reynolds-the-quran-in-its-historical-context-2

148 Gerd-R. PuinThe orthography of the Standard Text is full of inconsistencies, as if they becamepetrified at a time when an orthographic reform had started but had not yet becomeeffective in the whole Qur'iin. Of course, Muslim scholars like Ibn Abf Dliwiidal-Sijistlini (d. 316/928), al-Dlini (d. 444/l 052), and later Ibn al-Jazari(d. 833/1429) and al-Suyfiti (d. 911/1505), or even modem scholars like Allrnam,were aware of this situation, and they wrote down eclectic observations on the ·Qur 'anic orthography ofthis or that word in this or that verse. Although the intentionofthose old authorities might have been to limit the extent of variant ·(and readings) they were not able to realize the dynamic development of Arabicorthography as a process of accumulation and growing precision in the scripturalrendering. Their theory about the defective writing of words was to see the :phenomenon as a convention of the scribes in order to make the script "shorter" ·- to take away something "superfluous (za 'id)," to write it "defectively I-which tacitly implies that the plene writing according to the rules of ,....L --'--''Arabic were the original "mother of the book I umm al-kitab" (Q 13:39; 43:4) inheaven, on the "preserved tablet /law[! mal:ifiii' (Q 85:22).However, the orthographic variants in a corpus which has treasured up sopre-classical elements enable us to discover many details of their ortlb.o~~rai>hichistory - all the more so if we take the early manuscripts of the Qur'anaccount, because, for lack of a critical edition of the Qur'an, we cannot rightlysure that the Standard Text is really the "rasm 'Uthmanr", i.e. the earliestshape ofthe text.Therefore, the idea of this chapter is not to look back from the orthographyClassical (or modem) Arabic which has become (mostly) explicit or plene, butthe contrary to follow up the steady enrichment of the Arabic script (as enc:owr:ttei·ed.in the earliest manuscripts) by the invention or application of new signs andGenerally and until today there has been no need for a differentiation in therasm between the vocalizations of the a/if at the outset of a word: t_l 'akhun, ~­'ukhtzm, E_;J.-1'ikhwatun. This is the normal or evident case for those whofamiliar with the vocabulary and the grammar of Arabic. Yet the Qur'lin is not ."ordinary" text! Naturally, and in spite of its complicated structure, the text hadbe represented in script on the one hand, but disambiguated on the other, ifwritten shape was - or became in the course of time - misleading.An important instrument for the definition of a vowel's quality was the ·tion ofmatres lectionis, i.e. (mainly) of the vowel letters waw andya ',next toa/if, in order to specify the a/if's phonetic quality. Of course, their use wascommon for the definition of the long vowels