Does the Arabic Quran perfectly preserve what Muhammad recited?

Does the Arabic Quran perfectly preserve what Muhammad recited?

According to Islamic tradition, Muhammad recited the Arabic Quran in seven readings known as the qira’at. ¹Muslims believe that as Islam spread throughout Arabia and incorporated new tribes and dialects that the Quran began being recited in new dialects. According to the following hadith:

Ubayy bin Ka’b reported that the Prophet was near the locale of Banu Ghifar when Jibril came to him and said, “Allah has commanded you to recite the Quran to your people in one dialect.” To this he said, “I ask Allah’s pardon and forgiveness. My people are not capable of this.” He then appeared for the second time and said, “Allah has commanded that you should recite the Quran to your people in two dialects.” The Prophet replied, “I seek your pardon and forgiveness from Allah, my people would not be able to do so.” Jibril came for the third time and said, “Allah has commanded you to recited the Quran to your people in three dialects,” and again he responded, “I ask your pardon and forgiveness from Allah. My people would not be able to do this.” He then came to him for the fourth time and stated, “Allah has permitted you to recite the Quran to your people in seven dialects, and in whichever dialect they recite, they will be correct.” (Muslim, Sahih, Kitab as-Salat, hadith no.1789).  One of the most popular printings of the Arabic Quran today, the Cairo edition, preserves one reading known as the Hafs.

Does the Cairo edition of the perfectly preserve what Muhammad recited? Did versions before the Cairo edition perfectly preserve what Muhammad recited?

The answer is “No, not perfectly.”

The common belief that the Qur’an has a single, unambiguous reading is due in part to the bravado of translators, who rarely express doubt about their choices. Yet it is above all due to the terrific success of the standard Egyptian edition of the Qur’an, first published on July 10, 1924 (Dhu l-Hijja 7, 1342) in Cairo, an edition now widely seen as the official text of the Qur’an… Minor adjustments were subsequently made to this text in following editions, one published later in 1924 and another in 1936. The text released in 1936 became known as the Faruq edition in honor of the Egyptian king, Faruq (r. 1936–52). Yet the influence of the Cairo text soon spread well beyond Egypt. It has been adopted almost universally by both Sunni and Shi‘i Muslims, and by critical scholars as well, who have long since given up Gustav Flugel’s 1834 edition. Writing in 1938, Otto Pretzl noted with amazement that in his day for the first time a de facto canonical text had emerged.

Yet the Egyptian project was never intended to be text-critical, at least as this term is commonly understood. The scholars who worked on that project did not seek to reconstruct the ancient form of the Qur’an, but rather to preserve one of the canonical qira’at “readings” (here meant in the specialized sense it has in Islamic tradition), that of Hafs (d. 180/796) ‘an ‘Asim (d. 127/745). But these qira’at are part of the history of the text, not its starting point…

When the scholars in Cairo decided to fix a standard text according to Hafs ‘an ‘Asim, they still had to decide which reports of it to trust. Their project, then, involved comprehensive research of the classical qira’at works. In fact, they conducted this research with great thoroughness and attention to detail, according to the observations of several western scholars. Gotthelf Bergstrasser, for example, noted that in only a small number of cases is their reading contradicted by earlier sources on Hafs ‘an ‘Asim. However, the Cairo text is often at odds with manuscript evidence (Gabriel Said Reynolds, “Introduction,” in The Qurʾān in its Historical Context, ed. Gabriel S. Reynolds [London, Routledge, 2008], pp.2-3).

This isn’t to say that what Muhammad recited cannot be known or hasn’t been preserved—that’s another question. Rather, it is to say that what Muhammad recited has been preserved in Arabic Quran manuscripts. These manuscripts have a textual history.

Careless Transmission of the Quran

There has also been careless transmission of the Quran; in fact, the circumstances leading to the Cairo edition of the Arabic Quran were errors in printed Quranic texts:

the Egyptian government was motivated to begin the project that would lead to the Cairo Qur’an edition due to the variations (or “errors,” as an appendix to the Cairo edition describes them) found in the Qur’anic texts that they had been importing for state schools. In response, the government destroyed a large number of such texts by sinking them in the Nile River and issued its own text. The Cairo project thus followed in the spirit of the caliph ‘Uthman, and the governor al-Hajjaj b. Yusuf (d. 95/714), who are reported to have destroyed competing versions and distributed their own text of the Qur’an in the first Islamic century (Gabriel Said Reynolds, “Introduction,” in The Qurʾān in its Historical Context, ed. Gabriel S. Reynolds [London, Routledge, 2008], p.3).

Understanding this is important because many Muslims dismiss critical editions of the Bible as evidence of the Bible’s corruption (e.g. the Nestle-Aland edition of the New Testament). However manuscript variants are not evidence of the Bible’s corruption unless Muslims are ready to admit that imperfect manuscript copies of the Arabic Quran prove its corruption.

Talking point with Muslims

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