In Search of the Original Koran: The True History of the Revealed Text by Mondher Sfar Page A
Authors: Mondher Sfar
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their content, or in the number of surahs. For one thing, the texts in each corpus are the same from one corpus to another, with small variants. They seem (still according to the descriptions we have of them) to carry a total number of surahs that differs very marginally from the vulgate, depending on whether or not one adopts certain very short surahs, like the Fatiha, or the two final surahs. The only other visible difference, without real importance anyway, is in the order of surahs, which sometimes varies significantly from one corpus to another.
From these observations, we may conclude that the ensemble of the known noncanonical works by ancient authors belong to one and the same generation, and were constituted at a well-determined stage in the evolution of revealed texts: the same one that witnessed the present constitution of both the content and the number of surahs.
There is a paradox here that will not have escaped the reader. The most ancient works in the corpuses of the Korans, like those of Ubayy and Ibn Masud, which were supposed to have been formed independently of the recension realized by the first caliphs AN Bakr and Uthman, all resemble the latter like two drops of water, and they therefore all belong to the same collection. This situation presents us with an alternative: either the definitive collection was realized in the time of the Prophet-but in this case, a Uthmanian recension never existed, or else this collecting took place after the death of the Prophet (in this case it could not have been realized by some companion of the Prophet like Zayd, Uthman, All, Abu Bakr, Ibn Masud, Ubayy), in which case would have resulted from the slow evolution of an oral tradition relying on writings that reproduced the partial compendiums of texts revealed in the Prophet's time. This is the most likely hypothesis, con sidering the structure of the text that we have studied, and the oldest traces of the Koran that are still divergent.
Moreover, the definitive version of the Koran leaves no doubt about the absence of a veritable systematic and voluntary collection that would have taken place under a definite authority. When we observe the division of surahs in the Koran, we quickly see that they did not obey any criterion of composition at all. This can be well perceived in the extreme disparity that exists between the long surahs: fifty-some pages for the longest, "The Heifer," as opposed to one and a half lines for the shortest. In fact, this longest surah is the equivalent in length to the 75 last surahs combined (out of a total of 114 surahs in the Koran). It is clear that, if there had existed even a slight desire for a systematic gathering and definitive shaping of the Koranic text, then the Koran would not today present a disequilibrium so pronounced in so important a facet as that of surahs.
After about a half century, this state of affairs ended up settling, thanks to the collections composed by anonymous scribes, into a model corpus that was made official under the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik or under his son Walid I, that is to say, perhaps in the time of al-Hajjaj's rule.
The manuscript of Samarkand is a composite, containing portions written by different scribes at different dates. It is not complete, since dozens of pages are missing at the beginning and at the end, and some in its middle. It would assuredly merit the deeper study that we are cruelly lacking for ancient manuscripts. It is now located in Tashkent, after long peregrinations that brought it in 1485 to Samarkand, then in 1868 to St. Petersburg, ending up in 1917 in Tashkent. In 1905, Czar Nicholas II had Dr. Pissarev make fifty reproductions of it under the title "Kufic Koran of Samarkand," of which some copies can still be found in Western libraries.
There are some particularities of this manuscript that are of interest to us here.' It has omissions that are due, some of them, to a scribe's negligence; some have been rectified by
From these observations, we may conclude that the ensemble of the known noncanonical works by ancient authors belong to one and the same generation, and were constituted at a well-determined stage in the evolution of revealed texts: the same one that witnessed the present constitution of both the content and the number of surahs.
There is a paradox here that will not have escaped the reader. The most ancient works in the corpuses of the Korans, like those of Ubayy and Ibn Masud, which were supposed to have been formed independently of the recension realized by the first caliphs AN Bakr and Uthman, all resemble the latter like two drops of water, and they therefore all belong to the same collection. This situation presents us with an alternative: either the definitive collection was realized in the time of the Prophet-but in this case, a Uthmanian recension never existed, or else this collecting took place after the death of the Prophet (in this case it could not have been realized by some companion of the Prophet like Zayd, Uthman, All, Abu Bakr, Ibn Masud, Ubayy), in which case would have resulted from the slow evolution of an oral tradition relying on writings that reproduced the partial compendiums of texts revealed in the Prophet's time. This is the most likely hypothesis, con sidering the structure of the text that we have studied, and the oldest traces of the Koran that are still divergent.
Moreover, the definitive version of the Koran leaves no doubt about the absence of a veritable systematic and voluntary collection that would have taken place under a definite authority. When we observe the division of surahs in the Koran, we quickly see that they did not obey any criterion of composition at all. This can be well perceived in the extreme disparity that exists between the long surahs: fifty-some pages for the longest, "The Heifer," as opposed to one and a half lines for the shortest. In fact, this longest surah is the equivalent in length to the 75 last surahs combined (out of a total of 114 surahs in the Koran). It is clear that, if there had existed even a slight desire for a systematic gathering and definitive shaping of the Koranic text, then the Koran would not today present a disequilibrium so pronounced in so important a facet as that of surahs.
After about a half century, this state of affairs ended up settling, thanks to the collections composed by anonymous scribes, into a model corpus that was made official under the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik or under his son Walid I, that is to say, perhaps in the time of al-Hajjaj's rule.
The manuscript of Samarkand is a composite, containing portions written by different scribes at different dates. It is not complete, since dozens of pages are missing at the beginning and at the end, and some in its middle. It would assuredly merit the deeper study that we are cruelly lacking for ancient manuscripts. It is now located in Tashkent, after long peregrinations that brought it in 1485 to Samarkand, then in 1868 to St. Petersburg, ending up in 1917 in Tashkent. In 1905, Czar Nicholas II had Dr. Pissarev make fifty reproductions of it under the title "Kufic Koran of Samarkand," of which some copies can still be found in Western libraries.
There are some particularities of this manuscript that are of interest to us here.' It has omissions that are due, some of them, to a scribe's negligence; some have been rectified by
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