robert spencer-did muhammad exist__ an inquiry into islams obscure origins-intercollegiate studies institute (2012) (1)

same variant, along with other departures from the canonical text. 18
Hafs, Warsh, and Other Variants
The edition of the Qur'an published in Cairo in 1924 has won wide acceptance as an accurate reflection
of the Uthmanic text. But little known even among Muslims is the existence of an entirely separate and
officially sanctioned manuscript tradition. The Warsh tradition of the Qur'anic text predominates in
western and northwest Africa; the Cairo Qur'an represents the more common Hafs tradition.
Most of the differences between the Hafs and Warsh traditions are ones of orthography, some of which
can be significant. There are also several instances of small but unmistakable divergences in meaning. In
Qur'an 2:125, for example, the Hafs text has Allah commanding the Muslims: “Take the station of
Abraham as a place of prayer.” The Warsh tradition, however, has no imperative, saying merely: “They
have taken the station of Abraham as a place of prayer.” 19 In Qur'an 3:13, Allah recalls of the Battle of
Badr that there was “one army fighting in the way of Allah, and another disbelieving, whom they saw as
twice their number, clearly, with their very eyes.” At least so goes the Hafs text. In the Warsh, the pronoun
is different, so that the text reads “whom you saw” rather than “whom they saw.” 20 In the Hafs Qur'an,
sura 3:146 asks, “And with how many a prophet have there been a number of devoted men who fought?”
The Warsh question is significantly different: “And with how many a prophet have there been a number of
devoted men who were killed?” 21
In recent decades, numerous other Qur'ans have been published that differ markedly in orthography
from the Cairo text. 22 In 1998 the King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Qur'an released an
edition. In this Saudi edition, the Fatiha calls Allah “Master of the Day of Judgment” (1:4). The word
malik means “master” with a long alif (a). With a short alif, however, the word means “king.” “King of
the Day of Judgment” is exactly how some other texts of the Qur'an render this verse, including a text
published in Istanbul in 1993. 23
At least one variant in modern Qur'ans involves a flat contradiction. The Hafs tradition presents Qur'an
3:158 this way: “And if you die, or are slain, lo, it is certainly to Allah that you are gathered.” On the
other hand, a Qur'an published in Tehran in 1978 asserts: “And if you die, or are slain, lo, it is not to
Allah that you are gathered.” 24
None of these divergences in meaning (even the contradiction) is so significant as to affect Islamic
doctrine or practice. But the very existence of discrepancies, like the many hints of a Christian Syriac
substratum, suggests that the Qur'an is the product of many hands and that its text was at one point
considerably more fluid than Islamic orthodoxy acknowledges. In an examination of Islam's origins, this
fluidity becomes a matter of no small significance. Like so much else about the accepted story of how
Islam began, the standard Islamic account of how the Qur'an came about falters in the face of the facts.
Once it becomes clear that the Qur'an was not a single unified text in every time and place in which it
was distributed, the responsible historian has no choice but to look for alternative explanations for the
Qur'an's origins.