmānic codices described in Muslim literary sources, I argue that there must be a significant kernel of truth in these reports, and that a particular second-century list of the variants of the Companion Ibn Masud..."

This last landmark article comes from the germans and not Azami and is the Bergman article referenced above.

http://www.madaninejad.com/docs/Sade...r_lecture9.pdf

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Final quote from the landmark Arabica article by Bergmann (mind you Bergman and Sadeghi's article is based on the Sanaa manuscripts):

The present essay, however, finds that the textual evidence supports a more conservative conclusion, namely that the

ʿUthmanic tradition is better than C-1 in reproducing the Prophetic prototype. (This conclusion, however, may be modified in future if the parts of the manuscript not studied here do not support the

trends observed thus far.)"

[MostafaM]

Thanks for the infos, Barakzai!

It will take me some time to read them.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Thanks for the infos, Barakzai!

It will take me some time to read them.

No problem. Sorry, I have been busy and belated in responding. Be cautious as well with the work of the orientalists. I think it is fair to say that the early exegesis done by scholars like Ghazali, Suyuti, and even Bukhari are invaluable and more representative of the raw data we want to discuss here.

That may sound cliche to you, and I know you have your qualms with Islamic scholarship... but as a solid grounded example of the motivations of the Puins, the Fedelis, etc, take at a look at this very important comment about Fedeli's grossly exaggerated supposutions from ground breaking Arabica Article by Bergmann and Sadigh I cited to you:

"The non-ʿUtmanic status of the lower text has been noted already by Sergio Noseda, Yasin Dutton, and Alba Fedeli. In 2007, Fedeli published a report on two of the folios (David and Bonhams). She mentions a number of important variants and points out the first three items in Table 4. Aside from that, her discussion is slightly imprecise.
Moreover, she misreads the text at one point, mistakenly inferring an omission in the Bonhams folio, and then uses that to argue that the version in the ʿUtmānic Qurʾān resulted from deliberate addition motivated by religio-political concerns." Page 363

This should strike a chord with you Mostafa. I find it deeply concerning that automatic ipso facto trust is given to western orientalists simply because their name is exotic to the Islamic tradition (e.g. Wansborough). If their work is slipshod as Fedeli's is shown to be, and if they are demonstrated to have agenda as Bergman showed her to have... and if Puin equally slipshod to allow the inclusion of her works into his grandiose Encyclopedia of Islam... what does this say about the quality and intentions of their work?

By that same token, the fact that Bukhari was honest enough to document the hadith of Hudayfaah coming to Utmaan, describing the arguments arising in the outer provinces (interestingly enough, Afghanistan by that point) over companion codices, I think this speaks volumes about the deep integrity of these early Muslim scholars.

My view is, that as an engineer, you will want the rawest data devoid of the attempt to impose suspicions, etc. If that is the case, after you are done reading the cited works, I honestly think you will have a renewed appreciation for the early ulema.