The result of these labours is in our hands; as to how they were conducted we have no trustworthy information, tradition being here too much under the influence of dogmatic presuppositions. The critical methods of a modern scientific commission will not be expected of an age when the highest literary education for an Arab consisted in ability to read and write. It now appears highly probable that this second redaction took this simple form: Zaid read off from the codex which he had previously written, and his associates, simultaneously or successively, wrote one copy each to his dictation. These three manuscripts will therefore be those which the caliph, according to trustworthy tradition, sent in the first instance as standard copies to Damascus, Basra and Kufa to the warriors of the provinces of which these were the capitals, while he retained one at Medina. Be that as it may, it is impossible now to distinguish in the present form of the book what belongs to the first redaction from what is due to the second.
In the arrangement of the separate sections, a classification according to contents was impracticable because of the variety of subjects often dealt with in one sūra. A chronological arrangement was out of the question, because the chronology of the older pieces must have been imperfectly known, and because in some cases passages of different dates had been joined together. Indeed, systematic principles of this kind were altogether disregarded at that period. The pieces were accordingly arranged in indiscriminate order, the only rule observed being to place the long sūras first and the shorter towards the end, and even that was far from strictly adhered to. The two magic formulae, sūras cxiii., cxiv. owe their position at the end of the collection to their peculiar contents, which differ from all the other sūras; they are protecting spells for the faithful. Similarly it is by reason of its contents that sūra i. stands at the beginning: not only because it is in praise of Allah, as Psalm i. is in praise of the righteous man, but because it gives classical expression to important articles of the faith. These are the only special traces of design. The combination of pieces of different origin may proceed partly from the possessors of the codices from which Zaid compiled his first complete copy, partly from Zaid himself. The individual sūras are separated simply by the superscription: “In the name of God, the compassionate Compassioner,” which is wanting only in the ninth. The additional headings found in our texts (the name of the sūras, the number of verses, &c.) were not in the original codices, and form no integral part of the Koran.
It is said that Othmān directed Zaid and his associates, in cases of disagreement, to follow the Ḳoreish dialect; but, though well attested, this account can scarcely be correct. The extremely primitive writing of those days was quite incapable of rendering such minute differences as can have existed between the pronunciation of Mecca and that of Medina.
Othmān’s Koran was not complete. Some passages are evidently fragmentary; and a few detached pieces are still extant which were originally parts of the Koran, although they have been omitted by Zaid. Amongst these are The Koran not complete. some which there is no reason to suppose Mahomet desired to suppress. Zaid may easily have overlooked a few stray fragments, but that he purposely omitted anything which he believed to belong to the Koran is very unlikely. It has been conjectured that in deference to his superiors he kept out of the book the names of Mahomet’s enemies, if they or their families came afterwards to be respected. But it must be remembered that it was never Mahomet’s practice to refer explicitly to contemporary persons and affairs in the Koran. Only a single friend, his adopted son Zaid (xxxiii. 37), and a single enemy, his uncle Abū Lahab (cxi.)—and these for very special reasons—are mentioned by name; and the name of the latter has been left in the Koran with a fearful curse annexed to it, although his son had embraced Islam before the death of Mahomet, and his descendants belonged to the noblest families. So, on the other hand, there is no single verse or clause which can be plausibly made out to be an interpolation by Zaid at the instance of Abū Bekr, Omar, or Othmān. Slight clerical errors there may have been, but the Koran of Othmān contains none but genuine elements—though sometimes in very strange order. All efforts of European scholars to prove the existence of later interpolations in the Koran have failed.
Of the four exemplars of Othmān’s Koran, one was kept in Medina, and one was sent to each of the three metropolitan cities, Kufa, Baṣra, and Damascus. It can still be pretty clearly shown in detail that these four codices deviated from one another in points of orthography, in the insertion or omission of a wa (“and”) and such-like minutiae; but these variations nowhere affect the sense. All later manuscripts are derived from these four originals.
At the same time, the other forms of the Koran did not at once become extinct. In particular we have some information about the codex of Ubay ibn Ka’b. If the list which gives the order of its sūras is correct, it must have Other Editions. contained substantially the same materials as our text; in that case Ubay ibn Ka’b must have used the original collection of Zaid. The same is true of the codex of Ibn Mas’ūd, of which we have also a catalogue. It appears that the principle of putting the longer sūras before the shorter was more consistently carried out by him than by Zaid. He omits i. and the magical formulae of cxiii., cxiv. Ubay, on the other hand, had embodied two additional short prayers, which we may regard as Mahomet’s. One can easily understand that differences of opinion may have existed as to whether and how far formularies of this kind belonged to the Koran. Some of the divergent readings of both these texts have been preserved as well as a considerable number of other ancient variants. Most of them are decidedly inferior to the received readings, but some are quite as good, and a few deserve preference.
The only man who appears to have seriously opposed the general introduction of Othmān’s text is Ibn Mas‘ūd. He was one of the oldest disciples of the Prophet, and had often rendered him personal service; but he was a man of contracted Ibn Mas‘ūd. views, although he is one of the pillars of Moslem theology. His opposition had no effect. Now when we consider that at that time there were many Moslems who had heard the Koran from the mouth of the Prophet, that other measures of the imbecile Othmān met with the most vehement resistance on the part of the bigoted champions of the faith, that these were still further incited against him by some of his ambitious old comrades until at last they murdered him, and finally that in the civil wars after his death the several parties were glad of any pretext for branding their opponents as infidels;—when we consider all this, we must regard it as a strong testimony in favour of Othmān’s Koran that no party found fault with his conduct in this matter, or repudiated the text formed by Zaid, who was one of the most devoted adherents of Othmān and his family, and that even among the Shiites criticism of the caliph’s action is only met with as a rare exception.
But this redaction is not the close of the textual history of the Koran. The ancient Arabic alphabet was very imperfect; it not only wanted marks for the short and in part even for the long vowels, but it often expressed several consonants by the same sign, Later History of the Text. e.g. one and the same character could mean B, T, Th at the beginning and N and J (I) in the middle of words. Hence there were many words which could be read in very different ways. This variety of possible readings was at first very great, and many readers seem to have actually made it their object to discover pronunciations which were new, provided they were at all appropriate to the ambiguous text. There was also a dialectic licence in grammatical forms, which had not as yet been greatly restricted. An effort was made by many to establish a more refined pronunciation for the Koran than was usual in common life or in secular literature. The various schools of “readers” differed very widely from one another; although for the most part there was no important divergence as to the sense of words. A few of them gradually rose to special authority, and the rest disappeared. Seven readers are generally reckoned chief authorities, but for practical purposes this number was continually reduced in process of time; so that at present only two “reading-styles” are in actual use,—the common style of Ḥafṣ, and that of Nāfi’; which prevails in Africa to the west of Egypt. There is, however, a very comprehensive massoretic literature in which a number of other styles are indicated. The invention of vowel-signs of diacritic points to distinguish similarly formed consonants, and of other orthographic signs, soon put a stop to arbitrary conjectures on the part of the readers. Many zealots objected to the introduction of these innovations in the sacred text, but theological consistency had to yield to practical necessity. In accurate codices, indeed, all such additions, as well as the titles of the sūra, &c., are written in coloured ink, while the black characters profess to represent exactly the original of Othmān. But there is probably no copy quite faithful in this respect. Moreover, the right recitation of the Koran is an art which even people of Arab tongue can only learn with great difficulty. In addition to the nuances of pronunciation already alluded to, there is a semi-musical modulation. In these matters also the various schools differ.
In European libraries, besides innumerable modern manuscripts of the Koran, there are also codices, or fragments, of high antiquity, some of them probably dating from the 1st century of the Flight. For the restoration of the text, however, Manuscripts. the works of ancient scholars on its readings and modes of writing are more important than the manuscripts; which, however elegantly they may be written and ornamented, proceed from irresponsible copyists. The original, written by Othmān himself, has indeed been exhibited in various parts of the Mahommedan world. The library of the India Office contains one such manuscript, bearing the subscription: “Written by ‘Othmān the son of ‘Affān.” These, of course, are barefaced forgeries, although of very ancient date; so are those which profess to be from the hand of ‘Alī, one of which is preserved in the same library. In recent times the Koran has been often printed and lithographed, both in the East and the West. In Mahommedan countries lithography alone is employed.
Shortly after Mahomet’s death certain individuals applied themselves to the exposition of the Koran. Much of it was obscure from the beginning, other sections were unintelligible apart from a knowledge of the circumstances of their origin. Commentators. Unfortunately, those who took possession of this field were not very honourable. Ibn ‘Abbās, a cousin of Mahomet, and the chief source of the traditional exegesis of the Koran, has, on theological and other grounds, given currency to a number of falsehoods; and at least some of his pupils have emulated his example. These earliest expositions dealt more with the sense and connexion of whole verses than with the separate words. Afterwards, as the knowledge of the old language declined, and the study of philology arose, more attention began to be paid to the explanation of vocables. A good many fragments of this older theological and philological exegesis have survived from the first two centuries of the Flight, although we have no complete commentary of this period. The great commentary of Ṭabarī, A.D. 839-923, of which for the last few years we have possessed an Oriental edition in 30 parts (Cairo A.H. 1321 = A.D. 1903), is very full when it comes to speak of canonical law, as well as in its accounts of the occasions of the several revelations; for, as in his great historical work, he faithfully records a large number of traditions with the channels by which they have come down to us (genealogical trees, isnād). In other respects the hopes based upon this commentary have not been fulfilled.