The material in the present volume is offered to students of Islam as a contribution to the problem of the history of the Qur'an text. For many years the present writer has been collecting materials for a critical text of the Qur'an, and in 1926 agreed with the late Prof. BERGSTRÄSSER to collaborate in the much bigger task of preparing an Archive of materials from which it might be some day possible to write the history of the development of the Qur'anic text. It is hoped that it will be possible to publish shortly, as one step in that plan, a text of the Qur'an with apparatus criticus giving the writer's collection of textual variants gathered from the Commentaries, Lexica, Qira'at books. and such sources. Meanwhile Dr. PRETZL, BERGSTRÄSSER's successor at Munich, has begun to organize the Archive for the Korankomission set up by the Bavarian Academy at BERGSTRÄSSER's initiation, and has already assembled a goodly collection of photographs of early Kufic Codices and early unpublished qira'at works.

The need of the moment is the publication of material that will bring the subject into discussion amongst Islamic scholars. This is a field of Islamic study which offers almost unbroken ground, and presents numerous problems for investigation. One of them is the question of the Old Codices which represented the pre-'Uthmanic stage of the Qur'an text. It was the merest chance that led the present writer to unearth the MS of the Kitab al-Masahif of Ibn Abi Dawud which now lies in the Zahirya Library at Damascus, and which is apparently the sole surviving example of the little group of Masahif books which studied the state of the Qur'an text prior to its canonization in the standard text of 'Uthman.

The text of this work of Ibn Abi Dawud is presented here as accurately as it can be settled on the basis of this unique MS.

The MS is an early one finished on the 17th of Jumada ai-Akhira of the year 682 A.H. - 1283 A.D., and with every juz' are given the isnads of the authorities through whom the text had descended.

The original from which this text was copied had apparently lost some leaves and suffered some disarrangement. The only serious case of such disarrangement where part of the material of one chapter is found inserted into and breaking the connection of another Chapter, has been tacitly corrected in this edition. The MS also contains a number of explanatory interpolations which in this edition have been enclosed in square brackets [], round brackets ()being used for small particles etc which had dropped out through the negligence of the scribe. The Zahiriya MS is imperfect at the beginning, but probably only one or two leaves are missing. In its present state it consists of 100 folios 17x1O cm, the text varying from 21 to 23 lines to the page.

The MS as a whole is well written though sparingly pointed, that the difficulties of establishing the text are mostly such as arise from the nature of the subject matter. Occasionally a later hand has inserted vowels or made a correction on the margin, not always happily. The greatest difficulty has been with the isnads quoted by the author, and although all available controls were applied to them, there may still be some that will not stand the scrutiny of isnad critics. The assistance of Muslim savants in this matter was not very helpful for we could not overcome the principle that every isnad that led to a statement at variance with orthodoxy was ipso facto condemned.

Much of the material given by Ibn Abd Dawud regarding the history of the tort of the Qur'an, though extremely unorthodox, yet agrees so closely with conclusions one had reached from quite other directions that one feels confident in making use of it, however weak orthodoxy may consider its isnads to be. It seemed therefore, important to expose the text at once to the criticism of scholarship. The most significant material, naturally, is that concerning the Old Codices, and for this reason the text itself has been prefaced by a collection of the textual variants that have survived to us from the various non - Uthmanic Codices, whether

primary or secondary. In the cases of Ibn Mas'ud and 'Ubai b. K'ab, whom readings an important from another point of view, all the readings bare been given, but in the others as a rule only those variants which assume a consonantal text differing in some respect from the standard text of 'Uthman. The standard text is quoted from the Egyptian standard edition of 1342, though I have not slavishly followed its orthography, intelligibility being more important than consistency. The verses are quoted according to the Kufan verse numbering given in the 1342 edition followed by the number or the verse in FLÜGEL'S edition; where FLÜGEL'S numbering agree's with the Kufan numbering only one verse number is given.

These variants from the Old Codices have been read over with several Muslim savants in the East, in the hope of testing them by the criticism of those whose acquaintance with the text is more intimate than any Western scholar can hope to attain. Invariably these savants took the position that the 'Uthmanic just is perfect and unchangable, and the variants must therefore be regarded as conscious or unconscious corruptions of this text. Some contested the authenticity of the variants, arguing that they were nothing more than deliberate tampering with the text by later heretics who sought to gain currency for their heretical readings by attributing them to these ancient authorities. Others, though they were but few, were willing to admit the variants, but explained them by the theory that in the early days many of the Companions made for themselves copies of the Qur'an in which they inserted for their own private edification many explanatory additions, synonyms for words that they did not fully understand, and such like annotations. The text they recited, however, was the original text as it was delivered by the Prophet and afterwards written out officially by 'Uthman. Thus the variants that have come down from them are only those little peculiarities that were remembered as having been in their private copies, and so have no value whatever for the study of the text.

Modern scholarship naturally cannot accept so easy a way out of the difficulty, for it is quite clear that the text which 'Uthman

canonized was only one out of many rival texts, and we needs must investigate what went before the canonical text. On the one hand it seems likely that in canonizing the Madinan text-tradition, Uthman was choosing the text that had all the chances of being nearest the original. On the other hand there is grave suspicion that 'Uthman may have seriously edited the text that he canonized. It was therefore worth attempting an assembling of all the material that has survived from the rival texts. It is unfortunate that not sufficient has survived to enable us to get a real picture of the text of anyone of them. Such material as is available at the moment, however, is here offered to the criticism of scholars. Some of the variants seem linguistically impossible, and indeed are occasionally noted as such in the sources which quote them. Some give one tile impression of being the inventions of later philologers who fathered their inventions on these early authorities. The great majority, however, merit consideration as genuine survivals from the pre - Uthmanic stage of the text, though only after they have passed the most searching criticism of modern scholarship by scholars approaching them from different points of view, shall we be free to - them in the attempted reconstruction of the history of the text.

If sufficient interest is created among students of Islam to enable systematic search to be made, it is possible that we may yet recover some of the other Masahif books or copies of some of the early qira'at works of ad-Dini, al-Mahdawi, al-Ahwazi or Ibn 'Atiya.

My special thanks are due to two Oriental savants, Musa Jarullah Rostovdani of Kazan and Shaikh Sayyid Nawwar of Cairo, both of whom have read with me all the shudhdh qira'at from the Old Codices and taught me many things that a Christian can hardly learn for himself. Thanks also are due to Dr OTTO PRETZL who photographed for me the Zahiriya MS and to Amin al-Khaniji for his personal care over the printing of the Arabic text in Cairo. Finally there is due an expression of thanks to the Trustees of the de Goeje Foundation whose generosity made possible the publication of the volume in its present form.

Cairo, 1936
ARTHUR JEFFERY

Critical investigation of the text of the Qur'an is a study which is still in its infancy. Within the fold Of Islam it seems never to have attracted much attention. The growth of the Qurra' is evidence that there was some interest in the question in the early days of Islam¹ but with the fixing of the text ne varietur by the Wazirs Ibn Muqla and Ibn 'Isa in 322 A.H. at the insistence and with the help of the savant Ibn Mujahid (324)², and the examples made of Ibn Miqsam (362) and the unfortunate Ibn Shanabudh (328) who persisted in making use of the old readings after this fixing of a text³, such interest as there was seems to have come to an end. Variant readings within the limits of the Seven systems⁴ that were admitted as canonical by the decision of Ibn Mujahid naturally continued to be studied by a limited group of scholars, and the readings of the other uncanonical Readers occasionally received attention, more particularly

¹ Fihrist 36 mentions a number of works on Ikhtilaf al-Masahif, such as those by Ibn 'Amir (118), al.Farra (207), Khalaf b. Hisham (229), al-Mada'inf (231), al-Warraq and one Muhammad b. 'Abd ar-Rahman. Then was also a work with a similar title by Abu Hatim (248) cf. Fihrist 59:, a work derived from al-Kisai (189) entitled Kitab Ikhtilaf Masahif Ahl al-Madina was Ahl al-Kufa wa Ahl al-Basra 'an al-Kisai and a Kitab al-Masahif wa l'-Higra by Muhammad b. Isa al-Isfahini (253). Ibn Miqsam (362) is also said to have composed a Kitab al-Masahif (Fihrist 33), but the three famous Masahif books were those of Ibn Abu Dawud (316), Ibn al-Anbari (327) and Ibn Ashta al-Isfahani (360), of Itqan.

²Vide Massignon's al-Hallaj, I, 241 and Bergsträsser, Geschichte des Qorantexts, 152 ff. Some account of the man will be found in al-Khatib, Tarikh Baghdad, V, 144-148, Yaqut Irshad, II, 116-119, and Ibn al-Jazari, Tabaqat, I, 139-142, No.663.

³ On Ibn Miqsam see Yaqut Irshad, VI, 499; Ibn al-Jazari, Tabaqat, No.2945; Miskawaihi Tajarib (ed. Amedroz), I, 285; and on Ibn Shanabudh see Ibn Khallikan (tr. de Slane), III, 16-18; Yaqut, Irshad, VI, 302-304 and Ibn al-Jazari, Tabaqat, No. 2707.

⁴ The Seven were Nafi of Madina (169), Ibn Kathir of Mecca (120), Ibn 'Amir of Damascus (118), Abu Amr of Basra (154), Asim of Kufa (128), Hamza of Kufa (158) and al-Kisa'l of Kufa (189).

the systems of the Ten¹ and the Fourteen², who were nearest to canonical position, though at times others also were included³. No definite attempt, however, was made to construct any type of critical text of the Qur'an⁴, and for the most part textual studies were confined to questions of orthography (rasm) and pause (waqf). Thus the older variants, eves though they were known to be represented in some of the older codices, for the most part survived only in the works of two classes of savants, firstly certain exegetes who were interested in the theological implications of such variants, and secondly the philologers who quoted them as grammatical or lexical examples.

It is thus that to the Qur'an Commentaries of as Zamakakhshari (538)⁵, of Abu 'Hayyan of Andalus (745)⁶ and the more recent Yemenite writer ash-Shawkani (1250) ⁷ who seems to have used some good old sources no longer available to Western scholars, we find recorded a goodly number of old variants representing a different type of consonantal text from that officially known as the 'Uthmanic text, and in-the philological works of such writers as al-Ukbari (616) the blind philologer

¹To the Seven were added Abu Ja'far of Madina (130), Khalaf of Kufa (229), and Ya'qub of Basra (205) to make the Ten. Islamic scholarship is still divided over the question as to whether the seven only or all ten are canonical.

²To the Ten were added Ibn Muhaisin of Mecca (123), al-Yazdi of Basra (202), al-Hasan of Basra (110) and al-A'mash of Kufa (148)to make the Fourteen.

³ We hear of books composed on the Eight Readers, the Eleven Readers, the Thirteen Readers, and sometimes these included Readers not in the usual lists as given above. Thus the Raudat al-Huffaz of al-Mu'addil includes the readings of Humaid b. Qais' Ibn as-Samaifa' and Talha b. Musarrif (see Pretzl "Die Wissenschaft der Koranlesung" in Islamica, VI, 43). Also the Cairo MS of the Suq al-Aras of Abu Ma'shar at-Tabari contains numerous Mukhtarat beyond the canonical authorities and the lost Kamil of al-Hadhali, though it is a work of the Ten, is said to have contained readings of forty extra Readers (Nasr I, 90).

⁴ A possible exception is the case of Abu Musa al-Qazini to whom my attention has been drawn by Prof. Massignon, and who seems to have prepared a text in which varied coloured dots represented alternative readings in the text. Some samples of this process are actually found in some Kufic Codices of the Third and Fourth Centuries, but so far as I know never consistently carried out.

⁵ The Kashsaf, ed Nassau Lees, Calcutta, 1856.

⁶Al-Bahr al-Muhit, 8 vols, Cairo, 1328 A.H. printed at the charges of the Sultan of Morocco, and unfortunately in the latter volumes printed in great haste and consequent inaccuracy.

⁷ Fath al-Qadir, 5 vols., Cairo 1349. In his MS the author used the text of Warsh 'an Nah, i.e. the Madinan text tradition, but in the printing of this edition the publishers have stupidly changed it in every case to the Kufan text tradition of Hafs 'an 'Asim which is the one current in Egypt at the present day.

of Baghdad ¹, Ibn Khalawaih (370)² the savant of the Hamdanid Court of Saif ad-Dawia at Aleppo, and the even more famous Ibn Jinni (392)³, a not inconsiderable amount of such material has been preserved, which in some cases, indeed, proves to be one source from which it came to the Exegetes.

To apply this material to a critical investigation of the text of the Qur'an seems never to have occupied the attention of any Muslim writer. In the Itqan⁴, as-Suyuti's great compendium of Muslim Qur'anic science, we have recorded a great deal that concerns matters of the Muslim Massora, matters of considerable interest for the history of the exegesis of the Qur'an, but very little that bears on the investigation of the text.

Nor has the subject attracted much antention in the West. Nöldeke opened it up in 1860 in the first edition of his Geschichte des Qorans, and Goldziher drew attention to its importance in the first lecture of his Richtungen⁵ but it received no systematic treatment until Bergsträsser undertook his Geschichte des Qorantexts⁶ as the third part of the revised edition of

¹ At-Tibyan fi'l-I'rab wa l'Qira at fi Fami al Qur'an on the margin of Jamal's supercommentary to Jalalain, 4 vols, Cairo 1348. (It was also printed separately at Cairo in 1302 and 1306, and with Jamal at Tehran in 1860 A.D.. Of his I'rab al-Qira at ash-Shadhaha there is a broken MS in the in possession Dr. Yahuda or London and a complete MS discovered by the present writer in the East and now in the Mingana collection at Selly Oak.

² Ibn Halawaih's Sammlung nichtkanonischer Koranlesarten, herausgegeben vo G. Bergsträsser, Stambul 1934 (Bibliotheca Islamca, VII). There are also variants recorded in his 'I rab Thalathin Sawar of which three MSS are known.

³ Nichtkanonishe Koranlesarten im Muhtasab des Ibn Ginni von G. Bergsträsser, Munchen 1933. (Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1933, Heft 2). There are good MSS of the Muhtasab now available and it is hoped that the complete text may be published shortly. It is probable that other works of Ibn Jinni would repay examination for there are not a few uncanonical variants quoted in the Commentaries from Ibn Jinni which do not figure in Bergstrasser's lists.

⁴ Soyuti's Itqan on the Exegetical Sciences of the Qur'an ed.A. Sprenger, Calcutta 1857. (Bibliotheca Indica).

The recent work of az-Zanjani, Tirikh al.Qur'an Cairo 1935, may perhaps represent the beginning of a new day. The author is visibly inspired by Western work on the Qur'an, and although bound hand and foot by the necessity of defending the orthodox position, he has made a useful assemblage of material from which others may start.

⁵ Die Richtungen der Islamischen Koranauslegung, Leiden 1920, being the Olaus Petri Lectures at Upsala, published as No. VI of the De-Goeje Foundation.

⁶ Erste Lieferung 1926; zweite Lieferung 1929: the third and concluding section has now been issued by his pupil and successor at Munich, Dr. O. Pretzl. Bergsträsser envisaged a much larger plan for a history of the text of the Qur'an based

Nöldeke's work, and with characteristic thoroughness began to work down to bed-rock on the subject. It is an extraordinary thing that we still have no critical text of the Qur'an for common use. Flügel's edition which has been so widely used and so often reprinted, is really a very poor text, for it neither represents any one pure type of Oriental text tradition, nor is the eclectic text he prints formed on any ascertainable scientific basis. Some of the Kazan lithographs¹ make an attempt at giving the Seven canonical systems on the margin, but only very incompletely. The same as true of the curious Teheran lithograph of 1323. which prints parts of the text in Kufic script (with Interlinear naskhl) and parts in ordinary script, with a selection of the Seven on the margin. The best text so far available is the Egyptian standard edition of 1342 (1923)² of which then are several later prints. This edition attempts to present a pure type of text according to one tradition of the Kufan school as represented by Hafs 'an 'Asim, though unfortunately some corruptions have crept in owing to the use by its editors of younger authorities on the Kufan tradition instead of going back to older and better sources.³

The orthodox Muslim theory of the text is well known. According to this theory the Prophet arranged to have the revelations written down immediately they were revealed and used to collate once every year with the Angel Gabriel the material that had on an assemblage of materials on a vast scale, and of which the publication of a critical text of the Qu'ran by the present writer was to form a part. (See his preliminary statement, "Plan eines Apparatus Criticus zum Qoran" in the Sitzungsberichte of the Bavarian Academy, 1930, Heft 7). The tragedy of the summer of 1933 which deprived Germany of one of her finest Arabists and the writer of a close personal friend, has necessarily delayed this project and somewhat changed it. Dr. Pretzl, however, has undertaken to continue with the plan and a new scheme for it is being elaborated. (See Pretzl, "Die Fortführung des apparatus criticus zum Koran" in Sitzb. Bayer. Akad. 1934, Heft 2).

¹ Lg. the folio edition of 1857.

² Bergsträsser has given an account of it in Der Islam, XX (1932), Heft I in his article 'Koranlesung in Kairo'.

³Two of these older sources have been made available in careful editions in the Bibliotheca Islamica by Dr. Otto Pretzl viz. the Taisir and the Muqni of ad-Dinit (444) the Spanish Muslim savant. Das Lehrbuch der Sieben Koranlesungen von Abu 'Amir ad-Dani, 1930, and Orthographic und Punktierung des Korans: zwei Schriften von Abu 'Amr ad-Dani, 1932. In the Anmerkungen to this latter text Pretzl notes a number of cases where the editors of the Egyptian standard text have deviated from the older tradition.

thus far been revealed. In the last year of his life they so collated it twice¹. When the Prophet died the text of the Qur'an was thus already fixed, and all the material gathered in an orderly fashion though it had not yet been written out, at least not in book form. Under the caliphate of Abu Bakr took place the writing of it out in a first official recension. Later, in the Caliphate of 'Uthman it was discovered that all sorts of dialectal peculiarities had crept into the recitation of the text, so 'Uthman formed a Committee, borrowed from Hafsa the copy made by Abu Bakr, and on its basis had a standard Codex written out in the pure dialect of Quraish. Copies of this were made and sent to the chief centres of the Muslim empire where they became Metropolitan Codices, and all other Codices that had been formed were ordered to be burned. This was the Second Recension and all modern editions produced in the east are supposed to be exact reproductions of the text (though not of the form) of this 'Uthmanic Recension².

Very little examination is needed to reveal the fact that this account is largely fictitious. Nothing is more certain than that when the Prophet died there was no collected, arranged, collated body of revelations. Recent research - by Dr. Bell of Edinburgh and Prof. Torrey of Yale has suggested that there is internal evidence in the Qur'an itself that the Prophet kept in his own care a considerable mass of revelation material belonging to various periods of his activity, some of it in revised and some of it in unrevised form, and that this material was to form the basis of the Kitab he wished to give his community before he died. Death, however, overtook him before anything was done about the matter. If this is so we are at a loss to know what became of this material, which obviously would have been the community's most precious legacy³. The earliest strata of tradition

¹ Itqan, 146.

²Thus in the Preface to the above-mentioned Egyptian Standard edition (student's edition of 1344) we read -

³ There is a Shi'a tradition (Kashini, Safi, p.9) that before his death the Prophet

available to us make it quite certain that there was no Qur'an left ready as a heritage for the community. The Prophet had proclaimed his messages orally, and, except in the latter period of his ministry, whether, they were recorded or not was often a matter of chance. Some pieces of revelation matetial seem to have been used liturgically and so probably would have been written. Some pieces he himself caused to be written down in permanent form as they were of a definite legislative character¹. Besides these there were numerous portions generally small pieces, though sometimes pieces of considerable extent, that were in the possession of different members of the community, either memorized or written down on scraps of writing material that happened to be handy. Certain individuals among the early Muslims, perhaps even a little before the Prophet's death, had specialized in collecting or memorizing this revelation material. They and their successors became known as the Qurra - the Reciters, later the Readers, who constituted as it were the depository of revelation. Tradition says that it was the slaughter of a great number of these at the Battle of Yamama in 12 A.H. that caused interest to be aroused in getting all the revelation material set down in permanent written - form, lest with the passing away of the Qurra' much of it should be lost².

That Abu Bakr was one of those who collected revelation material was doubtless true. He may possibly have inherited material that the Prophet had stored away in preparation for the Kitab. That he ever made an official recension as the orthodox theory demands is exceedingly doubtful. His collection

called 'Ali and told him that this material was bidden behind his couch written on leaves and silk and parchment; bidding him take it and publish it in Codex form. It is also sometimes suggested that this material assembled by the Prophet was the nucleus of Abu Bakr's collection. In neither case, however, can we feel much confidence in the statements.

¹ There are of course elaborate stories of the amanuenses of the Prophet, and there can be no doubt that he did employ amanuenses for his diplomatic correspondence. That certain of these amanuenses were at times called upon to write out special pieces of revelation is not at all impossible. It is difficult to take seriously, however, the theory that considers them as a body of prepared scribes waiting to take down revelations as they were uttered.

¹ Ya'qubi (ed. Houtsma), II, 152; Fihrist 24; ad-Dani, Mugni' 4ff. and c.f. Nöldeke-Schwally II, 11 ff. There are many references to material that was lest at Yamama that should have formed part of the Qur'an.

would have been a purely private affair, just as quite a number of other Companions of the Prophet had made personal collections as private affairs. It was after the death of the Prophet that these collections became important. We have well-known stories of how 'Ali, Salim; Abu Musa and others had collection's, and there are traditions which give lists of those who had commenced making collections or memorizing during the lifetime of the Prophet. As no two of these lists agree with one another to any great extent one is driven to conclude that while it was known that such collections were made there was information, save with regard to a few names, as to who made them¹. Orthodox theory, even to the present day, has insisted that the word jama'a "to collect" used in these traditions means nothing more than "to memorize" and so does not imply that the collection was made in written form. As, however, 'Ali brought along what he had collected on the back of his camel, as some of the collections had come to have independent names, and as 'Uthman, after sending out his official copies to the Metropolitan cities, had to order all other copies to be burned, there cannot be the slightest doubt that there were written collections.

What we find in early Islam, as a matter of fact, is only what we might have expected to find. Different members of the community who where interested began to collect in written form so much as they could gather of the revelation material that had been proclaimed by the Prophet. Later, with the gradual expansion of the Muslim empire, some of these collections began to acquire notoriety as they came to be in some sort authoritative in different centres. Naturally it would be those collections that could claim some completeness that would attain to this position of eminence. Thus we read that the people of Horns, and Damascus followed the Codex of Miqdad b. al-Aswad², the Kufans that of Ibn Mas ud, the Basrans that of Abu Musa al-Ash'ari, and the Syrians in general that of Ubai' b. Ka'b (Ibn al-Athir, Kamil III, 86). Here we have the beginning of Metropolitan

¹ Ibn al-Jazari, Nashr I, 6; Fihrist, 27; Bukhari (ed. Krehl) III, 397; Ibn Sa'd 7 Tabaqut, II, ii, 112-114. See also Nöldeke-Schwally II, 8-11.

² This name is probably a mistake for Mu'adh b. Jabal, as indeed Bergsträsser has noted Qorantext. 173.

Codices, each great centre following that collection, or, perhaps we may Say that type of text, which had local fame.

Now, when we come to the accounts of 'Uthman's recension, it quickly becomes dear that his work was no mere matter of removing dialectal peculiarities in reading, but was a necessary stroke of policy to establish a standard text for the whole empire. Apparently there were wide divergences between the collections that had been digested into Codices in the great Metropolitan centres of Madina, Mecca, Basra, Kufa and Damascus, and for political reasons if for no other it was imperative to have one standard Codex accepted all over the empire. 'Uthman's solution was to canonize the Madinan codex¹ and order all others to be destroyed. It is very significant that the Qurra' were violently opposed to 'Uthman because, of this act², and there is evidence that for quite a while the Muslims in Kufa were divided not two factions, those who accepted the 'Uthmanic text, and those who stood by Ibn Mas'ud who refused to give up his Codex to be burned³.

There can be little doubt that the text canonized by 'Uthman was only one among several types of text in existence at the time⁴. To canonize the Madinan text was doubtless the natural thing to do, since in spite of the fact the Kufa ealy came to have the reputation of being par excellence the centre of Quranic studies, the prestige of Madina, the Prophet's own city, must at that time have been enormous, and the living tradition would doubtless have been most abundant there. We may even say that a priori the Madinan text had all the chances in its favour of being the best text available. Nevertheless it is a question of the utmost importance for any study of the history

¹ Assuming that there was a Madinan codex. The stories of 'Uthman's Committee in the Muqni and in Ibn Abi Dawud certainly suggest that Madina had depended largely on oral tradition and that this Committee of 'Uthman made a first hand collection by taking down the material directly from the depositories and demanding two witnesses for every revelation accepted.

² It will be remembered that the Ibadites made the charge against 'Uthman that he had tampered with God's word.

³ Ya'qubi, Historiat, II, 197; Ibn al-Athir III, 86, 87; Qurtubi I, 53.

⁴ Ibn Abi Dawud, p. 83 quotes from Abu Bakr b. 'Ayyash (194) the statement that many of the Companions of the Prophet had their own text of the Qur'an, but they had passed away and their texts had not survived. This same fact is evidenced by the recurring reference to al-harf al-awwal where what is meant is a reading from the time of the Prophet which is different from that in the 'Uthmanic text

of the Qur'anic text, whether we can glean any information as to the rival types of text that were suppressed in the interests of 'Uthman's standard edition.

In the works of the exegetes, and the philologers we not infrequently come across variant readings that have been preserved from one or other of these displaced Codices. Sometimes the reference is merely to a "Codex of the Sahaba" or a certain old Codex" or "in certain of the Codices" or "in the former text" ,. At times it is to one of the cities "a Codex of Basra", "a Codex of Homs", "a Codex of Ahl al-'Aliya" (Baghawi II, 52) Sometimes it is to a Codex in the possession of some particular person, as "a Codex belonging to al-Hajjaj" (Khal. 122, Gin 60) or "a Codex belonging to the grandfather of Malik b. Anas (Muqus 120) of a Codex used by Abu Hanifa (see Massignon's al-Hallaj I, 243 n5,or one of Hammad b. az-Zibriqan (Khal. 55 Mushir II, 187). Mostly, however, the references are to the well-known old Codices of Ibn Mas'ud, Ubai b. Ka'b etc, which were known to go back to the time before the canonization by 'Uthman of one standard type of text.

The amount of material preserved in this way is, of course, relatively small, but it is remarkable that any at all has been preserved. With the general acceptance of a standard text other types of text, even when they escaped the flames, would gradually cease being transmitted from sheer lack of interest in them. Such readings from them as would be remembered and quoted among the learned would be only the relatively few readings that had some theological or philological interest, so that the great mass of variants would early disappear. Moreover, even with regard to such variants as did survive there were definite efforts at suppression in the interests of orthodoxy. One may refer, for instance, to the case of the great Baghdad scholar Ibn Shanabudh (245-328), who was admitted to be an eminent Qur'anic authority, but who was forced to make public recantation of his use of readings from the Old Codices.

Ibn Shanabudh's was not the only case, and such treatment of famous scholars¹ was not encouraging to the study of the

¹In the accounts of Ibn Shanabudh will be noticed the effort made to paint

variants from the pre-'Uthmanic period. The orthodoxy continued to exert this same pressure against un canonical variants is revealed to us from many hints from the period subsequent to Ibn Shanabudh. For example, Abu Hayyan, Bahr VII, 268, referring to a notorious textual variant, expressly says that in his work, though it is perhaps the richest in uncanonical variants that we have, he does not mention those variants where there is too wide a divergence from the standard text of 'Uthman. In other words, when we have assemb1ed all the variants from these earlier Codices that can be gleaned from the works of the exegetes and philologers. We have only such readings as were useful for purposes of Tafsir and were considered to be sufficiently near orthodoxy to be allowed te survive¹.

Modern Muslim savants almost invariably set aside the variants recorded from the Old Codices,- on the ground that they are tafsir, or as we should say, explanatory glosses on the 'Uthamnic text, and they roundly condemned such ancient scholars as Ibn Khalawaih and Ibn Jinai for not knowing the difference between Qira at and Tafsir. It is clear, however, that only such qira at as were of the kind that could be used for tafsir had any likelihood of being preserved.

In the fourth Islamic century there were three books written on this question of the Old Codices which had some influence on later studies. These were the works already mentioned of Ibn al-Anbari, Ibn Ashta and Ibn Abi Dawad. In each case the book was entitled Kitab al-Masahif, and in each case the work,

him as an ignoramus and a weak-minded person. This was the usual procedure with regard to all those suspected of unorthodox views and is not to be taken seriously. It is perfectly clear from the sources that he was a famous scholar and drew large numbers of students who, in those days as in these, did not flock to listen to the ignorant and weak-minded.

¹ An interesting modern example occurred during the last visit of the late Prof. Bergträsser to Cairo. He was engaged in taking photographs (Of the Archive and had photographed a number of the early Kufic Codices in the Egyptian Library when I drew his attention to one in the Azhar library that possessed certain curious features. He sought permission to photograph that also, but permission was refused and the Codex withdrawn from access, as it was not consistent with orthodoxy to allow a Western scholar to have knowledge of such a text.

while dealing with the 'Uthmanic text, its collection, orthography, and the general Massoretic details with regard to it, dealt also with what was known of the Old Codices which it had replaced. The most famous of the three was that of Ibn al-Anbari (328), a work which was doubtless composed before the canonization by Ibn Mujahid of the Seven Readings. The work is lost but from the use made of it by later writers such as-Suyuti¹, one gathers that it contained a certain amount of Tafsir as well as information as to the reading: from the Old Codices. The work of Ibn Ashta (360) seems to have been of somewhat similar scope. He was a pupil of Ibn Mujahid and wrote a special work al-Muftd on the subject of the uncanonical variants² besides this work on the Codices which was also used by as-Suyuti³. The only work of this kind that has survived, however, is that of Ibn Abi Dawud (316) which, unfortunately, seems to have been the narrowest in scope of them all.

Abdallah b. Sulaiman b. al-Ash'ath Abu Bakr b. Abi Dawud⁴ as Sijistani was born in 230 A.H., the son of Imam Abu Dawud whose collection ranks third among the canonical collections of the Hadith. He was born in Sijistan but his father took him early on his travels and he is said to have visited Khorasan, Isfahan, Fars, Basra, Baghdad, Kufa, Madina, Mecca, Damascus, Egypt; al-Jazira and ath-Thughur. In every place where there were scholars his father set him to learn from them, so that he may be said to have been the pupil of most of the great savants of his day⁵. There is a story that when he came to Kufa he had only one dirham which he spent on thirty bushels of broad beans. Each day he ate a bushel of the beans and by the time they were finished he had mastered a thousand Traditions (or some say 30,000) from the Kufan teacher Abu Sa'id al-Ashajj.

His chief fame all his lifetime was as a Tradionist. There is a story that he returned to Sijistan in the days of 'Amr b. al-

¹ Cf. Itqan 428 and numerous quotations in ad-Durr al-Manthur.

² Ibn al-Jazari, Tabaqat II, 114.

³ Itqan 13 and 428.

⁴ For his life see Ibn Khallikan (Eg. ed.) I, 268, 269: Ibn al-Jazari, Tabaqat, No.1779; Dhahabi Liber Class., II, 80; al-Khatib, Tarikh Baghdad IX, 464-463; Ibn al 'Imad, Shadkarat ad-Dhahab II, 168, 273.

⁵ He is generally known as the pupil of Mhd b. Aslam at-Tusi and 'Isa b. Zaghba Al-Khatib IX, 464, 465 gives a list of his various teachers and the Readers from whom he drew his Quranic knowledge are listed by Ibn al-Jazari.

Laith and some of his fellow townsmen gathered together to request him to recite to them Hadith that he had learned on his journeyings. He refused on the ground that he had no book, but they retorted "What need has the son of Abu Dawud of books?" So he submitted with good grace and dictated a great number of Traditions from memory. When he got back to Baghdad he found that the story had preceded him and the Bagladadis were saying that he had fooled the innocents of Sijistan. But when they hired scribes to go to Sijistan and bring back copies of what Ibn Abu Dawud had dictated there, they found that on comparing them with the authorities in Baghdad they could find only six mistakes in all that he had dictated from memory.

In Quranic studies, he was a pupil of Abu Khallad Sulaiman b. Khallad (261), Abu Zaid 'Umar b. Shabba (262), Yunus b. Habib (267), Musa b. Hizam at-Tirnidhi (c. 260) and Ya'qub b. Sufyan (277), and was one of the teachers of Ibn Majahid (324) and an-Naqqash (351). He wrote a number of works on Qur'anic subjects. In the Fihrist, pp. 232, 233, we find mentioned: