paul@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (12/10/90)
Donald Blaise writes.. > In article <1990Dec6.014559.6623@nntp-server.caltech.edu> bes@tybalt.caltech.edu writes: > >goer@midway.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) writes: > >>Anyway, I have to admit to being a cynic in the sense that the Muslim > >>story on God -> Muhammed -> Followers -> Quran transmission seems just > >>too perfect to be believed. > > > >I think you would agree that there can be no historical documentation > >on the God --> Muhammad link in the chain. > > > >The Muhammad --> Quran is another matter. There is ample > >historical documentation about the development of the Quran. > > Behnam Sadeghi has provided a thoughtful reply [see his posting]. > Additional detail along this line of criticism can be found in... > > Bell, Richard, 1876- > [Bell's] Introduction to the Qur'an > Edinburgh: 1970, 1963, 1958, c1953 > L of Congress: BP130.B4 > Dewey Decimal: 297.12 B413 > The reference that I gave to _The Collection of the Qur'an_ in Torah Histories and Qur'an Histories echoes Behnam's information. Richard Bell's 2 volume translation of the Qur'an is also very interesting, as he notes which aya were written on the back of others and other issues in the complex chronology of each surah! Interestingly, in Muhammad Asad's introduction (p. ix) to his _The Message of THE QUR'AN_ he notes: "This work is based on the recension of Hafs ibn Sulayman al-Asadi, as it appears in the so-called 'Royal Egyptian' edition of the Qur'an, first published in Cairo in 1337 H. and regarded by Arab scholars as the most exact of all existing editions." 1337 H. corresponds to 1959 AD. I am aware of two "recensions" - the "Cairo" and the "Istanbul". Both only differ in the numberings of the surah/aya, and even then the numbering difference is miniscule. Bell's numbering, in his translation, follows the numbering of the German scholar Noeldecke, and is quite different in the aya numbering. Noeldecke tried to number according to text content.
paul@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (12/15/90)
zama@midway.uchicago.edu (iftikhar uz zaman) writes ! In article <1990Dec12.022249.20354@nntp-server.caltech.edu> you write: ! >While looking through the first 750 entries of the 1,434 listings ! >about the Qur'an in the California Library system on-line catalog, I ! >encountered this entry: ! > ! >634. Jeffery, Arthur. ! Materials for the history of the text of the Qur'an : the old codices : ! the Kitab al-masahif of Ibn Abi Dawud, together with a collection of the ! variant readings from the codices of Ibn Ma'sud, Ubai, 'Ali, Ibn... New ! York : AMS Press, 1975. ! UCB Law Lib BP131 .M37 ! > ! >These look to be codices that occurred very soon after the death of ! >the Prophet (PBUH). We don't have this in our library. Has anyone any ! >information about it? Thank you! ! ! We certainly have the Jeffery book in our library--actually it is ! pretty well-known among (us) "Orientalists." Is it the book itself ! you are interested in, or the variant reading of Ibn Mas`ud etc? ! These variant reading are to be found in many detailed tafsirs. One ! which I know of for sure is Bayan al-Quran of Ashraf Ali Thanawi--at the ! end of every sura he gives a list of all the verses which have variant ! readings associated with it, along with the variants themselves. ! But information on variant readings (usually referred to under the heading ! "qira'at") can be found in just about any tafsir which is detailed (eg ! goes beyond ten volumes or so...) ! ! Iftikhar