Don’t be dim Aldebaran, my list was an attempt to summarize what we’d reached up to that point in the thread, not a review of 1400 odd years of history.
Now from what you’ve provided there seem multiple instances where the integrity of the text/oral tradition could be called into question. Are there specific answers to them, or am I over stating the potential for errors in mistranslation/interpretation/memorization?
OK.
Well I have to clarify first of all something about the sources:
The problem with everything considering the history of early Islam is that we have to rely completely on the hadith for our information since there is no other source avaiblable.
The first obstacle is that the traditions (hadith) about the Prophet and what happened after he died weren’t transmitted with the goal to write history.
They were transmitted because people admired him and wanted to preserve his deeds and sayings (and in addition the deeds and sayings of his close companions and their adventures).
This implies that they were transferred with a religious goal and background and from a religious point of view, not a historical one.
The next obstacle is to take into account that there was over time almost inevitably some colourful painting added to certain events/stories.
Yet the good news is that one can’t escape the fact that beneath all that (and the study of the hadith makes that clear) one can discover a reflection of historical events.
So when you cut off the religious context and the fact that the Prophet was the admired example, you can read in those thousands of stories a historical report.
Add to this that these - at first oral transmitted - traditions were gathered and studied on very intensively by different people and selected and selected again on their reliability. The chain of transmitters for example - named Isnad - was subject of scrupulous investigation.
If you examine hadith, you shall often find slight differences in the details of reporting on the event, yet the story itself doesn’t change.
So to answer your question: yes, you are a bit overstating your suspicion about the possibility that the oral traditions of the text of Al Qur’an differ from what was written down.
We read for example in the hadith that the compilation ordered by AbuBakr was done by the (youngest) secretary of Muhammed, Zaid ibn Tabit (I can(t use here the right transliteration since the website doesn’t take it).
He describes himself how he received that order and gives details about how he worked (for example: where and how he found the ending of a particular sura) .
The same goes for the Uthmanian redaction, where we get a list of those who participated on the gathering and the writing of the text and the order to give preference to the use of the dialect of the Prophet.
Those men were close companions of the prophet, witnessed him getting revelations, witnessed his preaching and were - don’t forget that - filled with their belief in the Message they were writing down.
Further was one of the reasons for this redaction the preservation of the text for the coming generations.
The fast spreading of the empire made it impossible for the caliph to overlook the purety of the oral transmitted text. Differings in the reading in the province capitals were brought under his attention.
Uhtman ordered not only to further complete of the texts of Abu Bakr and gave then the ranking as we see them now.
He ordered also to make seven copies made (some sources say five) of the new redaction and had them send to the governors. With the explicite command to destroy everything that didn’t match with them.
One can imagine that there was opposition against this order and such is also described in the hadith.
Parallel readings/editions thus circulated for a period and how long exactly isn’t qjite clear and point of discussion.
These parallel editions are well described and you can find comments on them, reference to them, comparison between them and the Uthmanian redaction by a variety of professionals in this studyfield.
That is also why the findings in Yemen are so extremely interesting.
I can’t rely on own research here, but it seems to me they are part of this whole contraversional story of paralel editions/readings.
The evolution from the defective early Arabic to the Quranic Arabic we know now is an other one. And also one that is much discussed and gives occasion for a variety of opinions and conclusions. As there are a lot of discussions on Al Qur’an as text.
Salaam. A
If you think that’s a valid definition of translation, Aldie, there’s no way in heck you’ve a doctorate in the study of any language. Well, no way you got one from a reputable school.
** Grey**, I thought your personal loathing of ** Al** was in danger of blocking actual innersting information he may have.
Didn’t see your “As an aside…” post, or I would have restrained my carping.
I don’t believe that you have to be Muslim to discuss Islam. But I hope the average Muslim poster knows more about Islam than Joe Doper out there- however ignorant you feel he is about world politics, etc. Looking at ** Al**'s last post supports this.
Bonus example: I would be ready to give IzzyR the benefit of the doubt on questions directly invovling Judaism, tho I’d be more skeptical in other areas.
possum stalker,
I seriously doubt that the “average Muslim poster” shall ever describe you Al Qur’an and the Hadith as I just did 
Even better: for some of my brothers and sisters in Islam I’m already doomed because of my blasphemy.
Salaam. A
Al,you gotta admit, most Muslims would have a more nuanced view than ‘I’m sick to death of all this crap about Islam being a “religion of peace and tolerance.”’
Most of the fun posters on the SDMB are doomed for blasphemy anyhow. So we can look forward to continuing these debates in hell.
Well I’m actually never directly said that I was doomed even not by those Muslims I had very stubborn debates with (as I am a stubborn person and certainly was even more some ten years ago) and who are famous scholars at an institution regarded as the most prestigious in the Muslim world.
The last ten days I was only two times banned to hell by some strange Christian proselytizers. But the consolation is that they are praying for me.
By the way: do you have an idea where hell is these days because I’m right now in a country where the winter has attacked too harsh and too soon for my spoiled sun-loving body. I could use some heat…
Salaam. A
Well I’m actually never directly said that I was doomed. Even not by those Muslims I had very stubborn debates with (as I am a stubborn person and certainly was even more some ten years ago) and who are famous scholars at an institution regarded as the most prestigious in the Muslim world.
The last ten days I was only two times banned to hell by some strange Christian proselytizers. But the consolation is that they are praying for me.
By the way: do you have an idea where hell is these days because I’m right now in a country where the winter has attacked too harsh and too soon for my spoiled sun-loving body. I could use some heat and fire…
Salaam. A
I started reading through this thread from the beginning. I haven’t been able to follow every point throughout, but it seems as is Aldebaran is making a very earnest effort to make at least a definsible point.
Grey and Monty both seem to be responding in a manner below what’s called for by the forum. This isn’t the pit, and perhaps you should be a bit more respectful in your arguments than what you’ve shown.
The IMHO forum is a different forum, threemae.
shrug.
It’s hardly loathing. Aldebaran is remarkably good at polarizing people. There’s a pit thread from a few months back were I finally laid out what I thought of him. Part of what pisses me off is that he actually has the potential to provide useful, factual information here. His post here shows that. The problem is dragging it out of him.
The tangential discussion on the acceptance of Koran, Qur’an and Alcoran is a hang over from a previous thread. History rears its ugly head as Aldebaran failed to get bent out of shape over the use of a spelling/phonetics not identical to Arabic. Note that his referenced experts use Coran.
On to Aldebaran’s post
Interesting. How was the sura structure arrived at? Was it an artifact of the oral tradition or a later written structure to provide order within the revelation?
So a “defective script” acting as a short hand to aid memorization which was preferentially referenced when maters of moving the written Koran to the Qur’anic script necessitated. Were there disagreements between the original scribers, and if so how was it resolved?
When you say “complete the texts of Abu Bakr” does that mean the Abu Bakr text had portions of the oral tradition not recorded or does it mean that the structure of the text was unfinished?
I suppose the easiest method to trace this all back would be the age of the oldest current al Qur’an available. Does anyone have a cite?
Sorry, I have no idea what you are talking about. The only remarks I ever make about this is that we Muslims use mostly Al Qur’an as transliteration and that this is a transliteration form used all over the world by those who are involved with the studyfields “Islam” or whatever related.
Note that I live now and not in the 18the/beginning 19the century and that I speak of standards used now.
And you may also take notice that the studyfield has remarkably evolved from mostly Christians looking for ways to denigrate and dismiss Islam to serious research done by people of all backgrounds. Who - we may hope - are that well trained and scholared that they don’t let a religious background command their interpretations and conclusions.
If you as non-professional choose to write alkooooraaaaan or quuuuuuraaaaaaaaaan of a’ kran or kr’aan or whatever: As long as you can make it clear what you are talking about, who cares?
But since you claim to be so out on correct information, then you should take notice of the one I gave you.
It was the oral tradition combined with the already written suras. The ordering of the suras as we see now is contributed to caliph Uthman.
As I described, the Uthmanian redaction became prelavent in a rather short period of time, due to the fact that Uthman ordered every different copy to be destroyed.
This redaction however didn’t provide for a uniform reading. Thus it couldn’t end the wildgrow of the different readings, which had its origin in the oral tradition as we have seen.
In order to resolve that problem the Uthmanian redaction was over time provided with diactrical signs and additional letters to standarize the language and secure the text.
The study of the readers, how they transmitted their reading and the efforts to unify the readings is a story on its own.
To be short :
In the first half of the Xthe century AD (IVthe century AH) Ibn Mudjahid in his function as “Imam of the Qur’an readers” in Bagdad, came with the solution of the problem. With support of the authorities he declared seven by tradition transmitted ways of reading as correct. These seven readings went back on seven famous Qur’an readers from the 2the century AH (8the centure AD).
In his work about the seven ways of reading, Ibn Mudjahid suggests that the word harf (letter) must be seen as equal with the word qira’a (reading). In his view the well known saying of the Prophet that Al Qur’an came down in seven ahruf(plurial of harf) means that the seven ways of readings are so to say inspired.
At this day there are in general only two readings that prevail:
The version transmitted by Warsj of the reading of Nafi is used in Afrika with execpiton of Egypt.
The version transmitted by Hafs of the reading of 'Asim is used in Egypt an the rest of the Islamic world.
Although the pronounciation and recitation of those two readings go a bit apart here and there, there can little difference be noticed in the meaning of the text.
Those responsible for the Uthmanian redactions brought missing parts to the written collection.
The structure of the suras is said to be ordered by Muhammed; he said to the secretaries where a certain revelation neede to be inserted in the already existing ones.
The Uthmanian redaction was responsible for an important aspect in the outward look of the written edition:
The revelations are not chronoligically ordered, but put together in more or less long units. That way we get 114 parts, named suras; roughly ordered by lenght. The longest first, the shortest at the end, with at the beginning a short praise of God which is the openingssure: Al Fatiha. The suras themselves were parted in different sections ayaat (plural of aya, sign, mostly translated as “verse”)
In the Islamic tradition the numbers of the suras one can read on top of them aren’t used. They are called by their name. That name stemms from later periods and mostly refers to a word from the beginning of the sura or refers to the subject of the sura. At the top of each sura on can also most of the time find information about if it was part of the revelation in Mecca or in Medina and which sura came down before it.
There is more then one museum that claims to have “the oldest Qur’an”. Yet none of these copies stemms from the first period.
There are old fragments found showing the defective script and examined on their time of appearance.(Which is also a studyfield with a lot of contraversional opinions and conclusions.)
What is examined are fragments of the text, suras and collections of suras. On documents, as ornaments in architecture and occasionally as a writing of an early Muslim on a piece of a wall or rock.
Most of these testemonies suggest a good preserved unification of the contenance of the written texts.
But as in every academic studyfield discussions and differences of opinion and interpretation are present and in my opinion a necessity to be able to go on with the research.
Salaam. A
A concise, informative, reasonably pleasant given the poster’s view of the asker…damn it Aldebaran if you would only do more of this.
Well I would assume that goes without saying. I simply expressed a bit of amazement that the referenced experts were not more recent. Hopefully as ME. publishing picks up, more texts will become available for translation.
shrug. My professional standing has nothing to do with the use of a proper English word. Koran, Alcoran or Qur’an are all acceptable English words for this text. Koran and Alcoran have been for more than 400 years. Had I chosen to write
I would be wrong. Monty and I simply haven’t forgotten your posts on the validity of English words. I would guess you may have personal reservations about Blanchere’s use of Coran.
However, that thread is dead and I’ll end with thanking you for the informative post here.
I have no “reservations” on whatever Blachère has published.
And you can find enough publications by contemporan Arabists/Orientalists and as I said: when it comes to discuss or research Al Qur’an as text, you shall encounter an abundance of references to both of the works I mentioned.
Salaam. A
By the way:
Reading your last remark:
I do hope that you don’t mean that you think the studies of Nöldeke and Blachère are “translations” of other people’s studies?
There are about this and other studiefields on Islam an abundance of contemporan studies and works of people of all nationalities - and certainly of European and US - origin available that are published in Western languages.
Salaam. A