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240 Shawkat M Toorawafrom a shared root (e.g. qinwan and aqna). Of the Qur'an's 1,504 roots then,33 percent are basic hapax roots and 17 percent are strict hapax roots. Evenuse al-Maliji's figures, the figure is 25 percent. Greenspahn has shown that 1,50(289 absolute, 1,179 non-absolute, and 33 ambiguous) hapaxes out of a ·Biblical vocabulary of between 5,000 and 8,000 words is a far lower ,..,.,,,..m+lnnthan in other material, where the percentage is usually upwards of 3 5 percentFigure 7.i). The figures' for the Qur'iin are evidently lower.These figures put into perspective the issues of "foreigu" words andtion, the two principal contexts in which modem Western scholars haveinvoked hapaxes. Emendation, in particular, has major implications for m"~""·""··and vice versa. 83 In the opening lines of the article "Textual Criticism ofQur' an," James Bellamy writes: 84Anyone who writes on textual criticism should begin with definitions. Soit be said from the outset that textual criticism has nothing to do with thecism of music, art or literature. In simplest terms, textual criticism is thecorrection of errors.Many of the errors Bellamy (and others) proposes to correct are hapaxeswhen "corrected," often cease to be hapaxes. In Bellamy's aforementionedhe cites inter alia the following erstwhile hapaxes: batiab (which he changes toersatz batab ), abb (> lubb ), sijill (> musjil, musajjil), bitt a (> khitat), ~ur·-hunnn(> jazzi-hinna), qaswara (> fantara, pronounced bamtz7ra),jibt (> jinna), raqfm(> ntqz7d), many of which are conjectural emendations, not supported byvariants in the tradition. In other papers and articles, he has dealt with suchas tjamad and 'lsa. There are, to be sure, instances where hapaxes appear toan underlying problem. But careful attention to where hapaxes are used and how ·:they are rhetorically deployed can potentially mitigate the urge to "correct." · ·For Christoph Luxenberg, rikza, the final word in Maryam (19) 98, is one such·crux. He takes rikza to be a mistaken transcription from, Syriac, in the light of which·.he proposes an emendation to dhikra. 85 With the "original reading ... restored,"Luxenburg proposes that the reading "Dost thou perceive of them a single one orhear of them any mention?" is superior to "Dost thou perceive of them a single one· •or hear of them a [single] whisper?" But given that this requires us to jettison astrict hapax, 86 the question deserves special attention. It is true that dhikrnicely echo the opening of the Sura (dhiknt rabmati rabbika), but there are reasonS ·to prefer rikza, such as the paronomasia between rikza in the final verse and .Zakariyya in the opening verse possibly intimating a play on Zakariyya (and later •.83 I adumbrate some of the issues discussed below in S.M. Toorawa, "Hapless Hapaxes and Luckless .Rhymes: The Qur'an as Literature," Religion & Literature, 41, 2, 2009,221-27.84 J.A. Bellamy, "Textual criticism of the Qur'iin," EQ, 5:237.85 C. Luxenberg, The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran, Berlin: Verlag Hans Schiler, 2007, 81-82.86 Luxenberg, Syro-Aramaic Reading, 82.Hapaxes in the Qur'an 241being asked to hold their tongue, 87 and the symmet:J:y- the rhetoricalthat is .- of having the Silra open with a strict hapax, Kaj-Ha '-Ya '­and close with a strict hapax, rikza. This example illustrates the need toattention to rhetorical reasons for the presence of a particular hapax.SAMPLE PROPORTIONS OF HAPAX LEGOMENAPlautus 33,871Peking Chinese · 13,248As You Like It 3,609"A Polybe"(Seneca) 5,688"A He\via"(Seneca) 6,755Julius Caesar 2,919Captain's Daughter(Pushkin) 28,591NewspaperEnglish 43,990Gospel ofMark (Greek) 11,229"Aucassin etNicolette"(Old French) 9,870t:i/lusionComique (PierreCorneille) 16,586Paul's Epistles(Greek) 32,303English telephoneconversations 80,000Basic Frenchconversations 312,135Sample SizeOccurrences Vocabulary(words used)8,4373,3321,2311,4301,8569654,7836,0011,3451,0731,9062,6482,2407,9957.1 Hapax distribution in various corpora.Hapax LegomenaPercent ofNumb. Vocab. Occur.5,4392,0467298221,0465342,3842,9766344838451,1408192,70064.361.459.257.556.455.349.849.647.145.044.343.136.633.816.015.420.214.515.4N. Robinson, Discovering the Qur'an: A Con'temporary Approach to a Veiled Text, 2nd ed.,Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003, 147-48.18.38.36.85.64.95.13.51.00.9