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

152 Gerd-R. PuinVowel letters and ortho-epic writing in the Qur'an 153taJuwz•uhumwhich in tum is likely to contain the waw as a mater /ectionis, so that an original;. jt:; * taJ uz•uhum has to be assumed, although this could not be documentedfar. But we may take the historical sequence fromin the Standard Textfor granted, especially if we take into account the well-documented sequence of(14 a) \;(~) guJ in ms. G, e.g. 57:21, 29;\; (~) giJ in ms. A (Q 4:36) and H (Q 40:3), cf. below ad (90);(14 b) I.J>(i)) guw•J in mss. ACDGF, e.g. 13:6, and(14 c) ' QUW throughout in the Standard TextJlThe three stages a, b, and c show the development of the orthography: in a period ·when the a/if had become mainly associated with the/a/ sound, the addition of thewaw was felt to define more precisely the vocalization of the .a/if with a /u/ sound.In the next stage, however, the a/if was felt to be irritating; it was considered to bea scribal error and taken out of the rasm. As a proof for the oldest concept of analifs value in (13b) and (14a) we may adduce a word from the scriptio inferior inthe I:IijazT palimpsest DAM 6 01-27.1,(15) oJJ..r'\;; (Q 15:64)which has to be read definitely as tuJmariina; see Figure 6.1, center. As the contextofthe passage does not allow for a different reading, i.e. an active voice [)Jj.i5, wecan be sure that the scribe was aware to write the passive voice 1iJ~G tu) mariinain this way! However, the Standard Text has [)J~ 9 which would imply a changein the orthographical concept.1.2 The additional waw at the end of a wordnasa'Ju (Q 6:83)du\a'Ju (Q 13:14)andandrr ... ....\_;:r..;.ii~~(Q 11:87),(Q 40:50).This double orthography proves that the process of reform has not yet taken posses­,: si.on of the whole text. The disambiguation by the regular application of the vowel. letters waw and ya' as matres lectionis certainly would have led to a more homog-. orthography. However, before this homogeneity was achieved a far more· effective device had been found, which did not necessitate a revision of the whole:•. rasm any more: the words in question could remain as they were at a certain moment,·: as if petrified, but the new vocalization systems of red dots (or the later system of. ··· oblique alifs,ya's and waws) could be laid over any previous orthographyorder to maintain (or achieve or pretend) the 'phonetic' identity of the words.·Although we cannot prove so far that the word 'irnru 'un belongs to this;r:cate.gmy of an inserted mater lectionis waw, we notice that1.2.1 Plene writing of the short vowel luiIf the last syllable of a word ends on a short lui, this vocalization is expressed inthe Fu' ad Mu~lJaf in two different ways. As for the writing of nouns we have:(16) 't:;.:;(17) ')Wr(18) ~l.k$.nabaJ u (Q 9:70)malaJ u (Q 7:60)