Sana'a manuscripts
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The Sana'a manuscripts—found in Yemen in 1972—represent the oldest extant version of the Quran, dated to the latter half of the 7th century. In it are textual variations from the standard Quran that is presently read throughout the world.
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[edit] Discovery and assessment
In 1972 a large collection of many manuscripts was found in an ancient mosque in the Yemen. They are now lodged in the House of Manuscripts in San‘a’. Carbon-14 tests date them to 645-690 AD.[1]
The restoration project for the manuscript has been organized and overseen by a specialist in Arabic calligraphy and Koranic paleography,Gerd R. Puin, based at Saarland University, in Saarbrücken, Germany. Puin has extensively examined the parchment fragments found in this collection. It reveals unconventional verse orderings, minor textual variations, and rare styles of orthography and artistic embellishment. Some of the manuscripts are rare examples of those written in early Hijazi Arabic script. Although these pieces are from the earliest Qur'an known to exist, they are also palimpsests -- versions written over even earlier, scraped-off versions.[2]
A substantial amount of material has been retrieved from the site, as the work continues. From 1983 to 1996, around 15,000 of 40,000 pages were restored, including 12,000 parchment fragments some dating to the 8th century.[3]
In 1999, Toby Lester, the executive editor of the website of The Atlantic Monthly reported on Puin's discoveries: "Some of the parchment pages in the Yemeni hoard seemed to date back to the seventh and eighth centuries A.D., or Islam's first two centuries -- they were fragments, in other words, of perhaps the oldest Korans in existence. What's more, some of these fragments revealed small but intriguing aberrations from the standard Koranic text. Such aberrations, though not surprising to textual historians, are troublingly at odds with the orthodox Muslim belief that the Koran as it has reached us today is quite simply the perfect, timeless, and unchanging Word of God." [2]
More than 15,000 sheets of the Yemeni Qur'ans have been flattened, cleaned, treated, sorted, and assembled. They await further examination in Yemen's House of Manuscripts. Yet that is something Islamic authorities seem unwilling to allow. Puin suggests, "They want to keep this thing low-profile, as we do, although for different reasons." [2]
Puin, and his colleague Graf von Bothmer, an Islamic historian, have published short essays on what they discovered. They continue to feel that when the Yemeni authorities realize the implications of the find, they will refuse further access. Von Bothmer, however, in 1997 shot 35,000 microfilm pictures of the fragments, and has brought the pictures back to Germany. The texts will soon be scrutinized and the findings published freely - a prospect that pleases Puin. "So many Muslims have this belief that everything between the two covers of the Qur'an is Allah's unaltered word. They like to quote the textual work that shows that the Bible has a history and did not fall straight out of the sky, but until now the Qur'an has been out of this discussion. The only way to break through this wall is to prove that the Qur'an has a history too. The Sana'a fragments will help us accomplish this." [2]
[edit] The 1999 Atlantic Monthly Article, Puin's comments and conclusions
In a 1999 Atlantic Monthly article, Gerd Puin is quoted as saying that:[4] [4]
My idea is that the Koran is a kind of cocktail of texts that were not all understood even at the time of Muhammad. Many of them may even be a hundred years older than Islam itself. Even within the Islamic traditions there is a huge body of contradictory information, including a significant Christian substrate; one can derive a whole Islamic anti-history from them if one wants. The Qur’an claims for itself that it is ‘mubeen,’ or clear, but if you look at it, you will notice that every fifth sentence or so simply doesn’t make sense. Many Muslims will tell you otherwise, of course, but the fact is that a fifth of the Qur’anic text is just incomprehensible. This is what has caused the traditional anxiety regarding translation. If the Qur’an is not comprehensible, if it can’t even be understood in Arabic, then it’s not translatable into any language. That is why Muslims are afraid. Since the Qur’an claims repeatedly to be clear but is not—there is an obvious and serious contradiction. Something else must be going on.
However after the publication of the Atlantic Monthly, Puin wrote a letter[5] in which he said:
| “ | The important thing, thank God, is that these Yemeni Qur'anic fragments do not differ from those found in museums and libraries elsewhere, with the exception of details that do not touch the Qur'an itself, but are rather differences in the way words are spelled. This phenomenon is well-known, even in the Qur'an published in Cairo in which is written:
Ibrhim next to Ibrhm |
” |
In his book titled 'The History of The Qur’ānic Text from Revelation to Compilation: A Comparative Study with the Old and New Testaments'[6][7], professor Muhammed Mustafa al-Azami concludes from Puin's letter that
| “ | "This deflates the entire controversy, dusting away the webs of intrigue that were spun around Puin's discoveries and making them a topic unworthy of further speculation." | ” |
Aisha Geissinger, a notable writer on Islam, notes in her article titled 'Orientalists plot against the Qur'an under the guise of academic study and archive preservation'[8]
| “ | The fact is that the existence of minor differences in wording and in the ordering of the surahs in the earliest masahif (manuscripts) is no surprise to Muslims familiar with classical Islamic scholarship of the Qur'an. Such variations occurred for several reasons. One factor is the dialectical differences then existing in different regions of Arabia. Another is that some of the Sahaba kiram (Companions) recorded such masahif for their own personal use. As these persons had either memorised the Qur'an in its entirety or large portions of it, such masahif were written merely as an aid to memory. Therefore, notes in the margins such as the wording of du'as (supplications) occurred, and the order of surahs varied. Books written by classical Muslim scholars, such as al-Suyuti's Itqan, go into great detail about such issues. | ” |
[edit] References
- ^ Carole Hillenbrand, The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 1, p.330
- ^ a b c d Lester, Toby (January 1999). "What Is The Koran". The Atlantic Monthly.
- ^ Sana’a manuscripts: uncovering a treasure of words. UNESCO (2007). Retrieved on 2007-07-09.
- ^ a b Lester, Toby (1999) "What is the Koran?" Atlantic Monthly
- ^ al-Azami 2003, p3-13
- ^ al-Azami 2003, p3-13
- ^ The History of The Qur’ānic Text from Revelation to Compilation: A Comparative Study with the Old and New Testaments
- ^ Orientalists plot against the Qur'an under the guise of academic study and archive preservation - By Aisha Geissinger
