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CORRECTIONS IN EARLY QURAN MANUSCRIPTS

 DANIEL ALAN BRUBAKER

 

 

​

CORRECTIONS IN EARLY QUR >AN MANUSCRIPTS

 


CORRECTIONS IN EARLY QUR)AN MANUSCRIPTS

TWENTY EXAMPLES


DANIEL ALAN BRUBAKER

 

 

 

​

 

 

Copyright© 2019 by DANIEL A. BRUBAKER Published by Think and Tell Press, Lovettsville All rights reserved.
Front cover:MS.474.2003, courtesy of theMuseum oflslamic Art (D. Brubaker photograph); back cover: BnF arabe 331, Bibliotheque nationale de France
Photographs of manuscripts from the following institutions are used by permission:

⦁    Bibliotheque nationale de France, Paris
⦁    Museum oflslamic Art, Doha
⦁    The National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg


Modern Qur'an images are from the Mul?bafMuscat, used by permission of DecoType.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Corrections in Early Qur'an Manuscripts: Twenty Examples, QuranManuscript
Change Studies (series) Vol. l

ISBN13: 978+949123-03-6 (paperback)

ISBN13: 978+949123-04-3 (e-book)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For my parents

 

CONTENTS

 


Transliteration Key Manuscripts Referenced Preface Acknowledgments

l. Introduction
⦁    The Corrections
⦁    Conclusions

Index of Qur 'ii.n verses referenced Further Reading
Glossary
About the Author
xi xv
xvii xxvii

27
93

103
105
109
113

 

 


TRANSLITERATION KEY

 

 

 

For Arabic transliteration, I use the IJMES  system, shown below. However, since my purpose is to emphasize the form of script rather than its pronunciation, I don't change the definite article lam to the sound of the "sun" letters immediately following it.

 

t..:
th0

j(

kht dJ 

r.)
Zj

xii    Transliteration Key

s l.Y' shut h>'°
d.  '-"°.
t .b i..lo
ct
ght  f .._Q qJ

lJ

 


w .J
Y<$.
-a (-at in construct state);; al- and ) l- (article)JI
a I or '-5
U.J
i <$.
iyy 


ay <$.
a
u

Transliteration Key    xiii

When I need to transliterate the bare rasm, I use Thomas Milo's system of capital letters to convey the ambiguity of archigraphemes in manuscripts:

A    l    F
B    [F] -Q    (.J    "
G    C         K    !J    .b D             ..    L    J            J R                M        i        ..
s         [BJ -N    u    J
c    if    r=-    H    •
T    .1    b    w
E    [BJ -Y    <.S

 

 

 

 


MANUSCRIPTS REFERENCED

 

 

 

Bibliotheque nationale de France, Paris
arabe 327 (examples 7 and 9)
arabe 328 (examples 2 and 12)
arabe 330 (example 8)
arabe 331 (example IO)
arabe 340 (example 13)

Cairo Al-Hussein Mosque
Cairo al-mw/J:iaf al-sharif (example 16 and "Another phenomenon" at the end of chapter 2)

Dar al-Makhtutat,  an 'a'
01-20.4 (example 3)

Museum of lslamic Art, Doha MIA.2013.19.2 (example 15)
MIA.2014.491 (example 20)
MS.67.2007.1 (example 6)

 xvi    Manuscripts Referenced

MS.474.2003 (example 5, and front cover)

National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg
Marcel 2 (example 4)
Marcel 5 (example 19)
Marcel 7 (example 18)
Marcel II (example 3 and 17)
Marcel 13 (example 3)
Marcel 21 (example 3)

Topkap1 Palace Library, Istanbul
Topkapi al-mwjl:zaf al-sharif (examples l, II, and 14)

 

 

 

 

PREFACE

 

 

 

Over the several years since defending my doctoral disserta­ tion, "Intentional Changes in Qur i an Manuscripts," I've received many inquiries about when this work will be published. The delay has been the result of several factors, foremost among them a personal tendency toward perfec­ tionism that keeps me revising in what sometimes feels like an endless loop. Another is the sheer, and growing, volume of the material that I have accumulated.
The book in your hands is a small attempt in the short term to give some satisfaction to those eager for this work by providing a representative sample and introduction. It is unusual, I think, for the popular-level publication to precede the full academic one, and I have been cautioned by some against doing this. I feel this situation is a special case - and at any rate I am happy to release this material even as I finalize the larger and more rigorous works.
In the following pages, I 've written to be understood not only by scholars but also by general readers, though without, I

xviii    Preface

hope,  comprom.ise  of academic  integrity.  It  is  not  a big book, but it does include some technical details, as it should. If you are a non-specialist, there may be things that go over your head. Please do not worry about it too much. Conversely, if you are an academic, you may find yourself wishing for more detail. If this is the case for you, I do hope you will at least derive some benefit from what I have done here, but also wait patiently as I finalize further publications.

 

This book does not engage in theological  analysis of the Qur'an's content. Though theology is a thoroughly legitimate subject of study and serious contemplation, I do not comment in these pages upon the ultimate spiritual questions that the Qur'an raises. This book is not the place for it. What I have done is introduce an aspect of textual criticism of the Qur'an that has occupied my interest and effort and that I find fascinating.
Still, it may be appropriate to consider why the Qur'an as an object is worthy of such attention, what difference it should make to most people that the book exists, and why regular folks might be curious about its early transmission history.
The first thing to note is that the Qur'an's ideas and theology have not only had an impact on world  history  for more than a thousand years, but they continue to affect the lives of billions of people today. Those affected include people who believe Muhammad was a prophet and those who do not.
Let me address several potential categories of readers, one or more of which may represent you, and discuss what profit there may be in the subject of this book for each.

 Preface    xix
First, if you are one who believes Muhammad was a prophet and you call yourself "Muslim:" The Qurian is, quite simply, your kitiib, your book. Obviously, you know this. When it comes to these manuscripts, they are among the earliest surviving witnesses to the message Muhammad delivered. The verses they contain are likely those to which Muhammad was referring when he is reported to have said that Allah "showed favor to the believers when He sent among them an apostle from among themselves who recited to them His verses and purified them and taught them the book and wisdom, though before they were in obvious error." 1 For this reason alone I suggest it makes sense to have a curiosity about the early manuscripts. What passages do they contain? What are their physical and textual features? What variations exist among them, and what can these mean? What are these corrections, and why do they exist? And so forth. These manuscripts are fascinating to me as a scholar, and they capture my imagina­ tion every time I handle them or think about where and when they came into being. I can only imagine how special they must be to a person who believes they contain records of revelation.
Second, what might be the interest for those who do not believe Muhammad was a true prophet and therefore do not believe the Qurian to be revelation from God? To this I would answer that, even so, there are indeed some 1.6 billion people in this world who do believe that Muhammad was a prophet and who thus live their lives in some degree of conformity to his message and instructions. Depending upon where you live, you may have a lot of direct interaction with such people, or a little, or perhaps none at all. But the world is changing constantly and the influence of ideas upon events distant and

 xx    Preface

local is all around us. It is probably not necessary for you (if you fall into this category) to engage deeply with the literary or devotional sources of the religion of Muhammad, but  a reasonable level of information - some of it on the cutting edge of research - about the history and documentary trail of the foundational text of this world faith, the Qur)an, is worth acquiring, if possible,  and some of that is contained in the pages that follow here. Also, in my view, the main contours of the book you hold in your hands are not terribly difficult to grasp, even for non-Arabists. Give it a go!
Third, if you are an academic (either believing or non­ believing), the purpose of your work is to uphold truth and to pursue knowledge. Yes, it is true that everyone has a reason and motivation that draws our interest to a particular subject
⦁    you do as well as I. But to be a good scholar, one must operate in methodologically sound ways, and in service of a common master: Truth. When it comes to the history of Muhammad's life and actions, to that of those who identified with him during that time and in the subsequent  Arab conquests, to the history of the revelation and its transmission, and to the content of that revelation, the circumstances of its delivery, and the exegetical (interpretive) keys that may have been given by Muhammad and related through his compan­ ions and others, there is a lot to unpack and a lot more uncer­ tainty about some details than most uncritical observers may understand. As scholars we intend to test claims and proposi­ tions, with the purpose of refining our understanding of what actually happened or (as the case may be) what was actually said or written. Today we are witnessing an exhilarating time, academically, for the study of Qur)an  manuscripts and their early history. As an academic who is presumably interested in

 Preface    XXl

this field (since you are reading this), you may be very encouraged.
Fourth, if you are a professional (either believing or non­ believing) in politics or government  or  media, you may be faced from time to time, and perhaps increasingly, with claims about Islam, both positive and negative. Depending upon your personal relationships, predilections, political leanings, or any number of other factors, you may be inclined to believe one or the other.  But in any given situation you  might be wrong or lack nuance. When you speak, people listen to you. When you make a policy decision, it affects others. Good governance, reporting, and managing of others rests ideally upon knowl­ edge and wisdom. Sometimes the critical or negative thing - even though not politically correct - might be true. At other times,  the  alarming generalization  _:_  even though  satisfying to believe - might not be true or may at least require some qualification. The very center of Islam is Muhammad, and the center of Muhammad's identity for Muslims is his status as a Messenger of Allah. A messenger has a message, and  the Qur)an is that of Muhammad; therefore, its history is not an inconsequential matter.
This book, as I have already said, will not speak to the
larger issues of Islam. But it does focus on tangible historical objects that, because of their particular characteristics as described here, do challenge traditional assertions about the transmission of the Qur)an in several ways. If you are a curious and inquisitive person (and these are really good and important qualities in any human being, all the more so for those whose professions are related to knowledge, policy, and opinion), this book might be of interest to you not only for what it says about the matter at hand but also for what it says

xxii    Preface

about what might  be  termed  a  pious  enhancement  of the Qur) an's textual history. Hagiography, the enhancement of a history in order to elevate its subject, is not only carried out on historical people; it can be directed toward objects as well and
⦁    setting aside  completely for the  moment the  entire  matter of the actual nature of the Qur) an as received by Muhammad himself - the history of this recitation as a physical object from the time of its writing down until the present appears to contain some elements of hagiography, or cleaning up and beautifying. To acknowledge this is not necessarily to suggest bad or nefarious motives and certainly it is quite natural for people to attribute the most complimentary attributes and circumstances to people or objects that they hold in  great esteem. But if it is our intention to deal in reality, as is or ought to be the case for historians and reporters and legislators alike, we should be willing to test assumptions.

 

The past dozen years have been an adventure for me. I became interested in   Qur)iin manuscripts while working on my   PhD in the department of Religious Studies   (now the   department of Religion) at Rice University in Houston. In fact it was at a conference in Oxford around that time, perhaps 2007, that I first heard Keith Small present a paper on textual criticism of the Qur)an. I had further conversations with Keith on the subject at that time, and he, in his characteristic kindness and humility, made himself available to mentor me as I became ever more interested over the next several years.
Keith invited me to deliver a paper as part of a panel at the
annual  meeting   of the   Middle   East   Studies  Association

 Preface    XXlll

(MESA) in San Diego, organized by Emran El-Badawi and chaired by David Powers. I had been examining photographs of Quri an manuscripts (for example from the UNESCO CD­ Rom of San 'ai Qurians) more closely, and found a very inter­ esting page with two corrections and one glaring non-canon­ ical variant that had not been corrected. I discussed  these findings in my conference paper.
During a break between sessions at that conference, Keith and I were talking in the sitting area of his hotel room in the Grand Hyatt (it looked right out over the Bay and the day was sunny and beautiful) and Keith showed me a couple of photographs that really caught  my  attention:  they  were pictures of Qurian manuscript pages that had  quite  dramatic and lengthy corrections on them. These were not just a few letters or a single word, but were overwritten erasures greater than a full line in length. I  found the photographs fascinating and surprising.
Already very interested, I decided to look more at the early development of the written Qurian  in my doctoral work, thinking at first that I wanted to write my dissertation on something in the area of textual criticism related to these manuscripts generally, including corrections as part of the picture. As I began this proj ect, I began to find more correc­ tions, and I took note of them. In 2011 I made a major research trip to Europe and the Middle East to view manuscripts. Although my original idea for my dissertation was to write on early development of the Quri an in written form, I began to think seriously about writing only on corrections. I contacted Keith once again and asked his opinion of this direction. He said it would be a very good topic, so I told David Cook and my department of the new subject I intended to pursue.

XXlV    Preface

The rest is now history. I successfully defended my disser­ tation and was awarded my doctorate from Rice in April 2014, and have been continuing my research in this area since. Whereas I had documented some 800 physical corrections in my dissertation, I have by now noted thousands, and there is no end in sight.
What do these corrections indicate? You will see my own brief remarks in the final chapter.

 

I am aware, of course, that my work deals with things that real people believe, feel in their hearts, and consider to be matters of cultural and personal honor, so it is appropriate that I speak about this aspect for a moment.
The matter of corrections in Qur' an manuscripts obvi­ ously touches the question of whether what we have now is a true  and  complete  representation  of what  was  delivered  by
Muhammad in the first part of the 7th century AD.2 This ques­
tion is quite different from the (also important) one of whether Muhammad was a prophet - that is, whether these revela­ tions are from God. The book you have in your hands, and the material contained within it, does not have anything to say about whether Muhammad was a prophet. It does have to do with questions about the Qur' an's original form and about the integrity of its transmission in the earliest stages after Muham­ mad's death. I am not trying to hurt anyone's feelings by studying these things or by talking about them. What I would like to do, both as a human being and as a scholar, is test assumptions and follow evidence where it leads. I propose this

 Preface    xxv

path is a good one for anyone to follow, and so I invite you to come along this road as well.
As mentioned earlier, my more extensive works are forth­ coming; I do hope those interested will wait patiently a little while longer and receive these warmly when they are soon, God willing, published.
At the back of this book is a list offurther reading.

Daniel Alan Brubaker May, 2019

⦁    Guillaume, A., The Life of Muhammad: A translation of lbn l?biiq's  Sirat  Rasul Allah, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955. 398). See also Qur'an 3:164.
⦁    A note on dating conventions: I reference dates throughout this book in the Gregorian (solar) calendar, that is,  "AD"  and  "BC."  Many  readers  will  be aware that  there  is  also  an  Islamic lunar  calendar that  dates  from  the  year in which Muhammad and   his   community   emigrated   from   Mecca   to Medina, 622 AD, an event called  the  hijrah.  Its  dates  are  given  in  (lunar) years as "AH," for Anno  Hegirae,  "year  of the  H ijrah."  In  many  scholarly books  dealing with  subjects related to  Islam  and  its  history,  dates  are  given in both AD (or "CE") and AH. For simplicity and ease of reference  to  the calendar familiar  to  most  readers, I have  chosen  not  to do  this in  the English edition. If readers wish to find corresponding hijrl dates in a given instance,  there  exist  today  many  free  phone  apps  and  online  calculators that make doing so very easy.

 

 

 

 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 

 


Many people have made my Qurian manuscript work to date possible and pleasant, but there are some in particular whom I would be remiss not to mention by name.
First, I am grateful to my Ph.D. advisor David Cook and the late Keith Small, both academic mentors to me, and both also dear friends. I am also grateful to have had the guidance and friendship of the late Andrew Rippin, and am particularly thankful for the honor of his presence on my doctoral committee.
Many owners, curators, caretakers, and staff of institutions housing the manuscripts have opened doors for me, and I am grateful to all, including the following: Olga Vasilyeva and the manuscript staff at the National Library of Russia; Sue Kaoukji, her team at the Dar Museum (Kuwait); Dr. Mounia Chekhab Abudaya, Marc Pelletreau, and the entire staff at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha; Marie Genevieve Guesdon at the Biblio­ theque nationale de France; Alasdair Watson and the staff of the Special Collections Reading Room at Oxford University;

 Catherine Ansorge and Yasmin Faghihi at the Cambridge University Library; Elaine Wright at the Chester Beatty Library (Dublin); Colin Baker for making available to me both the actual manuscript BL2165 as well as a personal copy of his facsimile edition of the same in September of 2013 at the British Library; Samar Al Gailani of the Beit Al Qurian as well as its curator, Ashraf Al Ansari; Dr. Halit Eren in Istanbul for his hospitality  in  201I  and  to  IRCICA  and  Dr.  Tayyar  Alt1kula<;: (who I have yet to meet) for his wonderful work in preparing the  Turkish  facsimile  editions  of important  Qurian  ma$iil:zif; ISAM; the Muslim Board of Uzbekistan for their assistance on my 2016 visit to Tashkent; and Amalia Zhukovskaya and Alla Sizova at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St. Petersburg for their help during my several visits there.
Colleagues who have offered help and/or hospitality in this work include Efim Rezvan, Gerd-R and Elisabeth Puin (who hosted me as a houseguest and have invited me again), Alba Fedeli, and Fran<;:ois Deroche.
I give a friendly nod also to colleagues at both the Islamic Manuscript  Association  (particularly   Davidson   Maclaren) and the International Qurianic Studies Association  (particu­ larly Emran El-Badawi).
Latha and I owe a personal debt to Joshua Lingel for his steady encouragement over many years. He is a dear friend.
In  2012, having become aware of his unique expertise and long work in the area of historically and scientifically sound Arabic typography and encoding, I began pursuing Thomas Milo to develop much-needed solutions specific to my own needs dealing with Qur i an manuscripts,   in   particular related to the un-disambiguated rasm. 1 We had conversations around

 this topic over the following two years, and the conversation continues. I am heartened today to see fruit coming in large part through the clear outside-the-box thinking and aesthetic sense possessed by him and Mirjam, who have become friends to us. I am so grateful. They are kind, smart, and talented people.
I am grateful to my friends and colleagues Roy Michael McCoy III (Ph.D. as of January 2019) and Joshua Falconer, who in this post-doctoral stage have assisted immensely   with, among other things, transfer of my research from notes and photographs to the database I designed for the purpose of organizing and containing this material; it has been a privilege to work alongside them and my other colleague and friend, Andy Bannister - whose talents  and energies seem to know no end.
The following people read and offered helpful peer-review comments on this book, in more than one instance saving me from a great deal of embarrassment. I owe each of them sincere thanks: Marijn van Putten, Gerd-R. Puin, Asma Hilali, and Mark Durie. Further, I thank Leah Garber for her thor­ ough proofreading for grammar, punctuation, and style.
Finally, I thank my dear (also talented, accomplished, kind and beautiful) wife, Latha, for being my partner in life's work. I also thank my parents, Alan and Susan Brubaker, as well as hers, Annamma and the late Jefreys K. Samuel, for bringing us into the world, for raising us with much love and sacrifice, and in particular for helping during the long hours and days of my doctoral work and beyond.
Having said all this, the work that follows is my own and I take responsibility for shortcomings that persist. I hope it

proves for all readers an enjoyable and informative introduc­ tion to a fascinating topic.


⦁    There is a glossary at the back of this book defining specialized  terms, including this one. The rasm,  as  I  use  the  term,  is  the  basic  shape  of the Arabic consonantal text, without its dots or short vowels.

1

INTRODUCTION

 

 

 


E
arly Qur>an manuscripts contain many physical changes or corrections. 1 By now I have taken note of thousands of such changes via careful examination
of these manuscripts, mostly in person. This book is meant to serve as an overview, providing examples to illustrate the general nature of these manuscript corrections. In subsequent works I will make a more extensive presentation of these corrections and their descriptions.

ABOUT EARLY QUR>AN MANUSCRIPTS

a    result   of   such    political    circumstances    as    Napoleon's

A wealth of Qur>an manuscript fragments have survived from the first several centuries of its life. Many of the important early manuscripts are now available to scholars like myself as

campaign in Egypt and Syria which was accompanied by the deployment of scholars such as Jean-Joseph Marcel,2 or as the result of the intrepid efforts of people like Jean-Louis Asselin

 2    DANIEL ALAN  B R U B AKER

de Cherville,3 Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson,4 Chester Beatty, 5 Edward Henry Palmer, 6 and others, who acquired and preserved these objects. There have indeed been many different people involved in the collection and safekeeping of these manuscripts and these are only a few of the important names behind the objects in western academic libraries today. There are more manuscripts safely (others, sadly, have been imperiled by wars and other political instabil­ ities) kept in institutions around the world, and these all have stories and individuals behind them. It has taken me time and effort over a number of years to learn the locations of many such manuscripts, and I have had the privilege now of visiting a large number, including those probably produced in the 7th and 8th centuries AD, in libraries and museums around the world.
With some very important exceptions - most notably the Qur ' ans that tradition tells us the third Caliph,  cuthman, burned and that would therefore be forever lost - we seem to have a good number of early Qur ' an manuscripts from a fairly early date. Why are there so many Qur'an manuscripts in existence from the first and second centuries after Muham­ mad's life? In addition to the relative recency of this revelation 7 when compared to (for  example)  the  biblical writings,  there are two additional main reasons.
First, by the 7th century AD (Muhammad, the sources tell us, lived from 570 to 632), parchment was a commonly used
material to receive writing, particularly for books.8 Parchment
is animal skin, and unlike papyrus which will typically disinte­ grate over a period of 100-200 years, documents written on parchment can endure for thousands of years. They do not always last this long as other factors, such as the acidity of the

 Corrections in Early Qur 'tin Manuscripts    3
ink used for writing, the  quality and thickness of the parch­ ment itself, and the humidity and  other environmental factors the document has endured, contribute to their lifespan. But in general, the relative  stability of parchment has  resulted in a very large number of Qur'an manuscripts  from these impor­ tant early centuries having survived for us to examine.
A second major reason for the survival of so many Qur' an manuscripts from the   early period is the fact that, beginning in the mid-7th century AD (that is, the first century after Muhammad) these were produced in   political   environments that viewed the book in a positive light. The ruling authorities in these regions were not hostile to the Qur' an as was the situ­ ation for the New Testament during the first two centuries of Christianity. It was not dangerous to own a copy of the Qur' an in the Arab empires that by the latter part of the 7th century stretched across a huge swath of territory from the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb in the West to Azerbaijan in the East, nor were these manuscripts usually destroyed if discov­ ered. In fact, to own such an object was a sign of status, wealth, and piety. These documents were finely produced and at great cost. Professional scribes were employed and good materials used, the best that could be afforded by the person who commissioned a copy. As time progressed, the production of Qur 'ans became an art in itself with precise rules of geometry, ruling, and letter form. Illuminations were applied in various colors including gold leaf. These were treasured possessions that held a place of prominence and were displayed openly in mosques, palaces, and private residences.

 4    DANIE L ALAN  BRUBAKER 

HOW MANUSCRIP TS ARE DATED

The first question people tend to ask when looking at one of these manuscripts is, "How old is it?" Obviously, we want to know when a manuscript was produced, because its   date allows us to (a) better understand what the object can tell us about its time, and (b) apply what we may already know about that period as a lens to help us understand what we see going on in the manuscript itself. So, the date is very important.
It would be nice if every manuscript came with a label stating when it was produced. In fact, it became customary in later Qur'an manuscripts to include a colophon with such information as the name of the scribe and the date of produc­ tion. Unfortunately, we do not have such neat and clean indi­ cations for manuscripts of the first several centuries.
These manuscripts, then, are dated by considering what information we do   have, and this typically includes things such as paleography, or the study of the development of script styles. We have a good sense of when particular styles of script and certain developments in the ways of writing Arabic were in use, and so this detail of a manuscript is very important. The script style classifications that are standard today were described by Frarn;:ois Deroche in the 1980s. In general, the script styles listed in rough chronology of their first appearance
are: "hijazi" or "ma'il'' (these two terms are used interchange­ ably), 0, A & B.Ia (similar time of origin), C, B.II, D, E, F, and
"New Style."9 These styles do overlap; one was on the rise as
another was still in use or in decline, for example, and even this statement only takes into account the chronological dimension; doubtless regional and economic factors play into the picture as well. Most of these styles have subcategories. It

 Corrections in Early Qur ,tin Manuscrip ts    5

is not an exact science - for example, it is common for a manuscript to match Prof. Deroche'  description  of a  style along most but not all of its defining features - but  this should surprise no one when it is remembered that the scribes were human (scribes' personal  styles  are  most  readily observed in the  earlier scripts)  and that there was a progres­ sion over time and geography.
The earliest Qur)an manuscripts, particularly those in the "hijazi"  or "ma)il'' styles, were written without diacritic marks or with only occasional diacritic marks to disambiguate the archigraphemes. This is not to say, however, that the only way to disambiguate the archigraphemes was via diacritics. In fact, there came to be a system of writing the Arabic rasm that allowed precise disambiguation without those   extraneous marks, and Thomas Milo has termed this system "script grammar." 10
A second helpful indication can be the features of the page or book beyond the writing itself. The study of these features is called codicology. 11 Codicology asks questions like these: What is the writing material? Is the page vertical or horizontal in format? What are the dimensions of the page or book? How many lines of writing are on each page? Do all pages have the same number of lines, or does the number vary? How are the verses and chapters divided, and what sort of marks are used to do so? What inks were used? Is the page illuminated with illustrations or other graphic elements,  including extra mark­ ings to represent the short vowels? If so, what colors were used and what forms or styles or particular types of elements are present? Are the lines of the pages ruled? Are the margins ruled? Do margins exist or does the writing extend to the edge of the page? How is (or was) the book sewn together? What

 sort of binding was used? These features and more can provide details that give additional clues as to the age of a manuscript.
A third method for dating is probably the most well­ known: radiocarbon dating. This method can be applied to anything organic. Everything that was once living, that is, all plant or animal material, is organic. Parchment qualifies, and can therefore be tested with this method. The reason radio­ carbon dating works is that a radioactive isotope of carbon is present in all living things and begins to slowly decay at a predictable rate when the living thing dies. Subjecting parch­ ment to this testing yields a series of date ranges based upon the probable time that the source (in this case most likely the goat or sheep) was alive.
Obviously a radiocarbon date range cannot tell when a parchment was written, but we generally assume that a parch­ ment did not sit for decades before receiving its first writing.
Radiocarbon dating is not a foolproof way of determining dates of manuscripts. Some manuscripts of known date of origin (e.g. with a colophon or some other overt indication of the time of writing) have been radiocarbon dated a century or more off from the apparent actual date of production. There­ fore, all these methods must be taken with a grain of salt, and in most cases the best thing is to take all the various clues (paleography, codicology, and radiocarbon dating if available), and weigh them alongside one another. 12

PROVENANCE

In dealing with any ancient artifact, we want to consider all available information about it. At first view, we may be

 Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts    7

tempted to imagine that we can discern everything important about a manuscript merely from its physical details - what it says, what it does not say, how it was written, how it was orna­ mented, the material upon which it was written and the ink(s) that were used, how it was bound, whether the page was ruled, and so forth.
However, an object's context can also be very important to historians. There is always a context in which an item was produced, and there were contexts through   which   these objects have passed all the way until the time of their discovery (or re-discovery) and even after their discovery. Unfortunately, we cannot time-travel back to the moment and place of production, so it is very helpful to know at least where an item was found, by whom, and the chain of custody since that time. Where a manuscript was found may give further indication about where it was produced, during what time period, and by whom, as well as to how it was used post­ production. Most of the manuscripts discussed in this book were not recently found on archeological digs, but were rather discovered in mosques or libraries or private family collections passed down through generations and at some point (for example) making their way into the stall of a flea market or antiquities dealer and then sold to a discerning buyer. Still, chain of custody   is   important for several reasons, including the authentication of an object in a world where the value of such items leads sometimes  to forgeries. We certainly don't want to base our historical research about the past upon objects that are not authentic.
I don't go deeply into provenance in this book, but will say that much of the modern history of manuscripts shown is documented, and that institutions will often express caution

 8    DANI EL  ALAN BRU BAKE R

about objects whose provenance has not been confirmed or is doubtful. Furthermore, once an image such as a photograph is made of an object, that image also becomes an object. Who
took the picture, where, and when? Citing the photographer, whether he or she is a museum staff member or a  researcher like myself who was permitted access, should always be done when this information is available. This is both to give credit where due and also to describe the context of the object with due diligence.
It is important, finally, to understand that doubtful prove­ nance does not mean that an object isn't authentic or that it should not be taken seriously. Nor does the existence of a solid chain of custody always mean that an ancient object must be authentic, though it does strengthen the case. Attention to provenance is merely one of the best practices in archeology that helps us do quality work and avoid making unnecessary errors.

CONSONANTAL VARIANTS

Leaving aside for a moment the matter of corrections to the page, there is variation in the consonantal text (in Arabic this is called the rasm) within early Qur' an manuscripts. The tradi­ tional way of accounting for this variation is to claim that it was a flexibility approved by Muhammad himself and repre­ sented in variant readings, called qirii 'iit. In fact, the readings are different from the rasm and in most cases the one is not affected in the least by the other. Indeed, the history of the codification or (if you will) canonization of these readings is more complex and, according to the recent work of Shady Nasser, 13 owed less to a historical root validating each of the

 Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts    9

particular readings than it did to pragmatic or practical and political concerns. In short, Nasser argues, the readings were chosen to give geographic representation during Ibn Mujahid's time (late 9th and early 10th century AD) in the various urban centers from which he chose them, and not necessarily on the basis of strongest multiple attestation as is commonly supposed.
A further matter of difficulty for the readings is that the consonantal texts of some of the important monumental early codices,  such  as the Topkap1,  Istanbul,  and  Cairo  ma ii]:zif,  do
not reflect a single reading, but rather what might appear to be a combination of the different readings. 14 This fact leads the
preparer of their facsimile editions, Dr. Tayyar Alt1kulai;, to describe these codices in terms of rough percentages when it comes to their adherence to the various readings. Such a circumstance is not necessarily irreconcilable with the exis­ tence of approved readings, but it does indicate a more complex picture that requires further inquiry and explanation. That  being   said,   many of the thousands   of corrections I have documented appear to have nothing to do with the read­ ings attested in the secondary literatures. So, corrections must represent in at least some cases another phenomenon, such as perhaps a greater degree of perceived flexibility of the Qur) an text in its early centuries (the time of first production of these
manuscripts) than is documented in the qirii )iit literature.


GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ABOUT CORRECTIONS

You will see details of corrections in the next chapter, but will not get a full sense of the relative prevalence of different types of correction or their other features, so here is a high-level

 IO    D A NIE L  ALAN  BRUBA KE R

view. In a correction, something is added (insertion), removed (erasure), replaced (erasure overwritten, taping overwritten, or overwriting without erasure), or (perhaps) hidden. Corrections can be classified in other ways but these terms summarize the mechanics of the matter. I discuss the last category briefly at the end of the next chapter.
Most of the time, I have found that corrections in a Qur >an manuscript result in conformity of that   manuscript   at   the point of the correction with the rasm of the now-standard 1924 Cairo edition. This pattern is important and shows a general movement over time toward conformity, though not imme­ diate complete conformity. There are interesting questions raised when a manuscript is corrected in one place   but remains deviant (the word "deviant" supposes a standard and I use it here merely as a practical matter) when compared to the 1924 Cairo edition in other places. We will discuss this scenario more later.
Sometimes a correction takes a manuscript away from conformity with the now-standard rasm. The first thing  to consider when that is observed is whether the correction has followed a regional variant, and for this possibility there is a secondary literature to consult. Very rarely, a correction actu­ ally takes the manuscript out of conformity with any docu­ mented variant or reading, so such instances are  interesting when they are found.
Because each correction is different in nature and signifi­ cance, it would be a mistake to draw conclusions from raw numbers, but for general information, here is a rough break­ down of the relative number of instances so far. 15 

⦁    Erasure overwritten - about 30%

 Corrections in  Early Qur'trn Manuscrip ts     II

⦁    Insertion - about 24%
⦁    Overwriting without erasure - about 18%
⦁    Simple erasure - about 10%
⦁    Covering overwritten - about 2%
⦁    Covering - about 16%

More important factors to consider than the mechanics of a change include the apparent reason(s) for it, its timing rela­ tive to that of the first production of the manuscript, its extent, and what has been altered. Relevant questions about these matters, and more, will be discussed at the end of this intro­ duction.

WHERE ARE THESE MANUSCRIPTS TODAY?

Because of factors such as the climate of the region of their production and the material upon which they were generally written (parchment), a very large number of early Qur' an manuscripts have survived the centuries and exist in private and public collections. My own work over the past dozen years has been an exciting process of discovery of (among many other things) where they are. I now have a very long list and in my travels have noted collections both large and small. Undoubtedly, there are many of which I have yet to become aware - including those in private collections.
But in terms of a general understanding, which is the point of this book, these manuscripts exist in various university and national libraries,   such as Cambridge, Oxford, the University of Birmingham, the John Rylands Library in Manchester, and Berlin, as well as in museums around the world such as the Museum oflslamic Art in Doha, the Tareq Rajah Museum and

 12    D AN l EL  A L AN   BRUBAKER 

the Dar Museum in Kuwait, the British Library in London, the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, and the Beit al-Qur' an in Manama, and the Biruni Institute or Oriental Studies  in Tashkent, to name a few. Thanks is also owed to private donors and collectors, such as Nasser D. Khalili, who have gathered and safeguarded these objects and who make them available to scholars for study.


HISTORY OF THE QUR' AN (TRADITIONAL)

What is commonly accepted about the early history of the Qur' an has reached us mainly through secondary literatures that were written down beginning in the closing decades of the 8th century (that is, about 150-160 years after the death of Muhammad).  These literatures, though   further removed   in time from the events they describe than we might hope, are not without merit: but different scholars and historians have approached them in different ways. I will discuss this matter more later; the first thing is to relate a general outline of the traditional account, that is, what most Muslims  and most casual observers accept as "what happened." Here it is:
Muhammad was born in 570 AD, in Mecca. His father died before the time of his birth and his mother  died when Muhammad was yet very young.  Henceforward, Muhammad was raised by his grandfather and then by his uncle. As a young adult, Muhammad entered the employ of a Meccan businesswoman named Khadija, who was significantly his senior. When he was 25, she proposed marriage and he accepted.
At age 40, Muhammad was spending time alone in a cave in the hills outside of Mecca where he sometimes went for

 Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts    13

quiet. Suddenly, he was encountered by an imposing being that seemed to cover the sky. It  grabbed him tightly and gave the command "iqra >t" ("recite"), to which he answered, "What shall I recite?" Three times this happened, each time the being grabbing him even tighter. After the third time, tradition tells us, the first revelations - part of what is now the Qur'an - began coming from his mouth.
Muhammad returned home in a sweat, not sure what had just happened. It was his wife, Khadija, who informed him that this had been the angel Gabriel and that Muhammad was a Messenger of God.
This first encounter was in 610 AD. Over the next 22 years (23 or so by the lunar calendar), Muhammad would continue to receive revelations from time to time. Sometimes they were long and sometimes short. Sometimes they were at close inter­ vals and at other times long periods elapsed between revela­ tions. When Muhammad would get a revelation, he ordinarily would begin reciting it publicly, for example in his prayers. Others among those who had become believers would listen, memorize, and recite as well, thus recording and transmitting the revelations orally. There are also hadith traditions that say Muhammad would have his personal secretary,   Zayd   b. Thabit, write down the revelations whenever   he   received them.
By the time of Muhammad's death in 632 AD, the revela­ tions had been, we are told, written down on various discrete objects like palm stalks, stones, and bones of animals. These were gathered together, compiled and organized around this time, and written as a book (Arabic mu l:zaj).
Over the next couple of decades, later sources state, there came to be disagreements over some parts of the Qur 'an's

DANIEL ALAN BRUBAKER 


content that were significant enough to require the resolution of the matter via production of authoritative copies and the destruction of those deemed variant. This process, we are told, was undertaken by the third Caliph, c uthman, who died in 656 AD. He commissioned the production of several authoritative copies and had these sent out to the main centers of the now large Arab empire that he oversaw.
< Uthman's suppression of variants is not the end of the story, of course, even for the time period of the manuscripts which are considered in this book. These manuscripts go up through the 9th or possibly mth centuries. We don't need to cover all that history here, but I should mention some major developments. By the closing years of the 7th century, the Arabs had conquered territory all the way from Azerbaijan in the East to the center of the Iberian Peninsula (via North Africa) in the West. By "conquered," we mean they had gained political control over the regions, not that they had settled or saturated the countryside or territories. The religion of Muhammad filtered out more gradually and organically into these areas over the subsequent decades and centuries.
There were rivalries and dynastic changes that occurred both regionally and across time. We don't need to cover all of these here either; some highlights include the start of the Umayyad dynasty of caliphs with the death of 'Ali, the fourth caliph who was also the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, in 661 AD. The Umayyads held authority over most of the Arab kingdom until the Abassid revolution in 750 A.D., and
the    Abassids,    though    shifting    capitals    (Baghdad,    Kufa,
Samarra, etc.) held sway until the mid-13th century.

Corrections in Early Qur >an Manuscripts


DIFFICULT ISSUES

Some aspects of the Qur ' an, and some aspects of the historical records of the larger context of its transmission, including the details of the people and events in the first century of Islam, are a puzzle to historians. For the most part the Qur ' an's language is not complicated. However, it contains words and phrasings that seem to have been inscrutable even to believing exegetes going back to the early centuries of its history. Among these are words at whose meaning even the early commenta­ tors have had to guess.
For a book claiming to be revelation from God to contain mysteries, of course, would not itself be surprising. Some people, however, have raised the question of how such a circumstance can be reconciled to the Qur' an's internal claim
to have been "revealed in a clear (mubin) Arabic tongue." (Q16:ro3) 1 6
Devin Stewart, in considering words that break the rhyme structure of a passage, has entertained the possibility that the
rasm at some time came to be mis-pointed in places by a later generation who did not have the benefit of an unbroken and complete oral tradition. 1 7  Such a theory, if true, would alter
traditional assumptions about the Qur' an's transmission history. In any event, extensive re-visiting of the received pointing of the Qur' an text, that is, major revisionism, is prob­ ably not warranted. Still, I think it is entirely appropriate to consider the text in the way Devin has, and the rhyme words would just be markers that highlight a larger phenomenon. If it has happened with words that should rhyme, it would be unreasonable to think that it did not happen elsewhere as well
⦁    and the logical next thing to consider would be words that

D A N I E L  A L A N  BRUB AKER


today pose difficulty for exegetes or that seem to be out of place. Could the rasm be read in a way that makes sense but is outside the received tradition of reading? The question has been considered. 18 
Following are a few more examples that highlight inter­ esting questions and issues that critical scholars have been trying to address in recent years:
⦁    The topography  and  other  features   of  Mecca   does   not seem to match descriptions in the Qur 'an. The Qur'an itself is not rich in narrative detail, but this does not mean descrip­ tions are lacking entirely. When one looks closely, there are solid things that may be observed. For example, the late Patricia Crone noticed the agricultural details in Q.36 mention grain, date palms, and grapes, as well as gushing springs, with some echoes of these agricultural references appearing also in Q56. These descriptions are tied to the local pagans whom Muhammad was being instructed by Allah to warn. She notes many other agricultural references, most of which seem quite disconnected from the reality of Mecca. 19 
⦁    The archaeology of Mecca does not seem to support the traditional assertions  that the  place where  Muhammad  grew up  and  received  the revelations was a location that had seen the rise and fall of many previous civilizations.
⦁    The linguistic features of the Qur'an, in the opinion of some linguists20 but not that of others,2 1 raise questions about
its place of origin. These are not, perhaps, questions irrecon­ cilable at this point with the broad outlines of the traditional narrative, but neither are they insignificant.
⦁    The  qibla,  or  direction  of p_rayer,  is  designated  by  the orientation of the wall of the mosque containing its mil:mib, the niche in the wall designating this direction. One recent

Corrections in Early Qur >an Manuscripts

researcher, Dan Gibson, has noted that the surviving founda­ tions of all the earliest mosques until about 706 AD do not point toward Mecca at all, but rather considerably   further north, 22 and such does indeed seem to be the case. After 706, he finds qiblas began pointing in a direction further south from the original direction but still north of Mecca, and the first qibla he found pointing toward Mecca dates to around 727 AD. In fact, some process of development of the direction of prayer is attested in the literatures of the time, with some indi­ cations that the direction was at first merely toward the east,23 though these sources diverge from others that indicate Muhammad designating the qibla first toward Jerusalem and
then toward Mecca at a specific moment during his lifetime.24
Time will tell where scholarship lands on this matter as more attention is directed toward reconcilirtg the  archaeology with the contemporary historical literatures and other sources.
The apparent difference between what the Biography of Muhammad (written by lbn I Q.aq and revised by lbn Hisham) says on this matter and what is seen in the mosque founda­ tions highlights a larger and quite well-known issue that will be mentioned again later: the reliability of the existing secondary literatures, such as histories, badlth collections, biographical reports, and so forth. There is an extensive litera­ ture in Arabic from the 8th and 9th centuries relating history of the previous century, but the documents contain internal disagreements, sometimes without a clear clue for   deter­ mining which side (if any) of a conflicting account is true. It is not unusual to find equally "reliable" reports that are contra­ dictory. 25
⦁    The  manuscripts  support  some  aspects  of the  tradi­
tional narrative, such as the approximate time period during

 18    DANIEL A L AN  BRUBAKER 

which quranic materials came to be written (for example, we have portions of Qur) an manuscripts that appear to date from the mid-7th century), and they often confirm the existence of many of the various readings that are attested in the secondary literatures of the   following century, but other features present a puzzle and need some sorting out.
First, many manuscripts do not follow a single reading but rather appear - to  a  person who  is  operating from  the  point of view of the documented canonical readings - to move between readings without a discernible pattern. This is not a problem but rather emphasizes the question, "What was the place of the readings at the time of production of these manu­ scripts?"
Second, there exist entire pages of parchment that  have been washed or  otherwise  cleared  of quranic  material  and then rewritten. These sheets, called palimpsests, are the most extensive corrections that have reached  us.  The  wonderful thing about these documents is that in many cases what was first written on these pages can be discerned, either with the naked eye or through the use of technology that picks up the
earlier text. I have not emphasized these in my research since others like Alba Fedeli, Elisabeth Puin, Asma Hilali, Eleonore
Cellard, Behnam Sadeghi, and Mohsen Goudarzi have been working with them, but I will reference these as appropriate in later works.
Third, given the monumental nature of what tradition reports the third caliph, ' Uthman, to have done with the stan­ dardization of the text - the suppression of variants via burning or other means of destruction, and the production of authoritative copies that were then to serve as exemplars and standards against which subsequent copies could be measured

Corrections in Early Qur ,tin Manuscripts

⦁    it is odd that no copy existing today has been reliably iden­ tified as one of these actual authoritative copies, and that the ones about which such a claim is made seem to have been produced long after < Uthman's time. Certainly there is evidence in the lower text of the aforementioned palimpsests that there were earlier forms of the text, but this does not solve the problem of the apparent lack of any of < Uthman's copies existing today. These documents would have been extremely important objects, so we would expect they would have been preserved.
Fourth, the existence of manuscripts that were finely produced yet sometimes corrected after a long passage of time is interesting and presents a challenge to the notion that there was a strict uniformity and widespread agreement about every detail, every word and letter, such as one would expect to find if there were widespread agreement upon a standard from a very early date, such as the time of < Uthman's caliphate. I will discuss some of my thoughts about this matter in "Conclusions."

WHY WERE CHANGES MADE?

Not all manuscript corrections are equal; each has a context and a situation involving time, place, writing materials, envi­ ronment, exemplar, scholar, scribe, and so forth.
The most obvious cause that any one of us can easily imagine if we put ourselves in the place of working as a scribe is making a simple mistake when copying or writing, realizing the mistake, and then correcting it soon after.
A simple mistake-and-correction scenario fits what we see in some Qur i an manuscript corrections where the ink, nib,

 20    DA NIE L  ALAN BRUBAKER 

and writing style appear to match that of the rest of the page. However, it does not fit all of them. In many cases there are clearly other factors at play. Here are some of the questions I ask that help me think carefully about what is going on in a given situation:

⦁    Is   there   a   discernible  reason   that   could   have c aused a simple mistake? One of the common reasons for mistakes in manuscript transcription from an exemplar, for example, is the repeated occurrence of a word or sequence of words in close proximity to each other. A scribe may finish copying the first instance of the word or word sequence, go to dip the nib into the ink, and accidentally begin writing again after the second occurrence of the word or word sequence. This could be noticed later and corrected. Such a scenario or others like it is not uncommon in manuscript transmission.
⦁    Was there a long passage of time between first
writing and the moment(s) of correction? This question can be pursuedfurther by asking some of the following:

⦁    Does it look as though the writing materials (ink and nib width, for example) used in the correction were similar to those used for the first production?
⦁    Is the writing style different from that of the main page? Is it a l ater script style, one that became popular in another time period? Is it of a different dimension (e.g., taller or shorter), or is it of a

 Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts    21

different nib angle, or is it written by a person of a different writing or skill level?
⦁    Is there a difference of orthography (that is, the spelling or writing conventions that we know developed over time) between the page as first written and the part that has been corrected? Is the correction itself possibly dealing with such an issue?

Here are some further questions to consider:

⦁    Does the page show signs of having been corrected more than once, at different times?
⦁    What did the correction do? Can we see or guess
what was first written?
⦁    What was the result of the correction? Is the corrected rasm in harmony with the rasm  of the standard text today? If it is not, and if the nature of the variant can be attributed to different orthographic norms, does   its   orthography align with other manuscripts from the time period? If it does not, or if the difference cannot be attributed to variant orthography, does it align with any of the variant readings acknowledged in the qira cat literature?
⦁    If the page has been corrected, what does the rest of
the page look like? Are there other parts of the page that remain out of conformity with the now­ standard rasm,   and if so, what could this mean about the time that this document was corrected or about the person who corrected it?

 22    D A NIE L  ALAN B RUB AKER 

Obviously, there are other questions  one could ask, but you can, I hope, begin to see the way that we try to unpack these materials and make sense of them. You will see these questions in action as we turn now to the main substance of this book, and you can also ask them yourself as you look at each example.


I.  I  use  the  term  "correction"   for  convenience,  but  I  ask  readers  to  please notice that the word itself carries a value judgment that  I  don't  necessarily intend in each case.  Was that  which was first written  necessarily  less "cor­ rect''? Is what  n ow  stands  always  and  necessarily  more  "correct"?  Most  of the  time,  the  changes  we  find  in  Qur 'an  manuscripts  result  in  something that looks more  or  less  like  the rasm  of the  standard  1924 Cairo text,  but there are exceptions. So, please bear in mind that when I use the term "cor­
rection," I intend  only  to mean a  physical  change  to  the  script  at  some point.
2.      Deroche,  Frarn;:ois,  Qur 'ans of the  Umayyads: A first overview,  (Leiden:  Brill,
2014), 17.
⦁    Ibid.
⦁    Ansorge, Catherine, "Cambridge University Library Islamic Manuscript Collection. Origins  and  Content," Journal of Islamic Manuscripts  7  (2016):  139- 40;  Soskice,  Janet,  The Sisters of Sinai: How  Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009). The latter tells the fascinating story of how these two  Scottish  women  traveled  to  North  Africa and procured important biblical and quranic manuscripts that are today preserved in places like the Cambridge University Library.
⦁    A. Chester Beatty  was  a  successful American businessman  who  used his wealth for many charitable endeavors, among which was the acquisition of manuscripts and other  historic  objects.  Among  the  treasures  he  collected were  some of  the oldest papyrus  fragments  of  the New  Testament, and many  Qur'an  fragments  and complete  manuscripts,  some  quite  early.   Most of his  collection  today  is  housed   in  the  Chester  Beatty  Library,   located  in the Dublin Castle.
⦁    Ansorge,    Catherine,    "Cambridge    University    Library    Islamic    Manuscript
Collection.  Origins and  Content,"  Journal of Islamic  Manuscripts  7  (2016):  135·
⦁    I  do  not  intend  by  this  comparison  to  suggest  that  the  Qur 'an  belongs  in the  same  category,  qua  revelation,  as  the  Hebrew  Bible  and  New Testament. I merely raise it in order to point out similarities and differences in the

 Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts    23

context  and  circumstances  that  may  have  factored  into  the  outworking  of the various transmission histories.
⦁    Papyrus was indeed also in use extensively during this   time   period. Because of its lower cost, it was the writing material of choice for many administrative and transactional documents, as well as  regular  correspon­ dence. Indeed, there are also examples of Qur ' iin manuscripts written on papyrus. The few that I have seen (there are a couple in Oxford 's Bodleian Library,  for  example)  are small  fragments.  To  my  understanding,  there  are a   fair  number  of  Qur' iin  manuscripts  on  papyrus,  but  I  have  not  yet  had the opportunity  to  understand  their  number  or  quality.  The  point  here  is that parchment use  was  widespread,  and  it  is,  at  least  in  part,  due  to  this fact that we today have so many well-preserved pages of early Qur' iins.
⦁    Deroche, Frarn;:ois, The Abbasid Tradition: Qur 'ans of the  8th  to  the  wth centuries  AD,   (London:    Nour    Foundation,   1992);   Deroche,   Frarn;:ois,   Qur 'ans of the Umayyads: Afirst overview, (Leiden: Brill, 2014).
IO.  Milo, Thomas, "Towards   Arabic   historical   script   grammar   through contrastive analysis of Qur' iin manuscripts," in Writings and Writing: Inves­ tigations in Islamic Text and Script in honour of Januarius Justus Witkam. Kerr, Robert and Thomas Milo, eds. (Cambridge: Archetype, 2013), 249-92.
II.     Deroche,  Fran'i=ois,  Islamic  Codicology:  an  introduction  to  the study  of manu­ scripts  in  Arabic  script,  (London: Al-Furqiin Islamic   Heritage   Foundation, 2006).
⦁    Dutton,  Yasin,  "An  Umayyad  Fragment  of the  Qur 'an  and  its  Dating,"   in
Journal of Qur 'an ic Studies 9, no. 2 (2007): 57-87.
⦁    Nasser, Shady, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur 'an: The Problem of Tawiitur and the Emergence of Shawiidhdh, (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
⦁    What  appears  to   be   a   combination   of  other  attested  readings,   of  course, m ay be simply its own reading.
⦁    These   rough   figures  are   mostly  from   my  own  work  but   also   take   into
account some corrections in several manuscripts  found  by my friend   and former  research assistant, Dr.   Roy   Michael   McCoy   III.  There   is  a   great  deal of  additional   material   in   my   own   notes   and   photographs  not  yet   i ncluded in  these  numbers, and  no  doubt  others  will  add  to this  body  of research   in the future, but at this point I do not expect a major shi ft in the relative
proportions.
⦁    Ibn  Kathir,  Ismii 'ii,  Tafsrr al-qur 'iin al- 'a:;:fm, (Beirut:  Dar el-Marefah, 2003), 894-5 . The  commentaries  (of which  Ibn  Kathir is  but  one  that  is  somewhat of a culmination taking into account the earlier  historical and  exegetical sources) place this  verse  in  the  context  of accusations  against  Muhammad that he had been taught the Qur' iin by someone else, in particular   a foreign servant who spoke only a little Arabic. This verse, then, is seen by

DANI EL ALAN BRUBAKER 


the commentators as an answer in which is implicit a rhetorical  question: "How could a foreigner be the source ofverses composed in pure Arabic?"
⦁    Stewart,  Devin   J.,   "Divine   Epithets   and   the   Dibacchius:  Clausulae  and
Qur ' anic Rhythm," Jou rnal of Qur 'anic Studies 15.2 (2013): 22-64. For further discussion    of   rhyme     as    an     organizing    feature,     see     Sinai,     Nicolai,     The Qur 'an:  A  historical-critical   introduction,   (Edinburgh:   Edinburgh   University Press, 2017), 16-20.
⦁    Luxenberg, Christoph,   The  Syro-Aramaic  reading  of the  Koran: A  contribution to the decoding  of the  language  of the  Koran,  (Berlin:  Verlag  Hans Schiler, 2007); Bellamy, James A., "Some Proposed Emendations  to the Text  of the Koran," Journal of the American  Oriental  Society  u3,  no,  4  (1993); Bellamy, James  A.,  "More   Proposed  Emendations   to   the  Text  of the  Koran,"  Journal of the American Oriental Society 116, no. 2 (1996).
⦁    SOAS 68, no. 3 (2005): 387-399·
⦁    Crone,  Patricia,  "How  did  the  quranic  pagans  make  a  living?"  Bulletin  of
⦁    Durie,   M ark,   The Qur 'an   and   its   biblical reflexes: Investigations into   the genesis of a religion, (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2018), 16- 17, 42-43 (note 22).
⦁    Nicolai  Sinai  (ibid.,  42-43); van  Putten,  Marijn,  "Hamzah  in   the   Quranic Consonantal Text, " in Orientalia 87 no. 1 (2018): 93-120.
⦁    Gibson, Dan, Qur'anic Geography: A survey and evaluation of the geographical references in the Qur'an with suggested solutions for various problems and issues (Altona: Independent Scholars Press, 2011).
⦁    Sharon,  Moshe,  "Qibla   Musharriqa  and  early  Muslim  prayer  in  churches," in The Muslim World Vol. DOCX!, Nos. 3-4 (1991).
⦁    "And when the qibla  was  changed from Syria to the Ka 'ba - it  was changed in Rajah at the beginning of  the seventeenth month  after  the apostle's arrival in Medina - Rifa'a b. Qays; Qardam b. 'Amr;  Ka 'b  b.  al­ Ashraf; Rafi ' b. Abu Rafi '; al-Hajjaj  b.  'Amr,  an  ally of Ka' b's;  al- Rabi b.  al­ Rabi' b.  Abu 'l- l:fuqayq;  and  Kinana  b.  al-Rabi' b.  Abii 'l- l:fuqayq  came  to the apostle  asking why  he had turned  his back on the qibla he  used  to face when he alleged that he followed the religion of Abraham.   If  he  would return to  the  qibla  in  Jerusalem  they would  follow  him  and  declare  him  to be true.  Their  sole  intention  was  to  seduce  him  from  his  religion,  so  God sent down concerning them: 'The  foolish  people  will  say: What  made  them turn their back on the  qibla  that they  formerly  observed? Say, To God belongs the east and the west.  He guides whom  He will  to  the straight path. Thus we have made you a central community that  you  m ay  be  witnesses against men and that the apostle may be a witness against you.  And  we appointed the qibla which thou didst  formerly  observe  only  that we  might know  who  will  follow  the  apostle  from  him  who  turns   upon  his  heels,'  i.e. to test  and  find  them  out.  'Truly  it  was  a  hard test except for  those  whom God guided,' i.e. a temptation, i.e. those whom Allah established. 'It was

 Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts    25

not Allah's purpose to make  your faith vain,' i.e. your faith  in  the  first qibla, your believing your prophet, and your  following  him  to  the  later qibla  and your obeying your prophet  therein,  i.e.  so  that  he  may  give  you  the  reward of  both  of them.   'God  is  kind  and  compassionate  to  men."'  Guillaume,  A., The Life of Muhammad: A translation of lbn l?baq's Sirat Rasul Allah, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), 258-9.
⦁    One example is what the historian  al-Tabar!  relates  about Muhammad's answer to the question about whether it was Isaac or Ishmael that
Abraham took up the mountain to sacrifice. Half  the accounts say that Muhammad answered, "Isaac," and half  say that he answered "Ishmael." Brinner, William M., tr., The History of al-Tabari, volume II: Prophets  and Patriarchs (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), 82-97.

 

 

2

THE CORREC TIONS

 

 

 


I
've chosen the following examples for this introduction to the range of the phenomenon. I could easily have chosen twenty others, and in subsequent installments
may do so. Included below are corrections of various types (erasures, erasures overwritten, overwriting without   erasure, and insertion) as well as of different script styles representing different early time periods (7th, 8th, and 9th centuries A.O.).
Since I understand that many readers of this book do not speak or read Arabic, I've made an effort to explain each change clearly in a way that will not be inscrutable to nonspe­ cialists. Translation and graphic elements should serve this purpose while also including sufficient technical detail   to satisfy those who want it. There will still be difficult elements for non-Arabic speakers, but I trust that the main point will be understood from the photographs and the accompanying descriptions.

DANIEL ALAN BRUBAKER 


Example 1: Post-production insertion of a word in a monumental 8th century Qur' an

 

 

 

 

 


FIGURE I: Topkap1 al-mu l)af al-sharif, fo/. I22V.  (Source: Altikula ,  Tayyar, Ed. Al-Mu l)af al-Sharifattributed  to  'Uthman  bin  'Afran  (The copy at the Topkap1 Palace Museum). Istanbul: !RC/CA, 2007.)


This insertion is in the Topkap1 codex commonly known as the Topkap1 al-mu l:zaf al-sharif. This codex, of 408 folios on vellum, is distinguished as one of the oldest complete (two
folios are missing and others appear to have been replaced at an early date) copies of the Quri an. It was sent to Sultan Mahmud II in 18n as a gift by M. Ali Pasha, then Governor of Egypt, and has been kept at the Topkap1 Palace Museum since its arrival there in 18n. 1
The Topkap1 codex has been attributed by tradition to the third Caliph, c uthman, a Companion  of Muhammad   who died in 656 AD, about 24 years after Muhammad himself died. As is often the case with popular opinion, the attribution is not correct; this codex probably dates to a century later, that is, the mid-8th century AD. It is a delicate matter to challenge the

Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts

attribution to ' Uthman, so the statement of Mr. ihsanoglu, the founding Director General   of IRCICA and Secretary General of the Organisation of the Islamic  Conference, is admirable and carries weight:

Judging from its illumination, the Topkap1 Museum Mu$baf dates neither from the period  when  the  Mu$bafs  of  the Caliph  'Uthman  were  written  nor  from  the  time  when copies based  on these Mu$bafs were written.  Since  Mu$bafs of the early period took those  attributed  to  the  Caliph 'Uthmiin as a model, they do not  have  elements  of illumination. [ ... ] This Mu$baf [ ... ] does not  constitute  a sample of the early period of Mu$baf writing due to a
number of characteristics [ .. .It] most probably belongs to the Umayyad period.2

The Topkap1 codex is an important and beautifully­ produced relatively early and nearly complete monumental Qur) an manuscript. I hope to discuss it further in subsequent works.
I have noted 25 instances of correction over the Topkap1 al­ mu!jJ:iaf al-sharif's 408 folios. This, as well as examples II  and 14, are representative. The photograph above shows an insertion of the word JA huwa, "it [is] ," of Q9:72. In the 1924 Qur) an, the affected phrase of this verse reads wa-rfr;lwiinun mina lliihi akbaru dhiilika huwa  >J-fawzu  >J- 'a imu  "and Allah's good plea­ sure is greater, that is the great triumph."
The words dhiilika huwa together mean "that  is," but dhiilika alone, which was part of the page as first written, carries the same basic meaning. In other words, this particular correction resulted in a manuscript that it is now in

30    DANIEL A L A N BRUBAKER 

conformity with the now-standard rasm, but had no notable semantic effect.
This is clearly a post-production correction. It has been made with a different hand, nib, and style. It is my opinion that there was the passage of some length of time between production and correction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIGURE 2: lllustration of location of correction Example I compared with the Azhar-approved mushafmuscat.com Qur 'an, which is based upon the 1952 Cairo edition. [The r952 edition corrected some errors in the 1924 Cairo edition. The mushafmuscat is basically the corrected r924 edition with Omani-style punctuation. Also, the mushafmuscat follows the Medina format of 604 pages with a verse number at the end of each pagefor the entire
Qur 'an, in contrast to the Cairo edition 's free flowing text over 827 pages. The rasm is the same between these editions exceptfor the position of some ofthe amphibious characters. On the r924 and 1952 editions, see Puin, Gerd-R, "Quellen, Orthographie und Transkription moderner Drucke des Qur 'an," in Vom Koran Zurn Islam, Groft, Markus and Karl-Heinz Oh lig, Eds. 606-641.
Subsequent figures will refer to this as "the 1924 Cairo text"for simplicity.]

Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts    31 

Example 2: Post-production erasure overwritten in a 1st/7th century Qur>an

 

 

 

 

 

 


FI GURE 3: BnF arabe 328, fol. 58v.

This example is from BnF arabe 328b, part of the Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus, which comprises BnF arabe 328a and 328b, as well as other folios that exist today in the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg, the Vatican Library, and the Nasser D. Khalili Collection oflslamic Art in London.3
Franc;ois Deroche has worked with this codex for many years and has described it in wonderful detail. It dates, in his opinion, to the third quarter of the 7th century, specifically to between 671 and 695 AD.4 Dr. Alt1kulac; similarly places it (referring to arabe 328a) in the 7th century and, like Deroche, believes it not to have been one of the copies produced by
<Othman, but rather a copy of one of them or a copy of a copy. Although Deroche is cautious about placing it geographically, 5 Alt1kulac; sees evidence of origin in Damascus and suggests

 32    DANIEL ALAN BRUBAKER 

that was either copied from the codex that ' Uthman sent there, or from a copy based upon it.6 The Codex Parisino­ Petropolitanus has   many interesting distinctive   features   that are beyond the scope ofthis book.
The photograph above shows a place where the page has been erased and overwritten. Erasures were typically made by scraping off the ink with a pumice stone; this process leaves scratches on the parchment. It was often done in a very precise way following the general shape of the letters that were erased. Erasure marks are clear at this spot and I have looked at this
page on two di erent occasions. The change has been made by
a different hand and with a different nib and different ink than the rest of the writing on the page. Among other things, the lam (the upright extension at the right side) is less confident and more vertical in contrast with the general rightward slant of the rest of the page, including the apparent lam that was erased.
This correction occurs at Q42:21, and is the second of three instances of  lahum in this verse as it stands in the 1924 Cairo edition. What was first written here appears to have been lam­
he, that is, the compound Arabic word lahu, "to him." It has been replaced by lam-he-m'im, that is, lahum, "to them (m.)." As such, the way this page was first written would have had a meaning, "Or do they have associates who enacted for him as a religion that for which Allah did not give leave?" instead of the now-standard text which says "Or do they have associates who enacted for them," etc. The third person singular is used in the previous verse, and as it was first written on this page, verse 21 could have been read with the "for him" referring back to the hypothetical individual mentioned  in verse 20, who wishes the tillage of the Hereafter.

Corrections in Early Qur 'tin Manuscripts    33
The way the page is written after this change corresponds at this point with the consonantal text of the 1924 Qur)an. This correction is not the only one on this page of the manuscript; there are at least two others, including an erasure 3 lines earlier.

 

 

""    ,,    ,;    ,;

,.,    .J    ) ,,
WI'l• tten over

J    "    ,
erasure

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIG URE 4: Example 2 compared with the r924 Cairo text

34    DANIEL ALAN BRUBAKER 

Example  3:  Multiple  post-production  insertions  of  "allah" in several 1st/7th and 2nd/8th century Qur' ans

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


FIGURE 5: Nine insertions of allah in various manuscripts (Source of San 'a ' image (bottom right): UNESCO CD of San 'a ' Qur 'ans)

 

THE ABOVE FIGURE is not a single but a composite image showing nine different manuscript   insertions   of the   word alliih 7 ("God") at places where the word was omitted at the time of the manuscripts' initial production. I have so far cata­ logued about a dozen such instances in Qur) an manuscripts produced in the 7th and 8th centuries, most of these in the Fustat Umayyad Codex, and it has fascinated me to discover that, of all things for a scribe to "forget," alliih would be among them. I don't believe, actually, that alliih was truly forgotten in all these cases; in almost every instance shown above, Allah is the implied subject but is not grammatically necessary. This

 Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts    35
recurrence of similar corrections in  different places seems to me evidence, perhaps, of a certain degree of early flexibility in the manuscripts and probably also reflects the oral nature of the transmission (since manuscripts are not produced in a vacuum) that was at some later point in time drawn toward uniformity.
Here is a description of each one of the above, from top left to bottom right:


THE "FUSTAT UM AYYAD CODEX" 
Many full manuscripts have been broken up into sections and remain separated today in different libraries and muse­ ums. Such is the case with one codex that Franc;ois Deroche has named the Fustat Umayyad Codex. He believes it could possibly be either the codex sent by al-Hajjaj to the   'Amr
mosque, or that made by c Abd al- 'Aziz b. Marwan in response to this action. 8 Whatever the case, this codex apparently
remained in the 'Amr mosque for a thousand years until the early 1800s, when the various portions were acquired by Jean­ Joseph Marcel and making their way to Europe.9 The manuscript fragments now exist under four   call   numbers: three in Russia (Marcel II, Marcel 13, and Marcel 15) and one in
Paris (BnF arabe 33oc). 10 This manuscript is written in the 0 I
script style 1 1 and was probably produced in the first part of the 8th century AD.
The Fustat Umayyad Codex has many interesting features. Prof. Deroche has described it in in detail, and I have seen and made my own close observations of all its folios in both Paris and St. Petersburg. The interesting feature I am highlighting in this example of change (which actually consists of seven

D A N IEL  A L A N  BRUBAKE R


changes in this codex and two in other ones) is the apparent late standardization of a number of instances of alliih. Here is a description of each one in turn, with the manuscript and folio listed as well as the particular instance  of alliih that was omitted and then inserted shown in bold:


⦁    NLR Marcel II, ]V. Q33:18, qad ya ,lamu lliihu ,I-mu cawwiqin minkum, "Allah surely knows those from among you who hinder others... " This is an erasure overwritten, but it is almost certainly the alliih that was missing earlier; if this was the case, the ya ,lamu was erased and both words were then written in. As such, this manuscript prior to the change would have read, "He surely knows those from among you who hinder others... "


⦁    NLR Marcel II, 8r. Q33:24, li-yajziya lliihu ,l-$iidiqin bi-$idqi­ hum, "In order that Allah might reward the truthful for their truthfulness... . " Prior to the insertion, this manuscript read, "In order that he might reward the truthful for their truth­ fulness."


⦁    NLR Marcel II, 10v. Q33:73, wa-yatuba lliihu calii ,I-mu ,minina wa- ,I-mu ,miniit, "and that Allah  might pardon the believing men and believing women." Prior to the insertion, this manuscript  read, ''And that he might pardon the believing men and believing women."


⦁    NLR Marcel II, 12v. Q41:21, qiilU ,antaqanii lliihu lladhi antaqa

 Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts    37
kulla shay >in, "they will say, 'Allah who gave everyone speech gave us speech."' Prior to the insertion, this manuscript read, "they will say, 'He who gave everyone speech gave us speech."'


⦁    NLR Marcel 13, 2ov. Q22:40, yudhkaru fihii smu lliihi kathiran,
"wherein the name of Allah  is mentioned frequently."  Prior to the insertion, this manuscript read, "Wherein the name is mentioned frequently."


⦁    NLR Marcel 13, 23r. Q24:51, du ca )ilii lliihi wa-rasulihl, "they are called unto Allah and his Messenger." Prior to the inser­ tion, this page looks like a nonviable reading because of the presence of the wiiw ("and"). It is therefore not clear what might have been going on in this sentence.


⦁    NLR Marcel 13, 26r. Q35:n, inna dhiilika calii lliihi yaslrun, "that is indeed an easy matter for Allah." Prior to this insertion it is unclear how or whether this manuscript would have been read sensibly at this point.


OTHER MANUSCRIPTS


⦁    NLR Marcel 21, 4v, line n. Q9:93, wa-taba ca lliihu calii qulilbi­ him, "and Allah has placed a seal upon their hearts." Prior to this insertion, the manuscript read, "and he has placed a seal upon their hearts."

DANIEL A L A N  BRUB AKER 

Marcel 21 is a horizontal fragment on parchment of 12 folios in 3 quires. It is a composite fragment, in that the third quire, folios 9-12 (two bifolios), are clearly originally from a different codex than the first two quires. As this insertion comes from folio 4, I will only describe that portion of this manuscript. Its pages measure about 17.9 cm tall by 29.5 cm wide (about i' x n.6"), with the text block measuring 13 cm. tall by 23 cm. wide. The script style is Deroche's A.I. This first part of Marcel 21 was likely produced in the early 8th century; the third quire may date to the 7th century. Altogether, I have noted about three dozen corrections in Marcel 21.


⦁    UNESCO CD of San'a' Qur'ans, shelf number 01-20.4. Q9:78, wa- >anna lliiha 'allamu >l-ghuyiib, "and that Allah knows fully the things that are unseen." Prior to this insertion, this manuscript read, "and that he  knows fully the things that are unseen."
The final allah insertion shown in this example, from the bottom right of Figure  5,  is  found on  a page  from the  San <a' manuscripts. I do not have the dimensions  of the page and have seen it only in a photograph, not in person as I have all the others in Example 3. The page is horizontal in format, with 22 lines on the page. It has virtually no margin, and in this regard is very similar to the earliest vertical bijaz1 manuscripts, which also tend to make full use of the page right out to the edges. This is probably a late 7th or early 8th century manuscript.

Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscrip ts    39

 

 

 

 

 

 


FIG URE 6: Illustration of the allah insertion at QJ3:18 in the Fustat­ Umayyad codex as compared with the 1924 Cairo text

D A N I EL ALAN BRUBAKER 

 

 

 

 


-    ,,,,    16   )    _,.
.    _,.            ...J    ,.""
,,    ,,    [.
tul  jJ G) J fi0  1     
_.,        .,    0     .J    ,,    0    _,    :;_.,

,,    ..         '"
fJ ,_Jjl_J_f 0 p }Zll0 JJW1
FIGURE 7: Illustration of the alliih insertion at Q33:24 in the Fustat­ Umayyad codex as compared with the 1924 Cairo text

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIG URE 8: ll/uslralion of the alliih insertion at Q3373 in the Fustat­ Umayyad codex as compared with the 1924 Cairo text

Corrections in Early Qur ,an Manuscripts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


FIGURE 9: Q41:21 in  the 1924 Cairo text; showing location ofthe allah
insertion in manuscript #4 above

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


FIGURE 10: Q22:40 in the 1924 Cairo text, showing location of the allah
insertion in manuscript #5 above

42    D A N IEL ALAN BRUBAKER 

 

 

 

 


FIGURE II: Q24:51 in the 1924 Cairo  text, showing location of the allah
insertion in manuscript #6 above

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


FIG URE 12: Q35:II in the r924 Cairo text, showing location of the allah
insertion in manuscript #7 above

Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts    43

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIGURE lJ: Qg:93 in the 1924 Cairo text, showing location of the allah
insertion in manuscript #8 above

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


FIGURE 14: lllustration of allah insertion at Qg:78 in manuscript #9 above, showing the location in the 1924 Cairo text

44    DANIE L ALAN BRUBAKER 

THE ABOVE  NINE corrections represent about three-quarters of the simple alliih insertions I have noted so far. In addition to these, there are many corrections beyond simple   insertions that involve alliih. On its face, this should not be terribly surprising, since alliih is one of the most common words in the Qur ) an. Still, the specific nature of the corrections above makes them worthy of attention.

Example 4:  An erasure

 

 

 


FIGURE 15: An erasure leaving a gap in Marcel 2, on the last  line of the page.

This correction is found in the manuscript Marcel 2, in the National Library of Russia, on folio 3ov. This is a large square Qur) an, with pages measuring about 41 cm. (-16 in.) square. Its text block measures 33 cm. tall by 31 cm. wide (-13 in x 12 in.). Its  format  is  similar  to  that  of  the  Cairo  mu$1:zaf  al-sharif. Marcel 2 has 42 folios with 20-21 lines of script per page. It contains verse dividers in the form of vertical stacks of diag­ onal nib marks, as well as multi-verse dividers in the form of red medallions  circled with brown ink, preceded by stacked nib marks as mentioned already. Occasionally it has multi­ verse dividers in the form of a red medallion with four spikes at diagonals and petals extending right and left, up and down. These pages are written in the script style C.la, and this is

 Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts    45

probably an early 8th century manuscript. I've noted 26 corrections in this manuscript fragment.
The correction in this case is a simple erasure; nothing has been written to replace what was erased. A gap is left by the erasure at the end of the line, the final line on the page. The erasure follows the word   ctiqibatu, "the fate," of Q30:9. The word that comes next in the 1924 Cairo edition, 0:!.il I alladhlna, "(of) those," is the first word written on the following page of this manuscript. So, the rasm now aligns at this point with the 1924 Cairo text.
This verse follows a narrative that chastises disbelievers for not recognizing the signs and the fate of those who disobeyed God in the past: "Have they not travelled in the land to see what was the fate of those who preceded them? They were stauncher than them in strength,   and they plowed the earth and built it up better than they themselves built it up, and their messengers came to them with the clear proofs. Allah would not wrong them but they wronged themselves."
What was erased cannot at this time be discerned, but the length and continuity of the erasure indicates a likely single word of 4-6 letters, all linked. Grammatically,   assuming that the rest of the verse was read at the time of this manuscript as it is today, there are possibilities that could fit in this space. The first would be an expression of proportion such as kullu min, "all of," or kath!ran min, "most of," to render "what was the fate of all those who preceded them," or "what was the fate of most of those who preceded them," respectively. Another possibility would be a noun (for example, al-yahud, "the Jews," or al-ntis, "the people") with the resulting translation, "what was the fate of the Jews who went before them," or "what was the fate of the people who went before them." To be clear, I

DANIEL ALAN BRUBAKER 

have no indication that the erased writing said any of these things; I mention them to illustrate that there are grammati­ cally viable possibilities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIGURE 16: Q30:9 in the 1924 Cairo text, illustrating the Marcel 2 correction


There is one other correction on this page in Marcel 2, an insertion in the left margin. Like the one above, it has also brought the   page toward conformity at that point with the rasm of the 1924 Cairo edition.

Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts    47

Example 5: A Qur' an page, possibly 2nd/8th-3rd/9th century, containing several post-production corrections

 

 

 

 

 

 


FIGURE 17: MS.474.2003, Jol. 9v. (Brubaker photo, by permission of the
Museum of Islamic Art)

This page is in the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar. Its script style is Deroche's A.I,  and it is probably of 8th century production. The manuscript fragment (MS.474.2003) has about 30 physical changes over its 12 folios, and it is variant when compared with the 1924 Cairo edition.
The photograph above (Figure 17) shows part of folio 9v, a page that contains at least five instances of correction. Before discussing these, here is a general description of the script on this page.
This folio begins in the middle of Q6:91. Even as it now stands, it has a variant rasm; for example:

⦁    wa-lii "nor" of Q6:91 is written instead as wiiw,

DANIEL ALAN BRUBAKER 

"and;" the lam- )alifhas been omitted. The meaning here is thus "you and your fathers" rather than the 1924 Cairo edition's "you nor your fathers"
⦁    What reads mubarakun mu$addiqu, "[it is] blessed
and confirms," in the 1924 Cairo edition of Q6:92 is written in this manuscript without the long medial
)alif in the first word and also with a long  )alif at the end of both words, to render mubarakan mu$addiqan, apparently "a blessed and confirming one."
⦁    The waw "and" that precedes li-tundhir, "that you may warn," in the 1924 Cairo edition is absent on this page.
⦁    What reads $alatihim (archigraphemically CLA BHM), "prayers," in the 1924 Cairo standard is written in this manuscript with a waw instead  of the medial long )alif, that is, $alawatihim, 1 2 or, archigraphemically, CLW BHM. The latter is plural; a slight change of meaning.
⦁    The aw, "or," of Q6:93 is written in this manuscript as wa, "and," to render "he who imputes falsehood to Allah and says," instead of the 1924 Cairo edition's "he who imputes falsehood to Allah or says."
⦁    The 1924 Cairo standard's idh, "while," of Q6:93 is written in this page as idha, "when."
⦁    The long )alif that is in second position of the bastu, "outstretched," of Q6:93 in the 1924 Cairo edition is missing on this page.
⦁    The word  .J rabbikum, "your Lord," is written
between allah  and fa- )inna of Q6:95. This does not

 Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts    49
exist in the 1924 Cairo edition  ut does make grammatical sense here, reading, "That is Allah
your Lord, how then," rather than "That is Allah, how then" as it exists in today's standard. It is interesting that the correctors of this page did not erase this word. Did they feel it belonged here?

The points above give a sense  of the variant character of this manuscript. Now we will discuss the corrections on this page. There are at least five:


l) THERE IS an erasure near the end of line 3, of two words whose shadow partly remains. It occurs after the bawlahii wa, "around it, and," of Q6:92 and before the alladhina, "those who," that follows it. A significant gap remains. The result at this point is a rasm that conforms to the 1924 Cairo standard.


⦁    ON THE 6th line pictured, the word    'alayhi, "against him," has been written over an erasure in Q6:93 following the words bimii kuntum taqulUn, "for what you (pl.) used to say." However, the 1924 Cairo edition does not read <alayhi here, and moving closer to conformity might be the reason for what I believe to have been the next intervention, noted in point #3.


⦁    A SUBSEQUENT  correction was made at Q6:93, this time in the  right margin, where  .&1     <ala  alliih,  "about Allah,"  has been written, but oddly without erasing the 'alayhi that it is apparently intended to supplant. Also, this phrase is written

 50    DANIE L ALAN B RUBAKER 

next to the start of the following line, but it seems  to be intended for this spot.
The more interesting thing here is that the page at this line remains out of conformity with the 1924 Cairo edition in that it includes the additional words -.9 JJL:i .:U  takfuruna bi-lliihi wa,
"they disbelieve  in  Allah  and,"  after  the  words      bimii
kuntum and   taqulUn of this verse. That those words were not only plainly written in this manuscript here at the time of its production, but  also allowed to remain in it after two rounds of correction, despite not being part of the 1924 Cairo edition, seems important.


⦁    ON  THE 8th line pictured, the word u=.il l alladhlna, "whom," of Q6:94 has been inserted where it was at first omitted.


⦁    AT THE beginning of the second to last line of the page, the word   ya czamuna, "they know," of Q6:97 has been written over an erasure. The shadow of what was first written can still be seen and its archigrapheme appears to be BHMW N; however, this archigrapheme renders no word in the Qur' iin. It is possible, I suppose, that the erased text was BEMHW N; this   could   correspond   to   one   word,     ya <mahun,
"blind/dumbfounded," a word that occurs only seven times in the Qur' iin, with one of them being at the end of Q6:no, that
is, in close proximity to this verse. If this were indeed what was first written here, the verse would have read "We have made plain the signs for a people who are blind." It is difficult, at this point, to  make a strong opinion on this, since the new writing

Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts

covers the erasure partially. So, while possible, it is not at all clear that an <ayin was present.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


FlGURE 18: Q6:92-97 in the 1924 Cairo text, with tlie MS.474.2003 corrections shown

52    DANIEL  ALAN  BRUBAKE R

Example 6: Multiple post-production corrections in a 1st/7th century Qur 'an

 

 

 

FIG URE 19: MS.67-2007.1 (Brubaker photo, by permission of the Museum of Islamic Art)

 

THIS FRAGMENT, and two others grouped under sequential shelf numbers, is of a similar time period and style to the Codex Petropolitanus (BnF arabe 328a-b, etc.) and also the Birmingham folios that Alba Fedeli brought to the world's attention, which were radiocarbon dated with a very early date range, a 95.4% probability of the animal having been last alive between 568-645 AD. 1 3 Several years prior to the testing of the Birmingham folios, parchment from the palimpsest San (a) I were similarly radiocarbon dated, giving a 95%   confidence date range of 578-669 AD. 14 BnF arabe 328 is a vertical bifolio written in Ma' il/hijazi script.
The corrections here are found in MS.67.2007.1, in the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. Inserted are the words wa­ 'amilU >f-$ali/:zati thumma ttaqaw wa- >amanu of Q5:93. The main insertion has been made above the main line of text. Except possibly for the first portion, wa- 'amilU, about which I have some question because of the way it is written, this inser­ tion looks to be the work of the original scribe and was prob­ ably made soon after the time of first writing. Q5:93 has several

 Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts    53

repetitions in it, and it is not at all surprising that a scribe might have become confused and made a mistake that needed to be corrected later. This correction is thus almost certainly due to a simple copyist error at first writing.
There is one part of this insertion, however, that appears to be part of a second and later correction. It is the final )alif of camilu, "they did," and this orthography of the third person plural ending, I think, was omitted at first correction and added later. Also, the corresponding )alif of )amanil, "they believed," at the very end of this insertion is missing, a further odd detail, given that it is typically used elsewhere on this page and was also added in at the end of camilil.
Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, the initial   )alif of
I 'absanu, "they did good (imperative, 3rd pl.)," was omitted at the time of first writing and was added later, but with red ink, the same ink used for the dots representing short vowels elsewhere on this page.
So, there is a lot going on in some of these manuscripts, and a close and careful examination is needed. I almost did not  notice  the  issue  with  the   )alif of  )absanil  myself.  There have been several times (I remember one quite clearly at the Bodleian Library in Oxford several years ago), when I have been working closely and carefully with a page for a long time and have almost been ready to move on before noticing a correction that ought to have been plainly obvious much sooner. It is a reminder that patience, humility, and attention to detail is essential in this work.

54    DANIE L   ALAN  BRUBAKER 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIGURE 20: Q5:93-94 in the r924 Cairo text, with the MS.67.2001 corrections shown


The complexity of the above situation may be taken as evidence that this manuscript was in use and was felt impor­ tant enough to correct, multiple times. The issue with the red
)alif is interesting because it is not a matter of orthography or reading. So, there is more work remaining to be done on this section and in this manuscript, which has layers of informa­ tion to unpack.

Corrections in Early Qur 'tin Manuscripts    55
Example 7: Post-production insertion of the words "the seven"

 

 

 

 

 


FIGURE 21: BnF arabe 327, fol. Ir.


BnF arabe 327, in the National Library of France, is written in Deroche's B.Ib style. A fragment of 14 folios, its pages are nearly square, 26-27 cm. (about 10.5  inches) tall and just slightly wider, with 18 lines of writing per page. It probably dates to the 8th century. I have noted nine different corrections in this manuscript, and I believe one of these was corrected more than once.
Two different corrections can be seen in Figure 21. The first is above the upper line shown, where the words  I al-sab ci, "the seven," of Q23:86 have been added by a later scribe and in a very different script style from that of the original scribe. As first written, this portion read, "Say: 'Who is the Lord of the heavens and the Lord of the Great Throne?"' As corrected, and as it stands in the 1924 Cairo edition, it reads, "Say: 'Who is the Lord of the seven heavens  and the Lord of the Great Throne?"'
 

DANIEL A L A N  BRUBAKER 

Clearly, the verse makes sense either with or without the word; the only question is which reading reflects the original.
The number seven occurs several places in the Qurian, but is not a strong motif as it is, for example, inside the Bible. There is one other folio, probably 8th century but possibly late 7th, from among the San' a) manuscripts that omits the word
seven in Q9:8o where the word does exist in the standard text today. 1 5 That page, although corrected elsewhere, is not corrected at this point; its "omission" 16 was allowed by the
corrector to remain. The details in that manuscript, at a verse that seems  to have strong intertextual   connotations, around the number seven have led me to suspect that there was some­ thing going on relating to this word "seven." Q9:8o is talking about forgiveness, and, with the inclusion of "seventy," it suddenly shares two elements with Matthew 18:21-22, "Then Peter came and said to Him, 'Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?' Jesus said to him, 'I do not say to you, up to seven times,  but up to seventy times seven."' To be clear, the omission at Q9:8o occurs in a different manuscript from the one pictured above, but, because of it, I find any insertion or a variant involving "seven" or "seventy" to be interesting.
The lower line pictured above also has a correction, by a different corrector,  I think.  It  is  an  inserted  >alif in  front  of li­ lliihi ''Allah's" of Q23:87. The result does not align with the 1924 text, but it does comport with Abu ' Amr's reading (and anoth­ er); it is standard in some parts of the world today. The effect is to convert the word "Allah's" to ''Allah." This word is an answer to the question posed in the prior verse, "Who is the Lord of the seven heavens and the Lord of the Great Throne?" This conversion, at this particular verse, has been discussed by

Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts    57
Cook, who notes the resultant reading as allegedly aligning with the codex sent by ) Uthman to Basra, as described in al­ Dani, who ascribes the insertion to I:Iajjaj. 17 
An oval mark, partially pictured, also lies over the words following this correction. It marks that the words ._,.;->  l.9 wa-1-
)arlj, "and the earth" (which is not present in the 1924 text) for
omission, to be replaced by the inserted al-sab <i. 18 Thus, "the heavens and the earth" has in this manuscript become "the seven heavens."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


FIGURE 22: Illustration of location of correction Example 7 compared with the r924 Cairo text

58    DAN IEL ALAN  BRUBA KER 

Example 8: Erasure overwritten in a 1st/7th century Qur' an, possibly by original scribe and likely soon after original production

 

 

 

 


FIGURE 23: BnF arabe 330, fo/. 55r.

BNF ARABE 330 is a fragment of 69 large vertical parchment folios, approximately 37 cm. (14.5 in.) tall by 28 cm. (II in.) wide. It is a composite manuscript; its folios are not all from the
same original Qur' an. Prof. Deroche classified its folios under various script styles: bijaz'i III, A.I, and B.Ib. 19 He has recently classified the portion 33oc as style 0 I, 20 and considers it to be part  of the  Fustat  Umayyad  Codex.21  The  page  shown  (from
33og) above remains, for the moment, unclassified. 22 I have visited BnF arabe 330 twice and have noted 65 corrections among its pages.
In the example pictured above, allah ("Allah") of Q4:149 has apparently been replaced by 0ts:  Jil  allahu kana, "Allah is," via erasure and overwriting. This change appears to be the work of the original scribe and may have happened as part of the production process (for example, after proofreading the line or the entire page when it was first written). Probably the word

Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts    59
kiina was initially omitted, since the phrase fa- )inna llaha
<afuwwiin qad!ran, "so surely Allah is Forgiving, Powerful," and was corrected to remedy the faulty grammar.
The verse carries the same sense with or without this word, but its inclusion is standard today. I have found no mention of an issue at this spot in the qirii )iit literature.
This is not the only correction on this folio; seven lines below it there is another erasure that has been overwritten.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIGURE 24: Illustration of location of correction Example 8 compared with
the 1924 Cairo text

60    D A N IEL   A L A N   BRUBAKER 

Example  9: Post-production  insertion  of "the  Merciful"

 

 

 

 

 


FIGURE 25: BnF arabe 32?. fol. rw.

This is the second example of correction from BnF arabe
327. A general description of the manuscript can be found in Example 7 above.
In  this  case  the  words  f':P') I  al-rabzm,  "the  Merciful,"  of
Q42:5 were omitted at the time of production and have been added in above the line at a later time. The correction in this case appears to be the work of a different scribe. It is the last word of the verse, and completes the pair of attributes of Allah that commonly ends a verse. As first written, the verse read, "and Allah is the Forgiving." As corrected, and as is standard today, it reads, "and Allah is the Forgiving, the Merciful."
There are two additional interesting things about this correction. First, it looks like it has been written with two different nibs, one very narrow and the other a little wider, though still not as wide as that which was used for the original production of this page. Second,  the correction itself appears to have been rubbed out or almost erased at some point.

Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts    61

The verse is grammatically correct and semantically viable without the insertion, but its absence throws off the standard rhythm, as the expectation is usually for a pair of attributes of Allah at the end of a verse. Also, the first word of the pair,  I al-ghafilr, "the Forgiving," does not fit the rhyme pattern of the other verse endings in this chapter, while the inserted al-rabim does. There are a number of places in the Qur ' an where verse endings do depart from the overall rhyme pattern, and a devia­
tion can serve a poetic purpose,23 but it is difficult to imagine
reading this verse with only the single attribute.

 

 

 

,..,    ..    _,    ,,    ) ..    ,,     ..    -

 

  0P..    ,.,

.J    '    -:,.

,
0  """1 .,,1;J J?j-;,'i..,.,l
'    Cc:

'(1,.,1 '_;}    .. ,.,lY')    ,, "'l 0,.,  1- ..  I£.J?j ') ,.,I

,,    · -    ,.,    _,  ,,  -    t.

,    .. -
,.,    _, 


FIGURE 26: Illustration oflocation of correction Example 9 compared with the r924 Cairo text

62    D A N I EL ALAN BRUBAKER 

Example 10: Post-production mid-line insertion in a 1st/7th century hijazi manuscript

 

 

 

 

 

FIGURE 27: BnF arabe 331, fol. w.

BnF arabe 331 is also in the National Library of France. It is a well-preserved fragment of 56 very large parchment folios, about 39.5 cm. (15.5 inches) tall by 34 cm. (13.5 inches) wide. It has about 19 lines of writing per page. Its script style has been identified by Deroche as B.la.24
In the detail of this manuscript shown above, the word   mithli, "as," of Q2:137 was omitted at first writing and then added in at a later time, with the preceding bi. The correction is in a very different hand using a much narrower nib; it looks almost like a modern intervention on the page. This having been said, the ink used for the insertion is very close in color and consistency to that of the original writing on this page. Probably this was just a very good match in ink, but it bears mention.
One interesting feature of this case is that the bi which was first written, linking forward to mii, has  not been erased, so as

Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts

it stands now it has an extra letter when compared to the 1924 Cairo text, with the portion written as      I amanu bi­ mithli bi-mii, an apparently non-viable reading.
As this page was first written, the verse makes grammatical and semantic sense, "If they believe in that which you have believed," versus the 1924 Cairo text, which is approximately translated, "If they believe similarly to that which you have believed."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIGURE 28: Illustration of location of correction Example IO compared with the 1924 Cairo text

DANIEL ALAN BRU BAKER 

 

Example  11:  Post-production  marginal  insertion  of  "Allah" in the Topkap1 codex

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIGURE 29: Topkap1 codex, fol. 374v. (Source: Altikulaf, Tayyar, Ed. Al­ Mu J:iaf al-Sharif attributed to 'Uthmiin bin 'Affin (The  copy  at  the Topkap1 Palace Museum). Istanbul: IRCJCA, 2007.)


This is a second instance of correction from the Topkap1 codex, and also a further insertion involving the word allah.
This insertion of lam-lam-he occurs near the beginning of Q66:8. As originally written, the first allah of this verse was not present. This change has been made with a very small nib and probably occurred long after the first production of this manuscript. It is possible this addition is a modern  inter­ vention.
Prior to the insertion, this could have been read "Oh you who believe! Turn to a sincere repentance," were it not for the

Corrections in Early Qur ,an Manuscrip ts

original inclusion of the )alif after )ila. There is obviously a certain range of possibilities for some of these archigraphemes
⦁    for example, if some letters were to be pointed differently than they are today, rendering different  consonants  - that could open alternate readings, but the one with the most flexi­ bility when undifferentiated has a dot underneath it in this manuscript, binding us to bd 1. So, it is not clear to me what was intended by the original version, or whether it could have been read viably. It is worth noting, however, that the word in question is also part of a section that has been erased and overwritten in the manuscript Marcel 104 in the National Library of Russia, and that correction will be featured, among many others, in my larger forthcoming book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIGURE 30: Illustration of location of correction Example II compared with the 1924 Cairo text

66    DANIEL A L AN  BRUBAKER 

Example 12: Erasure overwritten and stretched in a 1st/7th century Qur ' an

 

 

 

 


FIGURE 31: BnF arabe 328, fo/, Br.

This example shows another correction in BnF arabe 328a, part of the Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus. This   manuscript was already introduced in Example 2.
The correction shown here is found on folio 8r, near the beginning of line 13. In it, the r)ad-lam of J. far)lin, "bounty," of Q3:171 has been written over an erasure. Erasure marks are clearly seen, including some of the shapes  of the letters of what was first written here, among which were four upward­ extending letters, the first of which is preceded by a short tooth letter. The corrector has used a different nib and ink from that which was used in first production of the page; also, the hand and angle of the script vary from that used on the rest of the page. This change is clearly a later intervention. The length of the space that is now covered by these two letters is
5.3 cm, and this would typically be occupied by five to eleven letters elsewhere on the page. There is only one other place on this page where this much space contains as few as five letters.

Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts

The result of this correction is a rasm that conforms at this point with that of the 1924 Cairo edition.

 

 

 

 

  1 µ   .J  -Ll J'
-;,    ..    ;         ,, ,,

   d G ._;tjl --1 _ 1


FIGURE 32: Illustration oflocation ofcorrection Example 12 compared with the r924 Cairo text


I have observed particular verses25 and words26 that are frequently corrected  in  Qur) an manuscripts. The word far;l.l  is
not frequently corrected, but it is of theological significance. 27
The word    fa<}.alna,  "we have favored,"  of Q6:86 has been written over a covering in the Cairo mu  af al-sharif. This is the only correction so far that I have noted for any part of Q3:171.

68    DA NIEL  ALAN  BRUBAKER 

Example 13: Erasure overwritten, apparently changing the verb declension

 

.

FIGURE 33: BnF arabe 340. fol. 26r.

BnF arabe 340 has 121 folios that are written generally in horizontal format on parchment. It is another composite frag­ ment, meaning that its folios did not come from the same orig­ inal book, but rather several. A number of its p ages are in later
script styles of the 10th and even mh centuries (e.g. D and
NS).28 Deroche dates arabe 34o(f) to the 9th century. 29 A number of these folios has been classified B.11, 30 which would be 9th century. Folios 1-12 and 13-30 (which includes the folio
shown here) he has left unclassified. 3 1  The folio shown here,
from BnF arabe 34o(b), is probably early 9th or even 8th century.
Even though  they represent different original codices, it will give readers a sense of scale to know that I have noted 91 corrections in the pages of BnF arabe 340.
The example above is found on 26r, one of the folios whose script style Deroche has  left unclassified, in the middle of line
⦁    Here, the final lam of J  qala, "he said," has been erased, and in  its  place  lam-waw-alif has  been  written.  The  result  is  the word l,l  qalU, "they (m. pl.)," of Q34:35. As it was first written, this verse read, "And he  said,  'We are more [than you] in

Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts

wealth and in children."' As it stands now on the manuscript page, and as it exists in the 1924 Cairo edition, this verse reads, "And they said, 'We are more [than you] in wealth and in children.'" 
This is not an extremely dramatic correction, and there are others among the pages of this fragment that are actually more interesting, but my purpose in this book is not to pick the most dramatic corrections but rather to show the range of the phenomenon. Conversions involving JU, or variations on this theme (in this case the third person plural), are among the most common types of correction in early Qur' ans.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FJGURE 34: Illustration of location of correction Example IJ compared with the r924 Cairo text

DANIEL ALAN BRUBAKE R

 

Example 14: Erasure leaving a gap in Topkap1 codex

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIGURE 35: Topkapi codex,fol. 65r, showing erasure ofa single 'alif at the end of line II. (Source: Ah1kula1;:, Tayyar, Ed. Al-Mu I;iaf al-Sharif attributed to ' Uthmii.n bin 'Affin (The copy at the  Topkap1  Palace Museum). Istanbul: /RC/CA, 2007.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


FIGURE 36: Topkap1 codex, fol. 65r, showing erasure of II ah qad at beginning of line r2. (Source: Altikula , Tayyar, Ed. Al-Mu I;iaf al- Sharif attributed to 'Uthmii.n bin 'Affin (The copy at  the  Topkap1  Palace Museum). Istanbul: /RC/CA, 2007.)


Here is a third example from the Topkap1 codex. In this

Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscrip ts

instance, there has been an erasure of two words at the begin­ ning of line 12, with the first letter of Allah having also been erased at the end of line 11. The shadow of what was first written  remains;  it  is      JJI   allahi  qad,  "Allah  has  already,"  of Q4:167.
This verse is grammatically and semantically   viable without the portion that has been erased. Whereas before the correction the consonantal text of this portion read, "Surely those who disbelieve and hinder from the way of Allah  have strayed far into error," after the correction it reads, "Surely those who disbelieve and hinder from the way have strayed far into error."
The reason for this erasure is unclear, but its precision in taking out only the selected words is evident. Someone, at the time of this correction, evidently thought that those words did not belong in this place.
This is an unusual correction, as it takes the page at this point away from conformity with the 1924 Cairo text. Such changes represent a very small proportion of the total number of corrections I have noted; usually corrections result in a rasm that conforms, or that conforms more closely than it did before, with what is standard today. It is natural and reason­ able to presume that a corrector felt the change that he was making to the page to be movement toward a more correct text. So in cases like these - and this one in particular is an excellent example - the question of what formed the basis for such a belief on the part of the corrector is intriguing.
It does look from the facsimile as though there has also been an erasure on line IO, just before the end of the line. I'll not describe it here, partly because I am not sure about it. It's always best to look at the manuscripts directly; even an

72    D A N IEL  A L AN  BRUB AKER

extremely good photograph does not measure up to direct examination. Of course, as a practical matter, these objects cannot be handled by everyone, so when I go to look at them I look very closely and make detailed notes.

erf:>  tu10  1  ;uLP  
!:    1'.J- -- ,  ,    -:- -' !!:.1w    !:1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


FIGURE 37: Illustration of location of correction Example 14 compared with the 1924 Cairo text

Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts    73
Example 15: An erasure leaving a gap in an 8th or 9th century manuscript

 

 

FIGURE 38: MIA.2013.19.2, verso. (Brubaker photo, by permission of the Museum ofIslamic Art)


THIS IS a fragmentary partial folio on parchment in the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar. Its writing is very similar to that of the Topkap1 codex and its style is C.lb.
In this example, there is an erasure at the end of one line and the beginning of the next. It occurs after the word <l. fa<J.lihi, "his grace," of Q24:33. The next word after the erasure is the word  that  follows fat;l.lihi  in  the  1924 Cairo  edition, that is, LJ:!jj l-9 wa- >lladhlna, "and those who." What was first written in this space that is now empty cannot be discerned from the manuscript, as no shadow indicating the shape of the letters remains.
I have noted two manuscripts that have multi-word correc­ tions of this verse; the other is BnF arabe 327, in which a long portion of text has been written over an erasure and appar­ ently corrected more than once. That is an interesting correc­ tion, and I will certainly talk more about it in a subsequent publication. However, that correction does not cover the section of the verse at issue here; they do not overlap.

74    DAN IE L ALAN BRUBAKER 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


FIGURE 39: Illustration of location of correction Example 15 compared with the 1924 Cairo text

 

THE RASM of this page as it now stands aligns at this spot with that of the 1924 Cairo edition, but as this page was first written, it contained something extra. Since this manuscript is the only known copy with a correction at this point, we must wait to see if anything else emerges in future research. Perhaps there was a mere scribal error.

Corrections in Early Qur 'izn Manuscripts    75
Example 16: A post-production insertion in the Cairo Qur'an

 

 

 

 

 

FIGURE 40: Cairo al-mu l)af al-sharl  fo/. 109r. (Source: Altzkula ,  Tayyar, Ed. Al-Mushaf al-Sharif attributed  to  Uthman  bin  Affan  (The  copy at al- Mashhad al-Husayni in Cairo). (2 vols.) Istanbul: /RC/CA, 2009.)


This example comes from the monumental codex that is kept on display in the I:Iusayn1 Mosque in Cairo. This codex is an enormous book of 1088 parchment folios. Like the Topkap1 mu{J:zaf already  mentioned,  it has  been popularly  claimed  by its custodians and the governing authorities to be one of the mu b-afs  of the  Caliph  ' Uthman.  This  opinion  is  rejected  by scholars,   including   Dr.  Alt1kula<;:,  who  places  the  time   of production of the Cairo mu b-af at the end of the 8th or begin­ ning of the 9th century. 32 I will give more detail about this manuscript at the end of this chapter.
In this  case,  the  .:_,lS kiina,  "is,"  of Q4=33 was not written in this verse at the time of production of this   manuscript. Though only the first two letters of this inserted word are now visible in this facsimile photograph, the full word kiina was presumably added here, with a very fine nib. I would like to

D A N I EL ALAN B R UBAKER 

have the opportunity to look at this manuscript directly to confirm this theory. The verse makes sense with or without the word, and its meaning is about the same in either case: "And Allah has power (lit. 'is powerful') over all things." As in many semitic languages, the verb "to be"  is often not used as its sense is implied when the   adjective directly following the noun it modifies. The verb can be included, but it is not gram­ matically necessary.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIGURE 4r: lllustration of location of correction Example r6 compared with the 1924 Cairo text

This manuscript is not the only one in which the word kiina has been inserted. A similar insertion of kiina exists in NLR Marcel 17, folio nv, at Q4:6; however, in that case, it does not appear that as much time elapsed between original production and correction.

Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts    77

Example  17:  A  correction  involving  "allah"

 

 

 

 

FIGURE 42: NLR Marcel rr,fol. 71"·

This erasure has been overwritten in Marcel 11, part of the so-called Fustat Umayyad codex, which has already been introduced under Example 3 above. Written in script style 0 I, this is a vertical fragment of 12 folios measuring about 36.5 cm. (-14.5 in.) tall by 31 cm. (-12 in.) wide. It has 25 lines of writing per page, and its folios are quite delicate now. This particular fragment has a very high density of corrections: I've noted 46 of them  over  its  12  folios.  Furthermore,  some  of its  con:ections are quite uramatic.
This correction is found on 7r, in the middle of line 9. All but the first two letters of JJI   ni cmata lliih, "the favor of Allah," of Q33:9 has been written over an erasure. A different nib and ink  have   been   used,   and   the writing   is that   of a different   hand.   Also,   the   writing   has   been bunched in.   My impression is that this could have read ni cmatihi, "his favor," at first; this rendering would have fit the space and would make grammatical sense here. H owever, this interpretation is just a reasonable conjecture; I cannot tell for sure.

DAN IEL ALAN BRUB AKER 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


FIGURE 43: Illustration of location of correction Example 17 compared with the 1924 Cairo text

 

In addition to its  many other corrections and this one, the 12 folios of Marcel II  have four omissions of allah that were later inserted: 33:18, 33:24, 33:73, and 41:21 - these were shown
in Example 3.
Surah 33 has a fair number of corrections in the early manuscripts. Most of them are fairly small and many involve orthography. There is a more lengthy erasure overwritten at verse 73 in BnF arabe 340. I will discuss this and others further at a later time.

Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscrip ts    79
Example 18: Post-production insertion of "the hour" in a 3rd/9th-4th/10th century manuscript

 

 

 

 


FIGURE 44: NLR Marcel '?,fol. 7r. (Brubaker photo, by permission of the National Library of Russia)


Marcel 7 is a horizontal parchment Qur)an fragment of IO folios. Its pages measure 17.7 cm. (-7 in.) tall by 23.3 cm. (-9 in.) wide. Its script style is probably D.IV and it is thus likely a 9th or IOth century manuscript. I have noted 8 corrections across its IO folios, a high frequency of correction for a manuscript produced more than two centuries after the time of ' Uthman.
In this case, the word 4. L. I al-sa 'ah, "the hour," of Q6:40 has been written in as a superscript insertion. It has been done with a very narrow nib and in a different hand. It is possible that this is a more modern correction.
This word, al-sa 'ah, has been corrected in other manu­ scripts. In BnF arabe 340, there is a rather lengthy erasure over­ written at Q15:85 that includes the instance of this word in that verse; it is not at all clear, however, that in this case the correc­ tion had to do with this word particularly or with another. The word sa 'ah is also written over an erasure at Q7=34 in the

80    DANIEL A L A N  BRUBAKER 

manuscript E20, located at the Institute of Oriental Manu­ scripts, also in St. Petersburg.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIGURE 45: Jllustration of location of correction Example 18 compared with the 1924 Cairo text


Corrections involving "the hour" are interesting since this word relates to eschatological (that is, referring to end times) or apocalyptic themes, which an insertion such as this one would have strengthened and clarified. 33 In  both 6:40 and 15:85, the word al-sa 'ah are eschatological references to the hour.

Corrections in Early Qur >ttn Manuscripts


Example 19:  Erasure  overwritten  involving "allah"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


FIGURE 46: NLR Marcel 5. fol. lIY.  (Brubaker photo, by permission of the National Library of Russia)

 

Housed in the National Library of Russia, Marcel 5 is a parchment fragment of 17 folios from a large format Qur ' an. Its pages measure 50 cm. (-19.5 in.) tall by 35 cm. (-14 in.) wide. Its text block measures 44 x 30 cm. (-17 x  12 in.). It has 20 lines of writing per page. Many of the letters are differentiated by diacritics, which are present in the form of fine diagonal nib marks; these seem to be original to the manuscript.
The above correction is found on folio II recto. In it, the words  Jil   Y'   huwa  llah,  "he  is  Allah,"  of  Q34:27  have  been written over an erasure. This is not the work of the original scribe; the ink is different and the letters are drawn in rather than written. The huwa, which extends into the right margin,

DANIEL ALAN B R UBAKER 

is likely part of the same correction, though it is at least possible that it was added later. Absent the word, the verse would read at this point, "for Allah is the Mighty, the Wise;" with it, and as both this manuscript and the 1924 Cairo edition now read, it says " for He is Allah, the Mighty, the Wise."
It is not certain what was first written here, but my suppo­ sition is that this manuscript initially had merely huwa, with the subject (Allah) being implied but not explicit: "He is the Mighty, the Wise." The huwa would have, in this scenario, been erased and allah or huwa allah written in its place. This is conjecture but would fit the space and would make sense.

 

 

 

 

 


FIGURE 47: ll/ustration of location of correction Example 19 compared with the 1924 Cairo text


This sort of correction - that is, the replacement of an implied reference to Allah, or a pronoun referring to him, with
the  actual word allah -   is not uncommon, as  should  be  clear by this point and in light of other examples above.

Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscrip ts


Example 20: Erasure overwritten of nearly a full line of text, involving "provision"

 

FTGURE 48: MIA.2014.491, fol. 7V· (Brubaker photo, by permission of the Museum of Islamic Art)

 

Located in the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, this object is a small horizontal format bound Qur' an fragment of nine parchment folios, measuring approximately 17.5 cm. (-7 in.) tall by 28 cm. (-II in.) wide. Its script style is B.11.
This   fragment   contains   several   interesting   corrections.
Shown here is the erasure and overwriting of an entire line in the  middle  of folio  7.  The  new  text  is      _)_,  Lo.  J   wa­ mimmii razaqniihum yunfiquna,  "and  of that which We have
provided them," of Q8:3, plus the initial 'alif of the following verse. Erasure marks are quite clear on this page and the current writing on this line is somewhat stretched out to fill the space, an indication that what was first written here was longer.
The word rizq, "provision," is directly corrected or part of larger corrections (as is the case here) quite frequently in early Qur' ans. It was such a prominent feature that it topped my list of frequently corrected words in early Qur'an  manuscripts in a conference paper I delivered at the International Qur' anic Studies Association several years ago. I am not yet sure why rizq is so frequently corrected, that is, what the issue is, but I would not be surprised if the issue has played into the motiva­ tion for this particular instance of correction.

DANIE L  ALAN BRUBAKER 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIGURE 49: Jllustration of location of correction Example 20 compared with the 1924 Cairo text

 

This concludes my presentation of the twenty examples. I am aware that, with Examples 3 and 5 (in particular), which contain several corrections each, I have actually shown more than twenty. My intent was to be generous, in the spirit of the old American tradition of the "bakers' dozen." Also, I wanted to take the opportunity   to   demonstrate   some   apparent patterns of correction (such as that in Example 3) that would be more difficult to see if I merely described them separately.

Corrections in Early Qur 1an Manuscripts


Another phenomenon:  Covering in  the  Cairo  Mu J:af?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


FIGURE 50: Cairo al-mu l.iaf al-sharlf.fol. 3311. (Source: Alt1kulai;:, Tayyar, Ed. Al-Mushaf al-Sharif attributed to Uthman bin Affan (The copy at al-Mashhad al-Husayni in Cairo). (2 vols.) Istanbul: IRCICA, 2009.)

 

WHEN SU RVEYING manuscripts for my doctoral dissertation, I came across some instances of what looked to me like writing that had been covered up. In an abundance of caution, I did not classify them as corrections, and even now am reluctant to do so since I have not had the opportunity in most cases to

 86    DANIEL ALAN  BRU BAKER 

look at the manuscripts in question directly to make a very careful assessment.
Pictured above is one page of the monumental Qur' an, in the opinion of Alt1kulac:,: probably dating to the end of the 8th century or the beginning of the 9th. It is an interesting manuscript for a variety of reasons, not least of which is its movement between conformity with one or another of the various documented codices:
 


The  comparison  we  made  between the  Mu J:iafs  attributed to Caliph ' Uthman in 44 places concerning pronunciation, a superfluous or a missing letter and the structure of words leads us to think that this Mu J:iaf is not related to any of the Mu J:iafs  of Caliph  ' Uthman.  [ .  .  .T] his  Mu baf differs  from the Medina Mu baf in 14 of the 44 places, from the Mecca Mu baf in 15 places, from the Kiifa  Mu l:iaf in 7  places, from the Basra Mu baf in 9 places and from the Damascus Mu baf in 28 places. As a   result,  although the Cairo Mu baf has common points with one or more than any one of these
Mu l:iafs in e ach of the 44 places,  it  is  not exactly the same  as any one of them. 34

This manuscript has more than 1,000 folios. Many of them have similar tapings that cover portions of the text. In my experience, such tape is sometimes used to repair a weak spot on the page, such as where the acidity of the ink has eaten through the parchment over the centuries,   and   I   have observed at least one instance of such tape being applied for the purpose of repair in a manuscript fragment of a similar age and script style to the Cairo mu:jbaf. Indeed, on many pages of
the Cairo mu:jbaf, parts of what is written beneath the tape

Corrections in Early Qur 'tin  Manuscripts

extend beyond the tape edges and appear to be in alignment with what we would expect to be there when compared with the 1924 Cairo edition.
My first objective with tapings like the one above is there­ fore to rule out the possibility that the tape was applied merely for the purpose of page repair. Were the manuscript in front of us, we could look at the page to assess its condition, and also examine the back of the page to see if there is evidence of split­ ting or weakening at the spot where the tape has been applied on the reverse.
In the case of the Cairo mw baf, I've not yet been able to survey these pages in person. I hope to be permitted to do so one day.
In absence of the opportunity for direct inspection, then, we must work from photographs, and the first thing I   do after looking closely at the side with the tape is to look closely at the photograph of the reverse side of the same page. In many instances in the Cairo mu[jbaf, as in folio 33 pictured above, the reverse of the page appears to   be perfectly sound. This observation leaves open the possibility, then,  that the tape might be serving another purpose,  such as selective concealing of something that is written on the page.
If the rasm beneath the tape of the page shown above conforms to the 1924 Cairo edition, then the covered portions would be as follows:

⦁    Line 1 -     All but the first three letters of  \"+?"  1-9
  wa- )akhrijuhum min baythu, "drive them out from wherever," of Q2:191
⦁    Line 5 - All but the first two and last two letters of

 88    DANIEL ALAN  BRUBAKER 
r-SP .:,LSfa- 1in-qiitalUkum, "so ifyou fight to kill them," of Q2:191
⦁    Line 6 -    All but the first five letters of dl..iS r-APLSfa­
qtulUhum kadhiilika, "then kill them (imper.), such," of Q2:191
⦁    Line 7 -    All but the last five letters of  I u LSfa- 1ini­
n tahau, "and if they desist," of Q2:192
⦁    Line 8 -    The first three letters of..>. ghafurun, "forgiving," and the last three letters of F..J ra/:zimun, "merciful," of Q2:192
⦁    Line 10 - All but the first letter of Ji u:..1 1 al-dlnu Zi­ llah, "the religion belongs to Allah," of Q2:193
⦁    Line n -  All but the last letter of 0J..i.e.   cudwiin,
"enmity," of Q2:193
⦁    Line 12 -  The final two letters of   l:i bi- 11-shahr,
"in the month," of Q2:193

Until I can see what lies under the tape, I do not know what has been covered up in each case. Still, I think it is worth mentioning that these coverings exist, and in many cases seem to have been applied when there was no need of page repair, possibly to hide what was written on the page at particular points.

Corrections in Early Qur >an Manuscrip ts

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIG UR E 5r: Cairo Mu l)af al-Sharif.Joi. 43or. (Source: Alt1kula . Tayyar, Ed. Al-Mushaf al-Sharif attributed to Uthman bin Affan (The copy at al-Mashhad al-Husayni in Cairo). (2 vols.) Istanbul: IRCICA, 2009.)


FINALLY, there is the matter of coverings overwritten. Above is one example of this. There are many places in the Cairo mu l:zaf where  these  tapings  have  been  written  over.  In  the photo above, this appears to have happened in three places:


⦁    On the first line pictured, all but the first two letters of   bi- )anfusihim, "in themselves," of Q13=11 has been written on the top of such a taping.
⦁    On the second-to-last line pictured, all but the initial  )alif of  .->= t>J.J I alladhl yurikum, "he who shows you," of Q13:12 has similarly been written
over a taping, and is rather stretched out. The stretching is not unusual in this manuscript, but it is more pronounced in this spot than is standard for the original scribe. It is notable that the way this section is written over the tape is missing one letter

90    DANIEL ALAN  BRUBAKER 
 
when compared with the 1924 Cairo edition, which has an additional ya ) between the ra ) and the kaf,

 ,     ;:
(S;ill.

⦁    On the final line, the  -J  wa- tama <an, "and hope," of Q13:12 has also been written over a taping.

 

IN ALL TH ESE CASES,  what was first written under the tape cannot be discerned, but likely remains there and could be seen were the tape carefully removed. It is possible that what is written underneath matches what was written over the top, but it is not certain that such is the case. Given the many other instances of correction in Qur ) an manuscripts,  I have not ruled out the possibility that some  of  these tapings are covering with intent to obscure a variant text or, in the case of tapings overwritten, to change what was first written.


I.     Alt1kulac;:,  Tayyar,  ed.,  Al-Mu?/:laf al-Sharif attributed  to   ' Uthmiin  bin   'Affiin (The copy at the Topkap1 Palace Museum) (Istanbul: I RCICA, 2007), 5- 13.
2. Ibid., 10-13.
⦁    Deroche,  Franc;:ois,  Qur 'iins of the  Umayyads: A first overview  (Leiden:  Brill, 2014), 17.
⦁    Deroche,  Franc;:ois,  La  transmission  ecrite du  Coran dans  les  debuts de  l'lslam: Le codex Parisino-petropolitanus  (Leiden:  Brill,  2009),  173;  Deroche,  Franc;:ois,
Qur 'ans of the  Umayyads: Afirst overview (Leiden:  Brill,  2014),  34.
⦁    Ibid.
⦁    Alt1kulac;:,  Tayyar,  al-Mu?J:iaf al-Sharif Attributed  to   'Uthman  bin  Affii n:  The Copy At al-Mashhad al-Husayni in Cairo (Istanbul: I RCICA, 2009), 131-3.
⦁    Throughout  this book,  I  transcribe  the  archigrapheme  A  LLH  as  alliih. The use of ii  instead  of a  adds an  element (the  presumption  of a  long  vowel) that is not, strictly speaking, present in the manuscripts.
⦁    Deroche,  Franc;:ois,  Qur 'ans of the  Umayyads: A first overview  (Leiden:  Brill, 2014), 96.

Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts

⦁    Deroche,  Frarn;ois,  La  transmission  ecrite du  Coran  dans  /es debuts de /'is/am: Le codex Parisino-petropolitanus (Leiden: Brill, 2009), wff.
IO. Deroche, Franc;ois, Qur 'ans  of  the  Umayyads:  A  first  overview  (Leiden:  Brill, 2014), 75-7, 154-5.
⦁    Ibid.,  I05.
⦁    In  modern convention around this particular word,  even   this   way   of writing  it  (i.e.  with  the wiiw) is  transliterated $aliit,  but  as  per my  remarks on transliteration at the front of this book, I am breaking  with  standard shorthand in order  to  precisely  represent  the  script  as  it  appears  on  the page.
⦁    "Birmingham Qur 'an manuscript dated among the oldest in the world," University of Birmingham, posted 22 July 2015, https://www.birmingham. ac.uk/news/latest/2015/07/quran-manuscript-22-07- 15.aspx
⦁    Sadeghi,  Behnam  and  Uwe  Bergmann,  "The  Codex  of a  Companion  of the
Prophet  and  the  Qur'an of the  Prophet,"  in Arabica  57  (January  20!0):  343-
436.  See also Sadeghi, Behnam and Mohsen  Goudarzi,   "San 'a  l  and   the Origins of the Qur'an," in Der Islam 87 (March 20J2): I-129.
⦁    Brubaker, Daniel, "Asking Forgiveness Seventy Times," (conference paper, Middle East Studies Association  Annual  Meeting,  San  Diego,  CA, November, 20!0).
⦁    I place  omission  in  quotation  marks  because  the  fact  that  the  particular page to which I refer was corrected but  these  words  were  not  added requires us  to  at  least  consider  whether  these  words were  felt  to  belong here at the time  and  place  of  both  original  production  and   correction   of this manuscript.
⦁    Cook,   Michael,   "The   stemma  of  the   regional  codices   of  the   Koran,"   in 
Graeco-Arabica: Festschrift in honor of V. Christides TtµT)TLKoa To1wa BaatAELOv Kpryanory  (Athens:  Graeco  Arabica,  2004),  93-4.  There  is  more  to  say  about this, as  this  particular  change  reflects  something  that  has  been  discussed extensively  in  the  literatures  from  the  time.  For  the  purposes  of this  book, however, it is enough to know this.
⦁    Thanks to Marijn van Putten  for  pointing  out  this  explanation.  I  have looked at this correction for years - of course  my attention  is  on  thou­ sands  of pages  and  not  intensely  upon  this  one  alone  -  without  realizing that this was the function of the oval mark here.
⦁    Deroche,   Franc;ois,   Catalogue des   manuscrits   arabes : deuxieme partie :   manu­
scrits  musulmans : tome I, I   (Paris:  Bibliotheque  nationale,  1983), 63-69.
⦁    Deroche,  Franc,:ois,  Qur 'ans  of the  Umayyads: A first overview  (Leiden:  Brill, 2014), 80.
21.    Ibid., 76.
⦁    Its style is very close to that of CBL Is 1615 I/II in Dublin, with hand almost identical, van Putten has observed. (personal communication)

 92    DANIEL ALAN BRUBAKER 

⦁    Stewart,   Devin,   "Divine    Epithets     and     the    Dibacchius:    Clausulae    and Qur ' anic  Rhythm,"   in  Journal  of  Qur'anic  Studies   15.2   (2m3):   22-64.   Stewart has done   good  work   on   rhyme   patterns,   asking  whether  current   readings may  in  some  cases  not  be  the  original readings.  I  was  riveted  when I  first heard   him  present  a  paper  on   this  several  years  ago,   and   I   believe  the   line of  inquiiy holds potential as   an   item   in   the   toolbox   during   the   coming years of manuscript research.
⦁    Deroche, Frarn;:ois, Catalogue des  manuscrits  arabes  : deuxieme partie : manu­ scrits musulmans : tome I, 1 (Paris: Bibliotheque nationale, 1983), 67.
⦁    Brubaker, Daniel, "Frequently Corrected Verses In Early Qur 'an Manu­ scripts," (paper  presented  at   the   Annual   Meeting   of the   European   Associa­ tion of Biblical Studies, Leuven, Belgium, July 20!6).
⦁    Brubaker,   Daniel,   "Corrections   involving   the   word   rizq   ("provision")   in 
early Qur'ans,"  (paper  presented  at  the   Annual  Meeting  of   the International Qur 'anic  Studies   Association,   San   Antonio,   TX,   November 2016). 
⦁    Rubin,  Uri,  "Meccan   trade   and   Qur 'anic   exegesis   (Qur 'an   2:198),"   in Bulletin  of the  School  of Oriental  and Africa n  Studies,   University  of London  53 no. 3 (1990), 421-428.
⦁    Deroche, Frarn;:ois, Catalogue des  manuscrits  arabes  : deuxieme partie  : manu­ scrits  musulmans  : tome  I,  I.    (Paris:   Bibliotheque   nationale,   r983),   109,    120, 131, 138.
⦁    Deroche, Frarn,:ois. The Abbasid Tra dition: Qur 'ans of the 8th to  the  wth Centuries AD (London: Nour Foundation, 1992), 54-55.
⦁    Deroche, Frarn;:ois, Catalogue des  manuscrits  arabes  : deuxieme partie : manu­ scrits musulmans : tome I, I. (Paris: Bibliotheque nationale, 1983), 69.
31.   Ibid., 147.
⦁    Alnkulay,  Tayyar,  al-Mushaf al-Sharif Attributed  to   'Uthman  bin  Affii n:  The Copy  At  al-Mashhad  al-Husayni  in   Cairo,   2   vols.    (Istanbul:   O rganisation    of the Islamic Conference Research Centre for   Islamic   History,   Art,   and Culture (IRCICA), 2011), 124-5.
⦁    Rahman, Fazlur, Major Themes of the Qur 'an (Chicago: The University  of Chicago Press, 2009), lo6ff; Cook, David, Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2005), 8-9.
⦁    Alt1kulay,  Tayyar,  al-Mushaf al-Sharif Attributed  to   'Uthman  bin  Ajfiin:  The
Copy  At  al-Mashhad  al-Husayni   in   Cairo,   2   vols.   (Istanbul:   O rganisatio n   of the   Islamic   Conference  Research   Centre   for   Islamic   History,    Art,    and Culture (I RCICA), 20II), 124-5.

 

 


3

CONCLUSIONS

 

 

 


T
he Qur' an has been, and continues to be, consequential in the affairs of men. In many parts of the world, it is a source of regional, cultural, and
spiritual   pride inextricably intertwined with every part of life. It is also an object of history related to one of the most dramatic and enduring movements of political conquest and colonization in the history of the world. It claims internally (e.g. Q2:1) to be revelation from God, and was also claimed as such by Muhammad himself. Furthermore, as a piece of writing (Arabic kitiib) with poetic and linguistic nuance, allu­ sions to events and details of its time as well as to the biblical scriptures (Hebrew Bible and New Testament) and apocryphal writings, it contains theological and historical themes inter­ twined in complex ways. For all these reasons and more, it is an object that has attracted scholarly study from   many different directions.
Leaving aside  for the moment devotional considerations
⦁    because these are generally outside the scope of an acad-

 emic inquiry - there are many ways to approach the history of the Qur i an. For example, there is analysis through the lens
of   secondary   literatures,   both   Arab/Muslim   sources 1   and
others,2 both of which can carry special problems, including internal or external contradictions;3 there is linguistic4 and poetic or chiastic5 analysis of the words and word groupings6
of the Qur i an itself, or of the presence of foreign words; 7 there is the Quri an's self-referentiality, 8 there is study of the histor­
ical content and clues in the text of the Qur i an, such as places,
people, and references to historical events and topography, 9 there is consideration of the theological and legal themes and motifs of the Quri an in context of its time and place of deliv­ ery; 10 and more.
Then, there is analysis of the material history, 1 1 which includes physical traces of Qurian passages, such as in rock inscriptions or on monuments from the early time periods. This includes consideration of the political circumstances in
the period following the lifetime of Muhammad. 1 2
Factoring large in the material history, of course, is the manuscripts, which serve as witnesses to the both their time of first production and also to the time  (if applicable)  of correction.
In the preceding pages, I have shown examples of correc­ tions from Quri an manuscripts that were produced in the first several centuries after the death of Muhammad. As stated earlier, I did not choose the most dramatic examples   to present here, but rather a good group of samples to introduce the range of the phenomenon. In order to provide readers the most value, I've generally decided not to pick corrections that I've judged to be the result of correcting a mere scribal mistake from the time of first production; the one exception in this

Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts    95
book is (possibly) Example 8. Among all the corrections I've documented so far in my research, simple scribal error does account for some of them, and it is important for readers to understand that this explanation is the first factor I consider when trying to discern the cause. These manuscripts were written by human beings, not machines, and so ordinary human error must always be taken into account.

 

WHAT DOES the existence of these corrections mean? It is an open-ended question with many possible answers. Here are a few of my thoughts:
First, although it seems to have been reasonably demon­ strated by now that (with the exception of the lower layer of the San 'a) palimpsest)  most surviving Qur)an  manuscripts bear the signs of having been produced following a campaign of standardization basically consistent with that reported to have been directed by the third caliph, it is also clear that there existed some    differences of perception about the correct words of the Qur) an text at the times most of these manuscripts were produced, which were later revisited when these perceptions changed or standardization became more thorough. It is not impossible that some of these varying perceptions would have been tied to certain geographic regions or locales.  This perceived flexibility exceeds the bounds of what is reported in the qirii 'iit literature.
Second,  these differences of perception were not confined to the earliest decades after Muhammad's death, but there was some flexibility extending for several centuries after. The flexi­ bility does not appear to have been great. For example, with

DAN IEL ALAN BRUBAKER 

few exceptions like the 7th century San ' a' and Birmingham palimpsests, we do not usually see the correction of very large portions of Qur'an text in the manuscripts. This degree of apparent flexibility that has limits seems to fit very well with what is seen elsewhere, such as the inscriptions in the Dome of the Rock which suggest to Chase Robinson and Stephen Shoemaker a certain instability in the text of the Qur' an through the time of its completion in 691/2 AD, during the reign of the caliph 'Abd al-Malik, 1 3 and, to the larger point, the variations requiring later correction in the manuscripts would be consistent with what Nicolai Sinai has termed the 'emergent canon model,' the hypothesis that "the   Qur ' anic text, in spite of having achieved a recognizable form by 660, continued to be reworked and revised until c. 700." 14  Of course, such a model, i.e. complete closure of the quranic "canon" around 700, would still fail to account for manuscripts being produced after this time that still required later correc­ tion, unless of course every one of these were to be attributed only to orthographic developments, standard qira ' at varia­ tions, or scribal error at first production, a scenario that does not appear to be the case.
Third, partial correction suggests a movement toward a standard over time, a gradual process rather than a sudden complete standardization. By partial correction, I mean places where one aspect of the writing on a page was brought to conformity with the 1924 Cairo rasm but another part of the writing remained uncorrected. Of course,   this   surmise suggests that the corrector, when noting and revising one aspect of the writing on the page that he perceived to be deviant, passed over another that he presumably did not see to be incorrect.

 Corrections in Early Qur ,iin Manuscripts    97
A  dominant  traditional  view   about   the   Qur) an's   early transmission and preservation held that orality   was   the primary factor, and the ability of even modern children to memorize the entire Qur) an from an early age is held forth as evidence that the same was the practice during the time of Muhammad and the centuries following. Indeed, there is little reason to doubt that oral transmission played a significant role in those early years. However, the existence of manuscripts attest also to a tradition of written transmission, and features
of the manuscripts also suggest the practice of scribal copying
from an exemplar. 1 5 That is, they looked at an existing copy in order to make a new copy, rather than either writing from
memory or writing from hearing a recitation. 16 So, it is more
likely that orality was part of the picture but that the major transmission of the book was not purely oral, an environment that Sadeghi and Bergmann have termed "semi-orality." 1 7 
A reconstruction ofthe physical history of the manuscripts and their relationship to both the oral tradition(s) and to one another is one goal of this work. There is, in particular, the hope of grouping manuscripts into families based upon close analysis and their textual features; this area of research is called stemmatics, and it highlights the familial relationship from parents (the exemplar) to children (the copies), grand­ children, cousins, and so forth. It should come as no surprise that this biological model should make use of methods and tools employed in similar work in the area of biology, and Alba
Fedeli, for example, has been conducting   analysis   in   this way. 18 The larger idea is one that has long been employed in
biblical textual criticism and is well-developed in that field. Nor is it a novel concept when it comes to the Qur )an manu­ scripts;   classifications   of these   objects   into   families   was

DANIEL ALAN BRUBAKER 

proposed by Theodore Noldeke as early as 1860, 1 9 and others have used distinctive features as a means of grouping manu­
scripts according to relational proximity.20
Clearly, the above observations bear only upon the trans­ mission of the Quri an. That is to say, they do not have anything to say about questions of whether Muhammad received revelation or whether this revelation was from God; rather, they speak only to what happened later as the commu­ nity of believers preserved and passed along what he delivered to them.
The mere existence of corrections in manuscripts is not the end of the story but a piece of the picture that must be taken into account when assessing what was being transmitted, in this case the words ofwhat came to be understood by believers in Muhammad's apostleship  to be a set of revelations from God. A manuscript is a physical record of a text; it is a medium of transmission and of preservation. We have many ways of transmitting and preserving information in recent years and today: print, photography, magnetic recordings such  as cassette and VHS tapes, CDs and DVDs, digital archives, and of course (as in the 7th century) the handwritten document. In each case there is the possibility of noise or distortion caused by either human error or the limitations of the medium itself, but not every variation between records is   necessarily the result of human error or the limitations of the medium. The work of a manuscript researcher is work in the real world of objects, using judgment to discern what is noise and what is meaningful information. I have drawn only a few conclusions here but expect that in the end, the greatest value of this book will have been the opportunity for reflection that the photographs and descriptions has provided you.

Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscripts    99

Certainly, there is much more to be said, and a great amount of material remains for further scholarly research. I will continue as I am able and hope others will also.


I. These include early literatures that fall into various categories: tafslr (com­ mentary),  tarlkh  (history), slra (biography  -  i.e.  of Muhammad),  rijal (liter­ ally "men," it is literature about the lives, lineages, and reputations for truthfulness and character of the people who were involved in transmitting traditions), bad!th  (accounts of  "what   happened,"   organized   topically   and in discrete bits of information as  reportedly  passed  from  person  to  person until being collected and written down by the l:iadlth  collector,  maghazl (histories of raids and conquests), jiqh (legal texts rooted in the teachings of Muhammad and the  Qur ' an),  to  name  a  few.  Needless  to  say,  the  earlier ones tend to carry  a  special  weight  with  scholars  even  if they  are  not  in every  case  the  most  popular devotionally.  Also,  there are  some  works  that, for various reasons,  are  considered  to  be  more  authoritative  than  others. Even  the  most  authoritative  works  are  not without  their  problems,  and  this is partly because  all  of these  works  tend  to  be  separated  from  the  events they describe by more than a century.
⦁    For example:  Hoyland,  Robert  G.,  Seeing Islam as others saw it: a survey and
evaluation of Christian, Jewish,  and Zoroastrian  writings on  early  Islam  (Prince­ ton: The Darwin Press, 1997).
⦁    Rippin, Andrew, "Al-Zuhrl, Naskh  al-Qur 'an  and  the  problem  of early  ta/sir texts," in Bulletin of the School of Orien tal and African Studies, University of London 47 no. l (1984), 22-43; Donner, Fred McGraw, The  Early  Islamic Conquests, (Princeton: The Princeton University Press, 1981); Motzki, Harald, 'Whither l:ladith Studies?" in Analysing Muslim Tra ditions: Studies in legal, exegetical, and maghazl bad!th (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 47-r24; Crone, Patricia,
Meccan Tra de and the Rise of Islam (Piscataway: Gorgias  Press,  2004);  Noth, Albrecht,  The  early Arabic  historical  tradition:  A   source-critical  study   (Prince­ ton:   The   Darwin   Press,    1994);   Neuwirth,   Angelika,    "Qur'an   and    History   -  a   Disputed   Relationship:    Some    reflections    on    Qur' anic    History    and History  in  the  Qur 'an,"  in  Journal  of Qur 'anic  Studies  5  no.  I  (2003),  1-18; Crone,   Patricia,   "H ow   did   the   quranic   pagans   make   a   living?"   in  Bulletin  of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 68 no. 3 (2005), 38]-399.
⦁    Luxenberg,  Christoph,   The Syro-Aramaic  Reading  of the Koran: A  contribution to the decoding of the language of the Koran (Berlin: Verlag Hans Schiler,

 [QQ    DANIEL ALAN BRUBAKER 

2007); Durie,  Mark,  The  Qur 'an  and  its  biblical  reflexes  ( Lanham:  Lexington Books, 2018).
⦁    Cuypers, Michel, The  Banquet:  A  reading  of  the fifth  sura  of  the  Qur 'an (Miami: Convivium Press, 2009); Cuypers, Michel, A Qur 'anic Apocalypse: A reading of the thirty-three last siirahs of the Qur 'an (Atlanta: Lockwood  Press, 2018); Stewart, Devin,   "Divine   Epithets   and  the   Dibacchius:  Clausu/ae  and Qur' anic Rhythm," in Jou rnal of Qur 'anic Studies, 15.2 (2013), 22-64;  Rippin, Andrew, "The poetics of  Qur 'anic punning," in Bulletin  of  the  School  of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 57 no. 1 in Honour of J. E. Wansbrough (1994), r93- 207.
⦁    Bannister, Andrew G., An Oral-Formulaic Study of the  Qur 'an  (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014); Witztum, Joseph, "Variant Traditions, Relative Chronology, and the Study of  Intra-Quranic Parallels," in Islamic  Cultures, Islamic Con texts: Essays in honor  of  Professor  Patricia  Crone,  ed.  Behnam Sadeghi, Asad Q. Ahmed,   Adam   Silverstein,   and   Robert   Hoyland   (Leiden: Brill, 2or5); Durie, Mark, "Phono-semantic matching in Qur' anic Arabic," (unpublished paper, Arthur Jeffery Centre   for   Islamic   Studies,   Melbourne School of Theology).
⦁    Jeffery, Arthur,  The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur 'an (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
⦁    Madigan,  Daniel  A.,  The Qur 'an 's self-image:  Writing  and authority  in  Islam 's Scripture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 
⦁    Zellentin,  Holger  Michael,  The  Qur 'an's Legal  Culture:  The  Didascalia  Apos­ tolorum as a Poin t of Departure (Ti.i bingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013).
ro. Dost, Suleyman, "An Arabian Qur ' an: Towards   a   theory   of  peninsular origins,"   (PhD   diss.,   University   of  Chicago,   June   2017);    "Geiger,   Abraham, Was hat  Mohammed  aus  dem  fudenthume  aufgenommen ? (Berlin: Parerga, 2005); Reynolds, Gabriel   Said,   The  Qur 'dn  and  Its  Biblical  Subtext  (Abing­ don:  Routledge,  2010);  Reynolds,  Gabriel  Said,  ed.,  The Qur 'an  in  Its Histor­ ical Context (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008); Reynolds, Gabriel Said, ed., New Perspectives on the Qur 'dn: The Qur 'dn in its historical con text 2 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011); Zellentin, Holger Michael, The Qur 'an's Legal Culture:  The Didascalia Apostolorum as  a  Point  of Departure  (Ti.ibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013).
IL  Small,  Keith E., Tex tual  Criticism  and  Qur 'an   Manuscripts   (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2on); Fedeli,   Alba,   "Early   Qur'anic  manuscripts,   their text, and the Alphonse Mingana papers held in the Department of Special Collections of the University of Birmingham," (PhD diss., University of Birmingham,  2or4);  Powers,  David,  Muflammad is  not the father of any  of your
men  (Philadel phia: University  of Pennsylvania  Press,   2009);   Puin,   Elisabeth, "Ein   fri.iher   Koranpalimpsest   aus    San 'a'   (DAM   01-27.1),"    in    Schlaglichter: Die beiden ersten islamischen fahrhunderte, ed. GroB,  Markus  and  Karl-Heinz Ohlig,  (Berlin:  Verlag  Hans  Schiler,  2008);  Dutton,  Yasin,  "Some  Notes  on

Corrections in Early Qur 'an Manuscrip ts    IOI 

the British Library's  'Oldest  Qur'an  Manuscript' (Or. 2165),"  in  Journal  of Qur 'anic Studies 6 no. I  (2004),  43-71;  Sadeghi,  Behnam  and  Uwe  Bergmann, "The Codex of a Companion of   the   Prophet   and   the   Qur' ii.n   of   the Prophet," in Arabica 57 (2mo), 343-436;  Rezvan,  E.,  "New  folios  from  " Uth­ mii.nic Qur ' ii.n' I. (Library of  Administration for Muslim   Affairs   of   the Republic  of  Uzbekistan),"   in  Manuscripta  Orientalia  10   no.   I  (2004).   These are just a sampling  from  a  much  wider  pool ofwork,  in cluding  works cited earlier in this book.
⦁    Kohlberg, Etan,  and  Mohammad  Ali  Amir-Moezzi,  eds.,  Revelation  and  Falsifi­ cation: The Kitii.b al-qirii. ' at ofAbmad b. Mubammad al-Sayyarl (Critical Edition) (Leiden:   Brill,   2009;   Modarressi,   Hossein,   "Early   Debates   on   the    Integrity   of the  Qur' ii.n:  A  Brief  Survey,"   in   Studia  lslamica  77  (1993),   5-39.  There  were early   debates,   for   example,   in   which   it   was   alleged   that   the   commonly accepted   text   of  the    Qur' ii.n    had   been   corrupted.   The    book   mentioned   here is a critical edition of one such work from the 9th century AD.
⦁    Sinai, Nicolai, "When did the consonantal skeleton of  the Qur'an  reach closure?" in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 77 (2014), 273-292.
⦁    Ibid.  6.
⦁    Clues that a manuscript has been copied  by  looking  at  another  manuscript include mistakes such as haplography  (omitting  a  word  or  phrase)  or dittog­ raphy (writing the same  word  or  phrase  twice) due  to  parablepsis  (looking aside when copying, for example, to fill the ink   in   a   nib).   There   are numerous   instances   of correction   in   early   Qur ' ii.n   manuscripts   that   rectify th is kind of mistake.
⦁    This latter practice, writing from recitation, could be discerned when, for example, letters that sound the same but look different when written are interchanged. Such a mistake would not be made  if the  scribe  was  copying from an earlier manuscript. This sort of mistake is not common in Qur 'an manuscripts; in fact, no example of it comes to mind.
⦁    Sadeghi, Behnam and Uwe Bergmann, "The  Codex  of a  Companion of the Prophet and the Qur'ii.n of the Prophet," in Arabica 57 (20!0), 345.
⦁    Fedeli,   Alba,   and   Andrew   Edmondson,   "Early   Qur'anic    Manuscripts    and their Networks: a Phylogenetic Analysis Project," (pre-circulated paper for Conference   "Qur'anic   Manuscript    Studies:    State    of  the    Field,"    Budapest, May 2017, after the research project Early Qur 'anic Manuscripts and  their Relationship  as  Studied  Through  Phylogenetic  Software  at the Central European University, Budapest).
⦁    Cook,   Michael,   "The   stemma   of  the   regional   codices   of  the   Koran,"   in
Graeco-Arabica Festschrift in Honour of V. Christides TtWJTLKoa To11oa BaatAEwv Xpryarn5ry, Volu mes  IX-X.  ed.   George   Livadas.   (Athens:   Graeco-Arabica, 2004), 89-104.

 102    D A N l EL  A L A N   BRUBAKER 

⦁    George,   Alain,   "Coloured   Dots   and   the   Question   of Regional    Origins    in Early Qur 'ans (Part  I),"  in  Journal  of Qur 'anic  Studies  17.1 (2017),  l-44;  van Putten, Marijn, '"The Grace of  God' as evidence for a written Uthmanic Archetype:   The   importance  of   shared  orthographic  idiosyncrasies,"   in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (forthcoming).

 INDEX OF QUR ' AN VERSES REFERENCED

 

 

 

2:137  (62-3); 2:191-3  (85, 87-8); 3=171  (66-7); 4:6 (76-7); 4:33  (75-6);
4:149 (58-9); 4:167 (70-2); 5:93 (52-4); 6:40 (79-80); 6:86 (67); 6:91-
97 (47-51); 7:34 (79-80); 8:3 (83-4); 9:72 (28-30); 9:78 (34, 38-9, 43);
9:80 (56); 9:93 (34, 38, 43); 13:11-12 (89-90); 15:85 (78-80); 22:40 (34,
37. 41); 23:86 (55-7); 23:87 (56-7); 24:33 (73-4); 24:51 (34, 37, 42); 30:9
(44-6); 33:9 (78-79); 33:18 (34, 36, 39); 33:24 (34, 36, 40); 33:73 (34,
36-7, 40); 34:27 (81-2), 34:35 (68-69); 35:11 (34, 37, 42); 41:21 (34, 37.
41); 42:5 (60-1); 42:21 (31-3); 66:8 (64-5)

 

 FURTHER  READING

 

 

 

Below is a partial list of recent books specifically dealing with Qur' an manuscripts. Some may be challenging for a non­ specialist. My mention is not an endorsement of every posi­ tion, theory, or conclusion of the authors, but all are serious scholars engaging substantively with the subject.

Baker, Colin F. Qur )an manuscripts: calligraphy, illumination, design. London: The British Library, 2007.

Blair, Sheila S. Islamic calligraphy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008.

Cellard, Eleonore. Codex Amrensis I (French and Arabic). Leiden: Brill, 2018.

Deroche, Franc;ois. Qur )ans of the Umayyads. Leiden: Brill, 2014.

 106    Further Reading

George, Alain. The Rise of Islamic Calligraphy. London: SAQI, 2010.

Hilali, Asma. The Sanaa Palimpsest: The Transmission of the Qur )an in the First Centuries AH. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Powers,  David. Mu/:zammad is  not the father of any of your men.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.

Sinai, Nicolai.  The Qur )an: A  Historical-Critical Introduction.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017.

Small,    Keith.    Textual  Criticism  and  Qur )iin    Manuscripts.
Lanham: Lexington Books, 2011.

I further recommend the chapters from the  following authors that are contained, among other places, in the German Inarah volumes edited by Karl Heinz-Ohlig and Markus Gro6:

Alba Fedeli Thomas Milo Elisabeth Puin Gerd-R Puin Keith Small
Others who have published important journal articles, but not

 Further Reading    107

yet books, on Qur' an manuscripts include notably Yassin Dutton, Mohsen Goudarzi, Efim Rezvan, Behnam Sadeghi, Ahmad Al-Jallad, Michael Marx, and Marijn van Putten. To this list could be added most of the authors of books above.

Finally, I mention one additional recently-published book that does not relate directly to the manuscripts, but which engages in fine linguistic and thematic analysis that may have some bearing on some of the things we see going on in them:

Durie, Mark. The Qur'an and Its Biblical Reflexes: Investigations Into the Genesis of a Religion. London: Lexington Books, 2018.

 

 

 

 

 

GLOSSARY

 

 

 

A.H. (or AH) - the abbreviation for Anno Hegirae, "Year of the Hij rah," a designation of a date given according to the Islamic calendar, which counts lunar years from the time of Muham­ mad's emigration from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD. Centuries are often given in AD/AH format, for example "7th/Ist centu­ ry," meaning the 7th century AD, which is also the 1st century AH.

archigrapheme - a mark which can represent different graphemes (letters). In this context it refers  to  unpointed Arabic letters, which, for lack of diacritics, were often ambiguous.

aya - a verse of the Qur) an

bifolio - a sheet folded in the middle so as to form two folios in a bound book. Several bifolios are usually stacked and sewn together to form a quire.

 no    Glossary

codex - a book (i.e. multiple pages bound at one edge). The Arabic  word  for  codex/book  is  mu "J:i.af  (pronounced  "moos­ hoff," NOT "mush-off")

colophon - a statement, usually included at the end of the book, that contains details about its production. In a Qur) iin manuscript, a colophon might include the name of the callig­ rapher, the date the project was completed, and perhaps the name of the patron who commissioned it. Unfortunately, the earliest Qur) iin manuscripts do not include colophons.

consonantal skeletal text - the Arabic rasm, that is, the core structure of written Arabic without any dots or other marks to disambiguate letters

diacritics - the graphic marks (usually dots today) that distinguish an otherwise ambiguous consonant. In Arabic, for example,  three  dots  above  a  consonantal tooth indicate the
letter tha )'    two dots above indicate a tii )'    one dot above indi­
cates nun, one dot below indicates bii >, and two dots below indicates ya ,. There are many other examples.

folio - a page in a codex. A folio has a recto (front) side and a
verso (back) side.

grapheme - the smallest unit of a writing system m a language. This term is relevant to understanding the word archigrapheme above.

hadith - a report that has been passed from person to person over time before being written down. Hadith typically tell of

 Glossary    I II

things Muhammad said or did, approved or disapproved, or similar things that his companions  did or said. Separate hadith reports have been gathered into authoritative collections.

manuscript -  a handwritten document

mu$baf (plural: ma$iibif) -    the Arabic word for a book

orthography - from the Greek meaning "right writing," this refers to the rules for correctly writing a word, particularly its spelling

parchment - animal skin prepared to receive writing. Parch­ ment is sometimes also called · vellum; they are not exact synonyms, but the terms are often used interchangeably.

qibla - the direction of Islamic prayer, today toward Mecca

quire -       a section of a book consisting, usually, of several bifo­ lios stacked and sewn together in the middle. In traditional bookbinding, and even in quality bindings today, a number of quires are first produced and then sewn or glued together to make a complete book.

rasm - an Arabic word describing the bare  consonantal Arabic text. Full written Arabic today has marks representing consonants, marks representing long vowels, and sometimes marks to represent short vowels. The rasm refers to the first two items, but not to the last one.

 II2    Glossary

recto - the front side of a folio  in  a book,  abbreviated "r"; when referring to manuscripts in this book, for example, 26r means "26 recto," or the front side of the 26th folio. The other side is called "verso."

surah -    a chapter of the Qur' an

script grammar - a term coined in 2002 by Thomas Milo to refer to slight variations in the consonantal skeletal text that permits disambiguation of some consonants even in  the absence of dots

verso - the back side of a page in a book, abbreviated "v"; when referring to manuscripts in this book, for example, 26v means "26 verso," or the back side of the 26th folio. The other side is called "recto."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Dr. Brubaker examining folios ofa 7th century Qur 'tin in the $abab Collection of the Dar Museum, Kuwait, 20r5.

DANIEL B RUBAKER became fascinated by corrections m Qur' an manuscripts during his Ph.D. work at Rice University, so fascinated that he chose to make these his prime focus. His dissertation, titled "Intentional Changes in Qur' an Manu­ scripts" (2014), is the first extensive survey of physical correc­ tions in early written Qur 'ans. Its contents and additional material are forthcoming. This is Brubaker's first book.

 1(1 facebook.com/drbrm W   twitter.com/dbruI @ instagram.com/dbruI

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