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

156 Gerd-R. Puinto be explained as a fact of historical orthography. We have already seen (Cf. :above, no. 14) that the waw in,_ e.g. I), has been an insertion in order to clarify the·.quality of the a! if as a /u! vowel. In the development of the Arabic orthography it ·seems that as little as possible ofthe rasm has been excluded or was substituted byanother letter. This implies, as in the case of\_,;, that the a! if in i~.:;J. was thereeven before the waw was, so that the original concept of the word was in fact~_:;.$.*,with a short final/u!. So far, we cannot prove this orthography in the manuscripts-although we should be aware that there are "dual" forms in the Qur'anlike 4.:;.$- which are possible candidates for the' interpretation of plurals. But suchan investigation has to take the context into account, which cannot be done here.Another example of the use of a "superfluous" alifis the masculine plural ofsome nouns, like(36) i)..:; 10:90 in the Standard Text, instead of_,':.:; in Classical Arabic.Maybe it can be qualified to be a "wrong" analogy to the verbal plural i~, e.g. in9:110. Thus, the orthography of_,':.:; inCA could have been the starting point for theaddition of an a! if, in analogy to the verbal pltiral forms like \~_:;.$.. In a text otherthan the Qur'iin, MulJammad b. ijabib's (d. 245/860) K. al-Mu/:zabbar' 9 even·verbal forms of the singular with a weak third radical are written with a waw plusalifat the end, although Classical Arabic would only allow for a waw, such as:,'-'..A! instead of _,p_ (p. 243)1_,.:.-l:l instead of _,.:.J..:l (p. 210)\_,_jA,! instead of _,_jA,! (p. 197, 369)\_,_;..:; instead of_,_;..:; (p. 200)\ft) instead of ft) (p. 241, 261)\#I instead of #I (p. 498)In this orthography any ending of a long /u:/ has an alif added. Although the orthographicpeculiarities of the manuscript 10 used by the editor lise Lichtenstiidter goback to the third century of the Hijra, 11 the writing of any long /u:/ with a final alif ·seems to be a relatively late orthographical development. It is plausible that thewriting of_,':.:; without an alifis an earlier phase, corresponding to the orthographyof Classical Arabic.However, it remains a matter of speculation so far whether the writing with thealifis related to orthographies like~* or its parallel·~ etc.: If the a/if was writtenoriginally in order to secure any final vowel, this would mean that the nominal9 Mul)ammad b. l;lablb (d. 245/860): K. ai-Mu!zabbar, ed. I. Lichtenstiidter, Hyderabad: Dii'irat ·ai-Ma'iirif 1942 (reprint Beirut: ai-Maktab ai-Tijiir'i li-1-Tibii'a wa-1-Nashr wa-1-Tawzt', no year[ca 1980)).I 0 London, British Museum, 2807.II The editor remarks on p. 512 that the names of "Khiilid, Ibrahim, al-Nu 'man, Malik, al-l;liirith,Sul'yiin and sometimes of$iilib" were written defectively, i.e. without an a/if. This feature is (still?) .common in other manuscripts"ofthe third century. Names which would contain a madda in modem ·writing are written with two alifs, like J.oll instead of joT for Amul (350). Perhaps this is the begin· ·ning of the madda sign in the history of the Arabic script? ·Vowel/etters and ortho-epic writing in the Qur'an 157ending was originally a short lui, not a long one, as the orthography ofArabic and of today might suggest.1 Omission of the wiiw before the article al- in the Standard Textorthography is a simplified method to represent the phonetical features of~language; in the case of Arabic the words generally keep their shape as if theyoccur alone, in isolation. The proper phonetical interpretation is then an addi­"art" which follows other rules. A good example for this is the Arabic article, which is always written in this way, although the ortho-epic rules say thatthe tam has to be assimilated to the following "sun"-letter;while the a/if takes the preceding vowel, this vowel becomes short if it waslong before.the correct pronunciation of, Sfira 17:11 ~ill ~~-' would shorten thelong /u:/ (or /i:l or /a:/) und~r the influence of the following article. So,is an orthographical rule to write a long vowel, but a contradicting rule tothis vowel as a short one. However, there are a few exceptions to the orthorulesin the Standard Text, which can only be explained by the applicationortho-epic rule of shortening a long vowel due to the following article:Jl l ~ (Q 17:11, 23:117, 54:6, 96:18)Jl ~ (Q 42:24) instead of Jl ~instead of Jl ~~in Classical Arabic.is even one exception in 42:34, where the "defective" version~ occurs inwhich could not be explained by an ortho-epic argument.(Q 66:4) instead of Jl ~ in CA.writing of an active participle is in contrast to Jl 1~\S' (Q 44:15) or fo\ I~2:249) where even a final a/if is added - perhaps in analogy to the frequentending of nouns as in I)..:;.nu11.Uau•v." this feature occurs in the final position of suffixes (-huw, -humuw,this lengthening is even enforced if the following word starts with a-huw-, -humuw-, -kumuw-. Although this is expressed by a small additional(or ya ' in similar cases), in the modem editions of the Qur' iin this ortho-epicmo:di1icatwn is not part of the rasm. In this respect the small waw or ya' areand