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

RECONSTRUCTING THE QUR’AN
None of the systems of chronological sequencing of Qur’anic chapters and
verses has achieved universal acceptance in contemporary scholarship. Nöldeke’s
sequencing and its refinements have provided a rule of thumb for the approximate
chronological order of the suras. Bell’s hypothesis has established that the final
redaction of the Qur’an was a complex process involving successive revisions of
earlier material, whether oral or already available in rudimentary written form. In
many ways, Western scholarship on the Qur’an reconfirmed the two assertions on
which the traditional Muslim views of the Qur’anic chronology were based. First,
the Qur’an was revealed piecemeal and second, it was collected into book-form
on the basis of both (1) written documents prepared by scribes on Muhammad’s
dictation and (2) Qur’anic passages preserved in the collective memory of his
circle of companions. All methods of chronological analysis, whether those of
traditional Muslim scholarship or modern Western, agree that the order of the
suras in Muhammad’s proclamation was different from the order found in
the present-day Qur’an where, in general, the suras are arranged according to the
principle of decreasing length. Furthermore, they agree that the redaction and
canonical completion was a complex process, one whose study presents a
minefield of historical problems from its inception until the appearance of the
final vocalized text.
The ‘Uthmanic codex of the Qur’an and its assessment
by Wansbrough and Burton
After Muhammad’s death, the Muslim community faced three major tasks with
regard to establishing the Qur’an as canonical scripture: it had to collect the text
from oral and written sources, establish the skeleton of the Arabic consonantal
text, and finalize the fully vocalized text that came to be accepted as the canonical
standard. The traditional view depicting the way in which these tasks were
accomplished covers three centuries and telescopes the history of the text into a
basic scenario. 15 This scenario proceeded on the assumptions that Muhammad
did not leave a complete written text of the Qur’an and that the Qur’an was
preserved primarily in oral form in the memory of a considerable number of
Muhammad’s direct listeners, although also in written form by scribes during his
lifetime. A group of companions, led by a scribe, whom Muhammad himself had
employed in Medina, gathered and arranged the oral and written materials of the
Qur’an in a complete consonantal text some twenty years after Muhammad’s
death. 16 This text, the Qur’anic codex (mushaf), came to be known as the
“Uthmanic” text or codex, because it was completed in the latter years of
the caliphate of ‘Uthman. 17 The final, fully vocalized text of the Qur’an, however,
was only established in the first half of the tenth century, after different ways of
reading including slight variations of vocalization, came to be tolerated and
accepted as standard. 18
Since the ‘Uthmanic text was written in a scriptio defectiva that was merely a
consonantal skeleton (rasm) lacking the diacritical marks which could distinguish
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