Genesis Of A Holy Book

After Uthman:

First, a brief recap.  Zayd ibn Thabit had been designated the sole custodian of the various “Recitations”.  According the “sahih” Hadith, he was therefore the singular compiler of the fabled “Uthman Koran”.  The available material with which he had to work was haphazardly scattered.  And whatever material was and wasn’t included was entirely up to him.  What he opted to include vs. discard was at his own discretion…which, as we’ve seen, did not always comport with the OTHER sources MoM had designated as the go-to custodians.  Some wanted certain parts redacted (the decision not to include stoning of adulterers and prescriptions for adult-breast-feeding, for example).  Others wanted certain parts embellished (the decision to include the notably militant 9th Surah, which came from only one person).

So THEN what?  It’s not like there were printing presses.  So the newly-minted “Uthman” edition could not be duplicated quickly and easily.  The caliph had scribes at his disposal.  So it makes sense that he would have had Zayd convene them…and promptly get to work.

So is that what occurred?  Perhaps.  But don’t be so sure.  As the story goes, Zayd entrusted his “master copy” of the “mushaf” to Hafsah bint Umar, one of MoM’s surviving wives (and daughter of the late caliph, Umar) for safe keeping.  She would not be the manuscript’s custodian for long, though.  For she died soon thereafter.

We read in Abu Dawood’s “Kitab al-Masahif” that, after Hafsah’s death, the decisive manuscript (insofar as we suppose it ever actually existed) came into the possession of Marwan ibn al-Hakam…via a man named Abdullah ibn Omar (who did who-knows-what with it while it was in his possession).  But EVEN THAT manuscript is said to have been lost or destroyed by Marwan immediately thereafter.  (Thanks, Marwan.)  The implication here is unavoidable: Zayd’s original manuscript (the fabled “Uthman Koran”) was irretrievably lost.

There is no reason to protest this unhappy outcome…in spite of legends about Ali ibn Abi Talib (MoM’s cousin and son-in-law; as well as the caliph following Uthman) taking a copy of the “Uthman Koran” with him to Kufa shortly after Marwan’s copy went missing.  That sequence of events is likely apocryphal, confabulated post hoc to get the account to comport with the desired outcome.  In other words, it is a “just-so story”.  At best, it helps explain why copies came to be produced in Kufic script.  Yet…recall that the primary figure in Kufa was Ibn Masoud: the man who’s version had been REJECTED by the powers that be.

In any case, it’s all a moot point; as even THAT manuscript would no longer exist.  So any supposition put forth about what its contents may have been is just another in a long series of flights of fancy.

It is worth reiterating: The manuscript said to have been the “mushaf” of Hafsah (the sole “dependable” copy of Zayd’s official compilation under Uthman) was lost or destroyed by Marwan immediately after Hafsah’s funeral.  Strangely, Providence was not attending to the preservation of what was supposed to be the most important message ever delivered to mankind.

So what, then, of the possibility of OTHER copies that may have been made from that fabled manuscript?  As virtually all the earliest codices–whether whole or fragmentary–cannot be dated to earlier than about two centuries after MoM’s death (see my essay on “The Syriac Origins Of Koranic Text”), it would be highly improbable that there were other copies…least of all copies that survived in a pristine form.  For surely, had such copies existed, protecting them would have been of the highest priority.

So what, then?  Are we expected to believe that the Rashidun and Umayyad regimes managed to conquer vast swaths of the known world (including the Egypt, the Maghreb, Anatolia, and all of Persia) within just a few generations; yet they couldn’t even manage to preserve what was supposed to be the singular object that served as the raison d’etre of their entire cause?

That makes no sense.

Another incriminating piece of evidence: In the last decade of the 7th century (about a half-century after Zayd’s project), the Umayyad caliph, Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan averred that it was in the month of Ramadan that “I collected the Koran.”  In other words, he announced that it was DURING HIS REIGN that an official version of the Koran was finally compiled: six decades after MoM’s death…and almost four decades after UTHMAN’S death.  This single statement contradicts accounts of a fabled “Uthman Koran”…at least insofar as that would be the final version.  According to this announcement, recensions were still being done by the end of the 7th century.

There is no other conclusion than that no “Uthman Koran” survived; and variations continued to proliferate AFTER Uthman commissioned a singular acceptable version.  So nobody can possibly know what it may have contained.  Hypotheticals about Ali retaining a copy of Zayd’s manuscript notwithstanding, this inconvenient fact cannot be avoided.  But WHY would Muslims have allowed those early versions to be lost?  We can only speculate.

My own theory is: Because they were composed IN SYRIAC; and so could not be retained by those who insisted the liturgical language needed to be Classical Arabic (based on the fact that THAT was god’s native tongue).  The “Recitations” would needed to have been ORIGINALLY delivered in Classical Arabic…for which the ACTUAL textual record would have posed a problem.

In any case, between Zayd’s death (at the end of Uthman’s reign) and the first available copies of what is now called “al-Qur’an”, many generations of transmitters came and went.  This entails a very long process of transmission–a process of which we have no records.  Considering the fact that the language (and script) was undergoing a significant metamorphosis in the intervening time, we can’t help but conclude that what are now the earliest available codices bear little resemblance to anything that may have existed in the 7th century.

Even more problematic: It is not until THREE CENTURIES after MoM’s death that a Koran resembling the PRESENT (“Cairo”) Koran finally emerged.  As I discuss in my essays on the Syriac origins of the Koran, the process would have begun in one language (Syriac) and eventually ended up in another language (the newly-coined Arabic).  Suffice to say, three centuries is a formidable span of time.

Indeed, it was a tumultuous epoch in which any changes that may have been made are un-accounted for.  Pretending to be certain of exactly what transpired during that period is–to put it mildly–disingenuous.

The extensive process of compiling–and collating–the disparate “Recitations” involved a slew of omissions and embellishments at key junctures, in accordance with exigencies at different times and places.  We should bear in mind that there were no stenographers in the Middle East during the Dark Ages.  People said all sorts of outlandish things–much of which was sincerely believed, some of which was deliberately contrived.  It was all mixed together during a haphazard process in which each bit of dogmatic detritus propagated according to various memetic factors (catchy-ness, sticky-ness, overall appeal, etc.)

When it came to oral traditions, some people simply made stuff up.  Other people remembered certain things in certain idiosyncratic ways, as the occasion warranted.  This is the sort of thing that went on for GENERATIONS after MoM’s death…before anyone decided to finally got around to writing it down in the familiar language: Classical Arabic.

Getting to the current “Cairo” Koran (114 chapters) from either Abdullah ibn Masoud’s “Recitations” (111 chapters) or Ubay ibn Ka’b’s “Recitations” (116 chapters) is a very long way…even if we conjecture that Zayd ibn Thabit’s version (the fabled Uthman Koran) had the anticipated number of chapters.

Such disputation involves a centuries-long oral tradition punctuated by decisive modifications–each of which was mandated by the powers-that-be.  That is to say: The process leading FROM the earliest “Recitations” (by Ibn Ka’ab out of Damascus; Ibn Masoud out of Kufa, Abu Musa al-Ashari out of Basra, and/or Zayd ibn Thabit out of Medina) all the way to the most recent “draft” followed a long, meandering path…with myriad twists and turns along the way.

There’s a problem here, of course.  For the Koran itself proclaims that it will be guarded against corruption (that is: perfectly preserved)–as in 15:9.  So much for that.

As we have seen, Uthman had all copies of un-approved versions of the “Recitations” burned.  But he would not be the last person to pull this stunt.