The Manuscripts

Nearly all of the early quranic manuscripts available on the Corpus Coranicum website either match the places where ibn al-Ǧazarī reports the ابرهم spelling perfectly, or almost perfectly.Footnote ¹⁰

Kairo, al-Maktabah al-Markaziyyah li-l-Maḫṭūṭāt al-Islāmiyyah: Großer Korankodex

The Großer Korankodex corresponds closely to the distribution as described for Hišām. There are six disagreements, two of which are almost certainly later additions. The six points of disagreement are:

For Q. 2:132 we are almost certainly dealing with a later addition of the denticle for the ī, as the ductus is much thinner than other instances of the denticle, see Fig. 1. Q. 2:125, the ductus is similar to the word, but the connection of the denticle to the م is different than in other parts of the manuscript, compare Figs. 2 and 3.

Fig. 1.

Q. 2:132

Fig. 2.

Q. 2:127

Fig. 3.

Q. 3:97

This manuscript attests 68 instances of the 69 attestations in the Quran (the only missing one being Q. 3:33). If we tabulate these results, taking Q. 2:125, and Q. 2:132, as spelling ابرهم , we get the following overview, the columns designate the spelling in the manuscript, and the rows designate the reading of the name as either ʾIbrāhām or ʾIbrāhīm in Hišām's tradition. The numbers between brackets designate the numbers if Sūrat al-Baqarah is removed from the data.

Table 2.

Distribution in the Großer Korankodex.

The statistical procedure known as Fisher's exact test is able to calculate the odds of this situation occurring by chance. The resulting p value is the probability that the correspondence would be due to chance, a p value of 0.05 is equivalent to a chance of one in twenty (0.05 = 1/20) that it would be due to chance. Calculating the p value, we get a value so significant, that chances of this happening by chance are virtually zero (a chance smaller than one in 52 trillion): p = 0.000000000000019

Even if we take Q. 2:125 and Q. 2:132 as spelling ابرهيم , the p value is still virtually zero (p = 0.0000000000016).

If we remove Sūrat al-Baqarah from the calculation, as this is of course the position where we also find ابرهم in the Cairo edition, we still get a highly significant result. (p = 0.00000000009).

This extremely high level of correlation between where Hišām reads ʾIbrāhām or ʾIbrāhīm versus the spelling ابرهم and ابرهيم shows clearly that this manuscript is related to a manuscript that ibn al-Ǧazarī describes.

Tübingen, Universitätsbibliothek: Ma VI 165

Ma VI 165 has four attestations of ابرهم (Q. 19:41, 46, 58; Q. 29:31) and nine attestations of ابرهيم (Q. 21:51, 60, 62, 69; Q. 22:26, 43, 78; Q. 26:69; Q. 29:16), these match perfectly with Hišām. Interestingly, we can see in Q. 29:31 was originally spelled ابرهيم and the denticle has been purposely removed to represent ابرهم , corresponding to Hišām's ʾIbrāhām (see Fig. 4). The correspondence is highly significant correlation (p = 0.0014). Assuming that Q. 29:31 represents ابرهيم , the correlation is still significant (p = 0.014).

Fig. 4.

ابرهيم with the mistaken ى partially removed in Q. 29:31.

Berlin, Staatsbibliothek: Kodex Samarkand (Facsimile)

The Samarkand Codex attests quite a few instances of ابرهـ [ـيـ]ـم . Surprisingly, the last four attestations of ʾIbrāhīm in Sūrat al-Baqarah are written ابرهيم , disagreeing both with the Cairo edition and the tradition of Hišām. Despite this, the correlation is highly significant both including Sūrat al-Baqarah (p = 0.0000083) and excluding it (p = 0.001).

Table 3.

Distribution in the Kodex Samarkand.

Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus

Dutton observed that there was a relationship between the reading tradition of Hišām and the places where the different spellings show up.Footnote ¹¹ Déroche comments on the presence of the spelling ابرهم in three places, but his edition misses seven other places where ابرهم instead of ابرهيم is written.Footnote ¹² Five of these agree with Hišām's reading (Figs. 5–9).

Fig. 5.

Q. 6:161 اىرهم

Fig. 6.

Q. 9:114 (first) اىرهم

Fig. 7.

Q. 9:144 (second) اىرهم

Fig. 8.

Q. 14:35 اىرهم

Fig. 9.

Q. 42:13 اىرهم

There are two places where the CPP quite clearly has ابرهم without the yāʾ where we would expect it to be present if it followed Hišām's reading tradition.

The first one is Q. 43:26 (Fig. 10), the other is Q. 3:33 (Fig. 11). Q. 3:33, however, clearly is the correction of a later hand and close examination of the high resolution photos shows that the original form of this word, before correction, was spelled ابرهيم . Dutton is therefore correct in saying that Arabe 328(a) aligns perfectly with the reading tradition of Hišām, but the broader manuscript of the CPP shows at least one deviation (Q. 43:26 is part of Arabe 328(b) not examined by Dutton).Footnote ¹³

Fig. 10.

Q. 43:26 اىرهم

Fig. 11.

Q.3:33 اىرهم with erased ابرهيم below.

There are two more instances of ابرهم /ابرهيم in the St. Petersburg portion of the CPP (Marcel 18). Q. 57:26 based on the reading Hišām would be expected to be spelled ابرهم and Q. 26:69 would be expected to be spelled ابرهيم . Both of these are read by Déroche as ابرهيم . As I do not have access to photos of this manuscript, I have decided to not include these two forms in the calculation below. The resulting correlation is highly significant (p = 0.0004).

Table 4.

Distribution in the CPP.

Istanbul, Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi: M1 (= Saray Medina 1a)

Saray Medina 1a agrees in quite a few attestations of ابرهم , although in some environments the now regular spelling is attested. While the number of corresponding ابرهم spellings is a minority, the relation is still highly significant (p = 0.00028).

Table 5.

Distribution in Saray Medina 1a.

Berlin, Staatsbibliothek: Wetzstein II 1913 + Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France: Arabe 6087

Wetzstein II 1913 and Arabe 6087 are correctly identified by the Corpus Coranicum project to be part of the same codex. This fairly complete early codex can also be said to agree with the reading tradition of Hišām. However, it is clear that the text has been retouched in many places. Surprisingly, in Sūrat al-Baqarah, it seems that all instances of ابرهم have received an added yāʾ. While in some cases, it is quite clear that these are later additions (e.g. Fig. 12), in other cases this is not as obvious (Fig. 13) and the writing is almost indistinguishable from places where we would expect the spelling ابرهيم (Fig. 14). If we take the most conservative approach and assume that all instances of ابرهيم are original and not retouched, the correlation is not significant if we include Sūrat al-Baqarah (p = 0.0951); however, if we reasonably exclude Sūrat al-Baqarah from the calculation, the correlation is significant (p = 0.0098).

Fig. 12.

ابرهم with ى clearly added in Q. 2:258 (second)

Fig. 13.

ابرهيم with possibly an added ى in Q. 2:135

Fig. 14.

Example of genuine ابرهيم spelling in Q. 6:75.

Table 6.

Distribution in Wetzstein II 1913.

Interpreting the data

In the previous sections, it has been shown that in a variety of old quranic manuscripts, the correlation of the spelling ابرهم to the pronunciation ʾIbrāhām in the Hišām reading tradition is highly significant. The observation by ibn al-Ǧazarī that such quranic manuscripts exist is confirmed by the evidence available to us. Surprisingly, however, there appear to be no early Quran manuscripts that display the pattern as it is found in the modern Cairo edition today. It therefore seems that such quranic manuscripts are in fact later than those which have the distribution that is similar to Hišām; so much later, in fact, that they seem to have fallen almost completely outside of the scope of the types of manuscripts that the Corpus Coranicum project aims to collect on their website.

Of course, the extremely high correlation with the reading tradition of Hišām requires an explanation. I see three possible options:

1. 1. All these manuscripts represent the reading tradition of Hišām, and the rasm of the manuscripts was adapted to represent this reading tradition.

2. 2. The variable pronunciation of ʾIbrāhīm and ʾIbrāhām in specific ayahs in the Quran used to be much more widespread in other reading traditions, and these manuscripts represent this.

3. 3. Hišām based his reading of ʾIbrāhīm and ʾIbrāhām on the spelling that was present in a codex available to him. This codex must have been very close to the quranic manuscripts discussed here.

We will discuss these three possibilities separately.

Option 1: All these manuscripts represent the Hišām tradition

One reason why the early quranic manuscripts examined so far seem to agree rather strikingly with ibn ʿĀmir's (d. 118/736) reading tradition as transmitted by Hišām (d. 245/859) could simply be that these Qurans were written to represent this reading tradition. If this is the case, it would mean that the rasm of the text was purposely altered to accommodate this reading tradition. In light of the highly defective writing of early quranic manuscripts, this is unlikely. If the rasm was freely adapted to accommodate certain reading traditions, we might expect many more subtle changes to the rasm to accommodate such variants, which do not seem to occur.

To test this hypothesis, the most obvious approach is to examine variant readings of the quranic text in these manuscripts and see if they correspond to the reading tradition of ibn ʿĀmir, and if possible more specifically to that of his transmitter Hišām. This latter option is unlikely, as several of the early quranic manuscripts examined here certainly predate Hišām's lifetime (d. 245/859). Such an examination is not always easy, as reading traditions only seldom disagree in terms of the consonantal skeleton, and consonantal dots often are not used.

DuttonFootnote ²¹ suggests that the CPP must indeed be a quranic manuscript related to the ibn ʿĀmir reading tradition of the late Umayyad period based on thirteen consonantal variants of which six are associated exclusively with ibn ʿĀmir. DuttonFootnote ²² also observed that the spelling of ʾIbrāhīm/ʾIbrāhām in both the CPP and Or. 2165 accord with the reading tradition of Hišām from ibn ʿĀmir and he tentatively concludes that this may also be a piece of evidence that the CPP is representing this reading tradition.Footnote ²³

Dutton bases the identification of these manuscripts as part of the Syrian tradition on the comments in the rasm literature such as al-Dānī’s Muqniʿ, which describes the differences in the consonantal skeleton of the Uthmanic text as they are found in different regional codices—primarily citing variants of the four provinces of Syria, Medina, Basrah and Kufah. These variants have been studied in detail by Michael Cook,Footnote ²⁴ who shows that these make up a manuscript stemma. The overview of the regional variants in Cook's article allows us to identify the regional variants that are present in a manuscript, and with that assign it a region.

From the CPP and Or. 2165, both Syrian manuscripts which both have the haphazard distribution of the spelling of ʾIbrāhīm that correlates with the tradition of ibn ʿĀmir, one might indeed conclude—as Dutton tentatively does—that this feature reflects Syrian regionality. However, this would only be true if all other quranic manuscripts that clearly correlate the spelling of ʾIbrāhīm also contained the Syrian rasm variants. This, however, is certainly not the case. While Wetzstein II 1913, like the CPP and Or. 2165, is a codex of the Syrian tradition, the other manuscripts examined clearly belong to different traditions.

Using Michael Cook's overview of the different consonantal differences, we can establish to which codex traditions these manuscripts belong.Footnote ²⁵ For an overview of the features I refer the reader to the Appendix. We can sum up here the likely provenance of the manuscripts discussed here. All four of Cook's manuscript types are present:Footnote ²⁶

We must therefore conclude that in the quranic manuscripts where the spelling ابرهيم /ابرهم correlates with the reading of Hišām, this is not because the quranic manuscripts are intended to represent Hišām's transmission of the ibn ʿĀmir reading tradition.

Option 2: The two variant readings of ابرهـ (ـيـ )ـم used to be more widespread

It is of course possible that originally all the reading traditions and not just that of Hišām pronounced the name as ʾIbrāhām where it is spelled ابرهم . In this case, despite the manuscripts examined not representing ibn ʿĀmir's tradition, they could still be intended to represent such readings. While this is not impossible, there is absolutely no positive evidence for this.

Moreover, in this scenario, we would still be unable to explain the source of disagreement between the tradition of Hišām and of ibn Ḏakwān, who both read ʾIbrāhām, but disagree on the positions where this is done. This is different from option 3 where, as we will see, the source of disagreement between Hišām and ibn Ḏakwān is easily explained.

Option 3: Hišām based his readings on the spelling of the codex

As the first option is not possible, and the second option is unlikely, the third option remains: a reversal of the scenario. Hišām based his reading on the spelling in his codex.

It seems likely that in the establishment and canonisation of the tradition of Hišām from ibn ʿĀmir, it was decided upon that every time the quranic manuscript had the spelling ابرهم it would be read ʾIbrāhām, whereas when it had the spelling ابرهيم it would be read ʾIbrāhīm. This tradition was then later decoupled from the spelling as present in the rasm of the manuscript it was based on, and came to take on a random-looking distribution when overlaid over the Cairo Edition rasm.

From this principle we can not only understand the Hišām tradition, but also the tradition of the other transmitter of ibn ʿĀmir – ibn Ḏakwān. We know that there are (at least) two manuscript traditions when it comes to the distribution of the ابرهيم and ابرهم spellings. The first tradition can be called the Baqarah-only tradition. Belonging to this manuscript tradition, we most notably have the Cairo Edition of the Quran. The other tradition can be called the Hishamoid tradition, which has ابرهم not only in Sūrat al-Baqarah, but also in a variety of other places throughout the Quran.

If we assume that the original principle of the tradition of ibn ʿĀmir was simply to read ʾIbrāhīm wherever ابرهيم was written, and ʾIbrāhām wherever ابرهم was written, we can understand the differences between the two transmitters of ibn ʿĀmir. The tradition of Hišām based itself on a quranic manuscript similar to, for example, the CPP and the Großer Korankodex whereas the tradition of ibn Ḏakwān based itself on a quranic manuscript similar to the Cairo Edition or the ʿAbdarraḥmān b. Zīdān Kufic Quran.

This does not mean that we can therefore date the innovation of the Baqarah-only type quranic manuscript to the period of ibn Ḏakwān's lifetime (d. 242/856). If ʾIbrāhām was read whenever ابرهم was written was indeed the rule, it is possible that the reading only started agreeing with the Baqarah-only type in later transmitters of his tradition. The disagreement amongst the transmitters on where ibn Ḏakwān read ʾIbrāhām is a strong indication that a cause for disagreement only developed after his lifetime.Footnote ²⁷

The relation between the rasm and the reading traditions

I have argued in the previous section that the variation of the ʾIbrāhīm and ʾIbrāhām pronunciations in the ibn ʿĀmir reading tradition should be considered a reading based on the rasm of codices which had these different spellings. This finding has important implications on how we understand the relation of the rasm to the reading traditions.

The important studies by DuttonFootnote ²⁸ form a fundamental basis for looking at early quranic manuscripts in light of their reading traditions. In these two articles, Dutton clearly shows that both the CPP and Or. 2165 display clear peculiarities of their consonantal skeleton that are also present in the descriptions of the reading tradition of ibn ʿĀmir.

Dutton suggests that because of this, the CPP and Or. 2165 were written according to the reading of ibn ʿĀmir.Footnote ²⁹ In other words, he believes that the manuscripts of this type could only have existed in a period that the reading tradition of ibn ʿĀmir had taken shape. This is an important fact because DuttonFootnote ³⁰ dates the manuscript on the assumption that it cannot have existed before the time that ibn ʿĀmir's reading tradition had taken its final shape “[i]f […] Ibn ʿĀmir's reading was not really fixed until the time of those later considered as the main rāwīs from him, i.e. Hishām (d. 245/859) and Ibn Dhakwān (d. 242/856), then this could simply be a late (i.e. Abbasid) example of a parchment, vertical-format, Ḥijāzī manuscript[…]”.Footnote ³¹

This, however, presupposes that the rasm of this codex was changed from the Uthmanic archetype in order to accommodate the reading tradition. And while this is possible, this is not the only solution. The other possibility is that when the copies of the Uthmanic codex were sent out to the provincial capitals, these variations were present in these initial copies. Due to a predominant ideology that an authoritative reading has to agree with the Uthmanic rasm,Footnote ³² the local readers would have adjusted their reading tradition to the local codices available to them.Footnote ³³ As a result, the reading tradition of ibn ʿĀmir, as an authoritative Damascene reader, would naturally have a reading that agreed with the deviations as present in the Syrian codex and its copies. Had this not been the case, he would not have been eligible to be part of ibn Muǧāhid's canonisation.Footnote ³⁴

The fact that such a scenario is likely, is already suggested by Cook's seminal workFootnote ³⁵ on the regional codices, in which he convincingly shows that the rasm variations described by al-Dānī in his Muqniʿ fī Rasm Maṣāḥif al-ʾAmṣār Footnote ³⁶ can be formulated and analysed through the methodologies of stemmatics, yielding convincing stemmata of the regional codices. Such a result would not at all be expected if the rasm variations found in the regional codices have their origin in oral traditions that predate these codices.

While these facts are highly suggestive in the direction of a written exemplar informing the reading traditions (and in that sense are, indeed, actual reading traditions), so far no direct evidence had been presented that proves that the reading traditions were directly influenced by the rasm that said readers were exposed to. This paper shows that the transmitters of ibn ʿĀmir based their reading of the name ʾIbrāhīm on the rasm as it was present in the codex available to them. If the rasm had هم it would be read as ʾIbrāhām, whereas if the rasm had هىم , it would be read as the commonly accepted form ʾIbrāhīm. The fact that this orthographic alternation is not a regional variant, but an orthographic idiosyncrasy attested in all regional codices proves that it cannot be taken as an example where the rasm has been changed to accommodate the reading tradition. Instead the reading tradition must have been changed to accommodate the rasm.

Implications

The data presented in this paper shows that the reading traditions of the Quran cannot be seen as the product of an exclusively oral transmission of the of the quranic text that developed independently from the standardised Uthmanic rasm. The canonisation of the reading traditions along the criterion that a tradition has to agree with the Uthmanic rasm at the time of ibn Muǧāhid did not function as a ‘filter’, in the sense that only reading traditions that by chance happened to agree with the rasm were qualified to be considered for canonisation. Instead, the presence of the official rasm warped and changed the reading traditions over time, so that they would have come closer and closer to the text their readers were using. The reading traditions were informed by the rasm and evolved from there. And the rasm of the regional codices was certainly not subordinate to the reading traditions as Dutton suggests.Footnote ³⁷ In this case, the rasm was not changed to reflect the reading traditions. The reading traditions were changed to accommodate the rasm.

We should not conclude from this that the reading traditions are completely devoid of an oral component that predates the Uthmanic canonical text. There are many cases where the canonical readers converge upon a reading, while the bare orthography of the Uthmanic rasm is highly ambiguous, and a potentially more obvious reading is left in favour of an idiosyncratic, but precise, word. This is not what we would expect if there had not been an oral tradition associated with the text.

One such an example is found in Q. 36:49 ىحصموں ‘they are disputing’ which by all but one of the seven readers is read as an anomalous assimilated stem VIII form.Footnote ³⁸ The different readings of this word as presented by ibn MuǧāhidFootnote ³⁹ are as follows:

• yaḫaṣṣimūna  Ibn KathīrFootnote ⁴⁰

• yaḫaṣṣimūna  ʾAbū ʿAmr

• yaḫiṣṣimūna   ʿĀṣim, al-kisāʾī, ibn ʿĀmir

• yaḫṣṣimūna   Nāfiʿ

• yaḫṣimūna   Ḥamzah

While there are four different forms of this verb in the seven traditions, all but the one transmitted by Ḥamzah, have an anomalous verb form that does not otherwise occur in the Quran, and does not conform to the regular word formation of Classical Arabic.Footnote ⁴¹ Had the readers based themselves completely on the rasm without any accompanying oral tradition, it seems unlikely that we would encounter such broad agreement on the use of this unusual verb form. From the rasm, the reading yaxṣimūna ‘they are disputing’ is clearly more straightforward, but nevertheless is only found with one of the seven canonical readers.Footnote ⁴²

Moreover, if it is indeed true that the Uthmanic standard text did not have any consonantal dots at all,Footnote ⁴³ it seems highly doubtful that a sensible reading—and something that approaches a consensus on most of the words in the Quran among the different readers—could be arrived at based purely on the consonantal skeleton, without knowledge of what the text is supposed to say.

In the light of this, it seems that we must consider the reading traditions neither the result of a purely oral tradition unrestrained by the written text that belongs to it, nor a purely written text completely devoid of a priori knowledge what the holy text is supposed to have said. We may therefore consider the reading traditions or rather semi-oral traditions, not altogether different from the traditional Tiberian recitation of the Hebrew Bible, which likewise is certainly dependent on the consonantal skeleton, but nevertheless preserves features in the oral tradition that would not be recoverable if the only thing that survived of the text was the consonantal text.Footnote ⁴⁴

It is hoped that this investigation encourages further research into the variant readings and their relationship to not only the orthography of the Cairo Edition, but also of the earlier quranic manuscripts, whose internal variation and interrelation have yet to be examined in much more detail.