The Qur'an in its historical context (pdf - Islam and Christian-Muslim ...

THE QUR’AN IN RECENT SCHOLARSHIP
35 Particularly if we assume, as some do, that Mecca was first established before Islam as
a trading outpost of one of the South Arabian kingdoms.
36 Anton Spitaler, “Die Schreibung des Typus im Koran. Ein Beitrag zur Erklärung
der koranische Orthographie,” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 56,
1960, 212–26. Note, however, A. Mingana and A.S. Lewis, Leaves from Three Ancient
Qurâns, possibly Pre- ‘Othmanic, with a list of their variants, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1914, 18 (to Qur’an 9:72, which has the orthography al-Sylwt).
37 W. Diem, “Some glimpses at the rise and early development of the Arabic orthography,”
Orientalia 45, 1976, (251–61), 255.
38 Muhammad Abu l-Faraj al-’Ushsh, “Kitabat ‘arabiyya ghayr manshura fi jabal Usays,”
al-Abhath 17, 1964, 227–316.
39 See J.A. Bellamy, “Two pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions revised: Jabal Ramm and Umm
al-Jimal,” JAOS 108, 1988, 369–78; idem, “A new reading of the Namarah inscription,”
JAOS 105, 1985, 31–48. A sampling of the tens of thousands of Safaitic inscriptions
known can be perused in R. Dussaud and F. Macler, Mission dans les régions
désertiques de la Syrie Moyenne, Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1903.
40 On the orthography, see G.-R. Puin, “Observations on Early Quran Manuscripts;” idem,
“Die korrumpierte Tradition? Ein Gespräch mit Gerd-Rüdiger Puin,” in Burgmer (ed.),
Streit um den Koran, 51–63; idem, “Über die Bedeutung der ältesten Koran-fragmente
aus Sanaa (Jemen) für die Orthographie-geschichte des Korans,” in H.-C. Graf von
Bothmer, K.-H. Ohlig and G.-R. Puin, “Neue Wege der Koranforschung,” Magazin
Forschung 1, 1999, 33–46. I thank Joshua Lingel for calling my attention to the
last-mentioned article and sending me the relevant section of it.
41 Luxenberg (pp. 62–5) proposes, for example, that ‘utull in Q. 68:13 is a misreading
for ‘al.
42 See al- ‘Ushsh, “Kitabat ‘arabiyya ghayr manshura fi jabal Usays,” 302; on the date,
see A. Grohmann, Arabische Paläeographie II, Graz, Wien, Köln: Hermann Böhlaus
Nachf., 1971, 15–7.
43 On the San‘a’ Qur’ans, see Puin, note 36 earlier. For another example, see Mingana and
Lewis, Leaves from Three Ancient Qurâns, 70 (to Q. 41:10), fa-qila la-ha (for fa-qala
la-ha); see also Mingana’s introductory remarks on page xxxv.
44 Or virtually so; Werner Diem points out that the “‘Uthmanic recension” lacks y in Ibrahim
in sura 2; elsewhere, with y: “Untersuchungen zur frühen Geschichte der arabischen
Orthographie, I: Die Schreibung der Vokale,” Orientalia 48, 1979, 207–57, at p. 227.
45 C. Rabin, Ancient West-Arabian, London: Taylor’s Foreign Press, 1951, 40, 111.
46 Alternatively, one might, following Luxenberg, suggest that the final alif maqsura (or y)
of hatta is another instance of using y as mater lectionis for long a, rather than
evidence of imala. The inconsistency in Qur’anic orthography of long a – sometimes
unmarked in rasm, sometimes marked by alif, sometimes marked by alif maqsura,
sometimes perhaps marked as Luxenberg suggests by a “tooth” (y) – suggests that
we still have a long way to go in understanding how the text came to be in the form it
exists today.
47 See J.R. Rickford, “Pidgins and creoles,” in William Bright (ed.), International
Encyclopedia of Linguistics, NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1992. A useful
overview of the processes in Arabic is found in the first chapter of C. Holes, Modern
Arabic, London: Pearson, 1995.
48 For example, the review by F. De Blois of Luxenberg’s Die syro-aramäische Lesart in
the Journal of Qur’anic Studies 5, 2003, 92–7, or that by Simon Hopkins in JSAI 28,
2003, 377–80.
49 See, for example, the brief comment in the Introduction to A. Ambros and
S. Prochazka, Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2004.
50 Actually a Greek-Syriac-Arabic trilingual, from Zebed (southeast of Aleppo, in northern
Syria), dated 512 CE. There is also a Greek-Arabic bilingual from Harran in the Laja’,
49