User:Louis P. Boog/sandbox/Quranic criticism

This page is about the academic treatment of the Quran as a historical document. For criticisms made against the Quran as a source of reliable information or ethical guidance, see Criticism of the Quran.

TO DO
*WHEN COMPLETED
*update, edit History_of_the_Quran#Origin_according_to_academic_historians

*READ and CHECK 
 *read and add MUSLIM WORLD https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1478-1913.1993.tb03571.x

*check HCL databases for "The battle of the books, The business of marketing the Bible and the Koran says a lot about the state of modern Christianity and Islam

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBUhCG3Fbck What are the seven different readings (qira'at) of the Qur'an? Dr. Shabir Ally explains
*trim out anti-Islamic parts 

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• TOOLS/REFERENCES
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Islam-related_articles
  • Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Islam-related articles
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Cite_Quran
  • multiple Quranic translations: https://www.islamawakened.com/quran/2/219/default.htm
  • 56:78 56:78 (Pickthall)

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THEMES:

• investigating and verifying the Quran's origin, text, composition, history
  • variations in text among different versions/manuscripts;
  • the intended audience (such as whether the audience was assumed to be familiar with the Christian Bible);
  • puzzles of unclear letters, words and phrases, unexplained by early exegetes;
  • themes and stories found in other earlier texts[9] (such as narratives about Alexander the Great) and earlier religious works (especially the bible, apocryphal gospels and Jewish legends);[10]
  • patterns and repetition of text suggesting oral transmission,

[What to do? 21- march 2021 Below has become to much of a mess. plan now is to start by going directly to the article improving 1) the Early Quranic manuscripts 2) legends/stories

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Historical reliability of the Quran [current name and version]

The Quran, in traditional Arabic text

Historical reliability of the Quran concerns the question of the historicity (i.e. history as opposed to historical myth, legend, or fiction) of the described or claimed events in the Quran.

[NOTE: this article should be totally rewritten or merged with another]

The Quran is viewed to be the scriptural foundation of Islam and is believed by Muslims to have been sent down by Allah (God) and revealed to Muhammad by the angel Jabreel (Gabriel). Muslims have not used historical criticism in the study of the Quran, but they have used textual criticism in a similar way used by Christians and Jews. It has been practiced primarily by secular, Western scholars such as John Wansbrough, Joseph Schacht, Patricia Crone, and Michael Cook, who set aside doctrines of the Quran's divinity, perfection, unchangeability, etc., accepted by Muslim scholars, and instead investigate the Quran's origin, text, composition, and history.

In the Muslim world, scholarly criticism of the Quran can be considered an apostasy. Scholarly criticism of the Quran, is thus, a beginning area of study in the Islamic world.

Scholars have identified several pre-existing sources for some Quranic narratives. The Quran assumes its readers' familiarity with the Christian Bible and there are many parallels between the Bible and the Quran. Aside from the Bible, the Quran includes legendary narratives about Dhu al-Qarnayn, apocryphal gospels, and Jewish legends.

Textual history

Sanaʽa manuscript of the Quran.

Early manuscripts

In the 1970s, 14,000 fragments of Quran were discovered in the Great Mosque of Sana'a, the Sana'a manuscripts. About 12,000 fragments belonged to 926 copies of the Quran, the other 2,000 were loose fragments. The oldest known copy of the Quran so far belongs to this collection: it dates to the end of the 7th–8th centuries.

The German scholar Gerd R. Puin has been investigating these Quran fragments for years. His research team made 35,000 microfilm photographs of the manuscripts, which he dated to early part of the 8th century. Puin has not published the entirety of his work, but noted unconventional verse orderings, minor textual variations, and rare styles of orthography. He also suggested that some of the parchments were palimpsests which had been reused. Puin believed that this implied an evolving text as opposed to a fixed one.

In 2015, some of the earliest known Quranic fragments, dating from between approximately AD 568 and 645, were identified at the University of Birmingham. Islamic scholar Joseph E. B. Lumbard of Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar has written in the Huffington Post in support of the dates proposed by the Birmingham scholars. Professor Lumbard notes that the discovery of a Qur'anic text that may be confirmed by radiocarbon dating as having been written in the first decades of the Islamic era, and includes variations in the “under text.” recorded in the Islamic historiographical tradition .

Quran and History

Main article: Biblical and Quranic narratives

Creation narrative and the Flood

Main article: Islamic views on evolution

The Quran contains a creation narrative and may refer to the world being created in six days (The word يوم yawm which in some places is translated as day, refers to other meanings as well depending upon in which context it is being used. Stages, period, or phases are some other meanings of the same word), although this is highly debatable. In Sūrah al-Anbiyāʼ, the Quran states that "the heavens and the earth were of one piece" before being parted. God then created the landscape of the earth, placed the sky above it as a roof, and created the day and night cycles by appointing an orbit for both the sun and moon. Some Muslim apologists, like Zakir Naik and Adnan Oktar advocate creationism. Some British Muslim students have distributed leaflets on campus, advocating against Darwin's theory of evolution and contemporary Islamic scholar Yasir Qadhi believes that the idea that humans evolved is against the Quran. It has to be noted, however, that not all Muslims are against the theory of evolution, Some Muslims point to a verse in the Quran as evidence for Evolution “when He truly created you in stages ˹of development˺?” Verse 71:14. Evolution is taught in many Islamic countries, and some scholars have tried to reconcile the Quran and evolution.

Quran also contains the flood narrative. According to the Quran, Noah was a prophet for 950 years, and he built an ark where he filled it with pairs of animals. People who did not believe him, including one of his own sons, are said to have drowned.

Samiri

Quran recounts a story of the golden calf, where it mentions that Samiri, a rebellious follower of Moses, created the calf while Moses was away for 40 days on Mount Sinai, receiving the Ten Commandments. Due to the fact that as-Samiri can mean the Samaritan, some believe that his character is a reference to the worship of the golden calves built by Jeroboam of Samaria, conflating the two idol-worshiping incidents into one.

Death of Jesus

Papyrus of Irenaeus' Against Heresies, which describes early Gnostic beliefs about Jesus' death which influenced Islam.

Main article: Islamic views on Jesus' death

Quran maintains that Jesus was not actually crucified and did not die on the cross. The general Islamic view supporting the denial of crucifixion was probably influenced by Manichaenism (Docetism), which holds that someone else was crucified instead of Jesus, while concluding that Jesus will return during the end-times.

That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah";- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not:-
Nay, Allah raised him up unto Himself; and Allah is Exalted in Power, Wise;-

— Qur'an, sura 4 (An-Nisa) ayat 157–158

Despite these views, theologians maintain that the Crucifixion of Jesus is a fact of history. The view that Jesus only appeared to be crucified and did not actually die predates Islam, and is found in several apocryphal gospels.

Irenaeus in his book Against Heresies describes Gnostic beliefs that bear remarkable resemblance with the Islamic view:

He did not himself suffer death, but Simon, a certain man of Cyrene, being compelled, bore the cross in his stead; so that this latter being transfigured by him, that he might be thought to be Jesus, was crucified, through ignorance and error, while Jesus himself received the form of Simon, and, standing by, laughed at them. For since he was an incorporeal power, and the Nous (mind) of the unborn father, he transfigured himself as he pleased, and thus ascended to him who had sent him, deriding them, inasmuch as he could not be laid hold of, and was invisible to all.-

— Against Heresies, Book I, Chapter 24, Section 40

Irenaeus mentions this view again:

He appeared on earth as a man and performed miracles. Thus he himself did not suffer. Rather, a certain Simon of Cyrene was compelled to carry his cross for him. It was he who was ignorantly and erroneously crucified, being transfigured by him, so that he might be thought to be Jesus. Moreover, Jesus assumed the form of Simon, and stood by laughing at them. Irenaeus, Against Heresies.

Another Gnostic writing, found in the Nag Hammadi library, Second Treatise of the Great Seth has a similar view of Jesus' death:

I was not afflicted at all, yet I did not die in solid reality but in what appears, in order that I not be put to shame by them

and also:

Another, their father, was the one who drank the gall and the vinegar; it was not I. Another was the one who lifted up the cross on his shoulder, who was Simon. Another was the one on whom they put the crown of thorns. But I was rejoicing in the height over all the riches of the archons and the offspring of their error and their conceit, and I was laughing at their ignorance

Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, likewise, reveals the same views of Jesus' death:

I saw him (Jesus) seemingly being seized by them. And I said 'What do I see, O Lord? That it is you yourself whom they take, and that you are grasping me? Or who is this one, glad and laughing on the tree? And is it another one whose feet and hands they are striking?' The Savior said to me, 'He whom you saw on the tree, glad and laughing, this is the living Jesus. But this one into whose hands and feet they drive the nails is his fleshly part, which is the substitute being put to shame, the one who came into being in his likeness. But look at him and me.' But I, when I had looked, said 'Lord, no one is looking at you. Let us flee this place.' But he said to me, 'I have told you, 'Leave the blind alone!'. And you, see how they do not know what they are saying. For the son of their glory instead of my servant, they have put to shame.' And I saw someone about to approach us resembling him, even him who was laughing on the tree. And he was with a Holy Spirit, and he is the Savior. And there was a great, ineffable light around them, and the multitude of ineffable and invisible angels blessing them. And when I looked at him, the one who gives praise was revealed.

However, Islamic scholar Mahmoud M. Ayoub and historian of religion Gabriel Said Reynolds disagree with the mainstream interpretation of the Quranic narrative of Jesus' death, arguing that the Quran nowhere disputes that Jesus died.

See also

• Historicity of the Bible
• Criticism of the Quran
• History of the Quran
• Corpus Coranicum
• Syriac Infancy Gospel
• Noah in Islam

References

Bibliography

• Roslan Abdul-Rahim (December 2017). "Demythologizing the Qur'an Rethinking Revelation Through Naskh al-Qur'an" (PDF). Global Journal Al-Thaqafah. 7 (2): 51–78. doi:10.7187/GJAT122017-2. ISSN 2232-0474. Retrieved 26 February 2019.
• Bannister, Andrew G. "Retelling the Tale: A Computerised Oral-Formulaic Analysis of the Qur'an. Presented at the 2014 International Qur'an Studies Association Meeting in San Diego". academia.edu. Retrieved 20 May 2019.
• Burton, John (1990). The Sources of Islamic Law: Islamic Theories of Abrogation (PDF). Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-0108-2. Retrieved 21 July 2018.
• Cook, Michael (2000). The Koran : A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0192853449.
• Crone, Patricia (1987). Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (PDF). Princeton University Press.
• Crone, Patricia; Cook, Michael (1977). HAGARISM, THE MAKING OF THE ISLAMIC WORLD (PDF). Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 18 March 2020.
• Dashti, `Ali (1994). Twenty Three Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammad (PDF). Retrieved 10 April 2019.
• Donner, Fred M. (2008). "The Quran in Recent Scholarship". In Reynolds, Gabriel Said (ed.). The Quran in its Historical Context. Routledge. pp. 29-50.
• Dundes, Alan (2003). Fables of the Ancients?: Folklore in the Qur'an. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 9780585466774. Retrieved 2 May 2019.
• Gibb, H.A.R. (1953) [1949]. Mohammedanism : An Historical Survey (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
• Guillaume, Alfred (1978) [1954]. Islam. Penguin books.
• Hawting, G.R. (2000). "16. John Wansbrough, Islam, and Monotheism". The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. New York: Prometheus Books. pp. 489–509.
• Holland, Tom (2012). In the Shadow of the Sword. UK: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-53135-1. Retrieved 29 August 2019.
• Ibn Warraq, ed. (2000). "2. Origins of Islam: A Critical Look at the Sources". The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Prometheus. pp. 89–124.
• Ibn Warraq, ed. (2000). "1. Studies on Muhammad and the Rise of Islam". The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Prometheus. pp. 15–88.</ref>
• Ibn Warraq (2002). Ibn Warraq (ed.). What the Koran Really Says : Language, Text & Commentary. Translated by Ibn Warraq. New York: Prometheus. pp. 23–106. ISBN 157392945X. Retrieved 9 April 2019.
• Ibn Warraq (1995). Why I Am Not a Muslim (PDF). Prometheus Books. Retrieved 25 April 2019.
• Leirvik, Oddbjørn (27 May 2010). Images of Jesus Christ in Islam (2nd ed.). New York: Bloomsbury Academic; 2nd edition. pp. 33–66. ISBN 978-1441181602.
• Lippman, Thomas W. (1982). Understanding Islam : An Introduction to the Moslem World. New American Library.
• Lüling, Günter (1981). A Challenge to Islam for Reformation; Die Wiederentdeckung des Propheten Muhammad: eine Kritik am "christlichen" Abendland. Erlangen: Luling.</ref>
• Reynolds, Gabriel Said, ed. (2008). The Quran in its Historical Context. Routledge.
• Reynolds, Gabriel Said (2008). "Introduction, Quranic studies and its controversies". In Reynolds, Gabriel Said (ed.). The Quran in its Historical Context. Routledge. pp. 1-26.
• Donner, Fred M. (2008). "The Quran in Recent Scholarship". In Reynolds, Gabriel Said (ed.). The Quran in its Historical Context. Routledge. pp. 29-50.
• van Bladel, Kevin (2008). "The Alexander Legend in the Qur'an 18:83-102". In Reynolds, Gabriel Said (ed.). The Quran in its Historical Context. Routledge. pp. 175-203.
• Saadi, Abdul-Massih (2008). "Nascent Islam in the Seventh Century Syriac Sources". In Reynolds, Gabriel Said (ed.). The Quran in its Historical Context. Routledge. pp. 217-222.
• Böwering, Gerhard (2008). "Recent Research on the Construction of the Quran". In Reynolds, Gabriel Said (ed.). The Quran in its Historical Context. Routledge. pp. 70-87.
• Gillot, Claude (2008). "Reconsidering the Authorship of the Quran. Is the Quran party the fruit of a progressive and collective work?". In Reynolds, Gabriel Said (ed.). The Quran in its Historical Context. Routledge. pp. 88-108.
• Rodinson, Maxime (2002). Muhammad. London: Tauris Parke. ISBN 1-86064-827-4.
• Said, Edward (1978). Orientalism. Vintage. Retrieved 12 April 2019.
• Wansbrough, John (2004). Quranic Studies : Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (PDF). Foreword, Translations, and Expanded Notes by Andrew Rippin. Amherst, New York: Prometheus. ISBN 1-59102-201-0. Retrieved 29 February 2020.
• Weiss, Bernard (April–June 1993). "Reviewed Work: The Sources of Islamic Law: Islamic Theories of Abrogation by John Burton". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 113 (2): 304–306. doi:10.2307/603054. JSTOR 603054.

Category:Quran Category:7th-century books Category:Historicity of religion Category:Religious texts

END OF CURRENT VERSION

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SECTION ON PROPOSED CHANGES

PROPOSED NEW NAMES FOR ARTICLE

Origin of the Quran according to academic historians

The Quran, in traditional Arabic text.

ORIGINAL LEAD

Historical reliability of the Quran concerns the question of the historicity of the described or claimed events in the Quran. Muslims have generally disapproved of the historical criticism of the Quran. In the Muslim world, scholarly criticism of the Quran can be considered an apostasy and can be punished by death. Scholarly criticism of the Quran, is thus, a beginning area of study. Scholars have identified several pre-existing sources for the Quran. The Quran assumes its readers' familiarity with the Christian Bible and there are many parallels between the Bible and the Quran. Aside from the Bible, the Quran includes legendary narratives about Alexander the Great, apocryphal gospels, and Jewish legends. Thus, the question of the historical reliability of the Quran is tied to the question of the historical reliability of the Bible.

PROPOSED LEAD (to be added later)

Historical and scholarly criticism of the Quran (or secular Quranic studies) involves investigating and verifying the Quran's origin, text, composition, history, in a manner similar to Biblical criticism (and unrelated to criticism in the sense of "expressing disapproval"). Issues examined might include variations in text among different versions/manuscripts; the intended audience (such as whether the audience was assumed to be familiar with the Christian Bible); puzzles of unclear letters, words and phrases, unexplained by early exegetes; themes and stories found in other earlier texts (such as narratives about Alexander the Great) and earlier religious works (especially the bible, apocryphal gospels and Jewish legends); patterns and repetition of text suggesting oral transmission, etc.

Some Muslims have have found secular study of the Quran "disturbing and offensive", "dangerous", and even an "assault" on the holy book, (and some Muslims have been punished for attempting it). At least some have also found it superfluous, as traditional Islamic religious sciences (`ulum ul-Qur'an) already provide "all the answers to questions posed by modern western orientalists" except those "that issue from the rejection" of the Quran's "Divine Origin". Orthodox belief holds that the Quran is divine, perfect, and unchangeable, having been sent down by Allah (God) and revealed to Muhammad by the angel Jabreel (Gabriel).

Scholarly criticism of the Quran (as opposed to traditional Islamic study) is thus a relatively new area of study, but has been practiced by secular, (mostly) Western scholars (such as John Wansbrough, Joseph Schacht, Patricia Crone, Michael Cook) who set aside doctrines of its divinity, perfection, unchangeability, etc. accepted by Muslim Islamic scholars;

Historical and scholarly criticism of the Quran
*variations in text among different versions/manuscripts;  
*the intended audience (such as whether the audience was assumed to be familiar with the Christian Bible); 
*puzzles of unclear letters, words and phrases, unexplained by early exegetes; 
*themes and stories found in other earlier texts[9] (such as narratives about Alexander the Great) and earlier religious works (especially the bible, apocryphal gospels and Jewish legends);[10] 
*patterns and repetition of text suggesting oral transmission, etc.

[proposed rewrite]

Questions about history and origins

Traditional history of Quran

See also: History of the Quran and Historicity of Muhammad

Quran from the 9th century. It was alleged to be a 7th-century original from Uthman era

According to Islamic narrative/historical tradition, the Quran -- bringing a message of uncompromising monotheism to humanity -- was passed down from its archetype/prototype in heaven. It was revealed to Muhammad, an illiterate Arab trader, in the pagan society and desert environment of Western Arabia over 22 years starting in 610 CE. As the Prophet of Islam -- and despite persecution of the pagan ruling class of his home town -- Muhammad built up a following many of whom wrote down his revelations and/or memorized them. From these memories and written scraps the Quran was carefully complied, edited and codified not long after Muhammad's death, under the supervision of Caliph Uthman (the third successor of Muhammad). Islam spread as Arab Muslims, outnumbered but fired by religious conviction, conquered the Persian Sasanian Empire and most of the Byzantine empire. Seven copies of the standard codex edition of the Quran or "Muṣḥaf" were made and sent by Uthman to the major centers of this rapidly expanding empire. All other incomplete or "imperfect" variant copies were destroyed. In the next few centuries, the religion and empire of Islam solidified, and a great body of religious literature and laws was developed, including commentaries/exegeses (Tafsir) to explain the Quran.

According to traditional Islamic teaching, we know that not only was the Quran "perfect, timeless", "absolute", revealed by God to Muhammad, but that it has remained so to the present day, both because of the careful work of pious Muslims and because of divine protection (indicated in this verse): Quran 15:9:

إِنَّا نَحْنُ نَزَّلْنَا الذِّكْرَ وَإِنَّا لَهُ لَحَافِظُونَ

"Indeed, it is We who sent down the Quran and indeed, We will be it's guardian."

While there are mysteries in the Quran (and Islam in general), known only to God, God has revealed what we need to know.

Secular Quranic studies

For some time, until the early 1970's, most non-Muslim scholars — while not accepting the divinity of the Quran — did accept its origin story "in most of its details". Ernest Renan famously declared that "Islam was born, not amid the mystery which cradles the origins of other religions, but rather in the full light of history."

But in recent years, secular scholars (such as Günter Lüling, John Wansbrough, Yehuda D. Nevo and Christoph Luxenberg), have begun to question much of "what the Muslim historical tradition can tell us about the origins of Islam", questioning, for example, the link between the Quran and the traditional beliefs about the life of Muhammad.

Since historical criticism based on the scientific method does not accept divine revelation/intervention as an explanation nor refuse to study a subject on the grounds that human beings cannot understand or know it, it may question or contradict the Islamic historical tradition. Consequently "one of the most dangerous aspects of Orientalism was the European study of the origins of the Quran" (according to Firas Alkhateeb writing in "Lost Islamic History" posted in Islamicity website), and part of "an attempt to obliterate the whole course of the history of Islam and existence of the Qurʾān during the first two centuries" (M. Feroz-ud-Din Shah Khagga and M. Mahmood Warraich)

So far, however, answers to criticism questions have been in short supply. According to scholar Fred Donner, while it is generally agreed the Quran was intended as "a source of religious and moral guidance" for its readers, "we simply do not know ... things so basic" about the Quran as

How did [it] originate? Where did it come from, and when did it first appear? How was it first written? In what kind of language was -- is -- it written? What form did it first take? Who constituted its first audience? How was it transmitted form one generation to another, especially in its early years? When, how and by whom was it codified?

Problems with traditional history

Secondary evidence and textual history and their lack

See also: Historiography of early Islam and Revisionist school of Islamic studies

In addressing the question of "when did the Quran first appear", traditional secular Quranic studies has been criticized for not challenging the received wisdom of Islamic historical tradition and failing to compare it to supporting evidence such as archaeological findings or non-Muslim literary sources. What has been described as a "wave of skeptical scholars" or revisionists argued that the Islamic historical tradition had been greatly corrupted in transmission, and its account of the origin of the Quran should not be trusted. Skeptics argue that evidence suggests the Quran appeared later than Islamic historical tradition maintains, i.e. later than circa 650 CE.

Islamic historians Patricia Crone, Michael Cook, John Wansbrough, Fred Donner, and archaeologist Yehuda D. Nevo all argue that all the primary Islamic historical sources -- the "biographical, exegetical, jurisprudential and grammatical texts" known to modern scholars -- that the traditional history of the Quran is based on, are from 150–300 years after the events which they describe, leaving several generations for events to be forgotten, misinterpreted, garbled, embroidered on, etc. Specifically, this leaves a gap of some decades between the traditional date for codification of the Quran (circa 650 CE) and when the "full light of history" began to shine (i.e. during the Abbasid Caliphate era starting 750 CE), according to historian John Wansbrough.

SEE IF YOU CAN PUT THIS SOMEWHERE ELSE

(Michael Cook wonders why the heavenly archetype of the Quran is a book, the Muṣḥaf Quran on Earth is a book, but between these came a revelation to Muhammad that was oral, piecemeal, and not in the same order as the book -- the verse first revealed to Muhammad reputed to be not Q.1:1 but Q.96 -- but mainly his concern was with other issues.)

Epigraphic (rock carvings), numismatic (coins of the era), archaeological evidence is lacking that mentions the Quran (and sometimes even Islam) before around 690, i.e. during the era when according to the traditional history, pious salafs ("The best of my community" according to a sahih hadith), and rightly guided caliphs (Rashidun), should have been holding sway. Cook and Crone argue (as of 1999) that "there is no hard evidence for the existence of the Koran in any form before the last decade of the seventh century," about 40 year later than traditional Islamic history. Referring to the obscure words and phrases and the "mystery letters" and mystery of the Sabians in the Quran, Cook (and Christopher Rose) argue that "someone must once have known" what these mean, and that their meaning was forgotten now suggests the Quran may have been "off the scene for several decades". (Pious Muslims argue that there are many things in Islam known only to God.)

The "earliest Arabic Islamic literary sources" of Islamic origins are the "biographical, exegetical, jurisprudential and grammatical texts written" during the Abbasid Caliphate, according to Fred Donner, leaving a gap of some decades between the traditional date for codification of the Quran and when the "full light of history" of the Abbasids shown, according to historian John Wansbrough (1928–2002). (The claim that the Abbasid Islamic literary texts were simply transmitting earlier sources from the time of Muhammad has been questioned by another scholar, Ignác Goldziher).

Archaeologist Nevo and researcher Judith Koren note coins of the region and era used Byzantine -- not Islamic -- iconography until the reign of Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (646-705 CE).

Tradition tells us the Quran was composed in the early 7th century CE, but according to historian Tom Holland, "only in the 690's did a Caliph finally get around to inscribing the Prophet's name on a public monument; only decades after that did the first tentative references to him start to appear in private inscriptions".

The earliest biographer whose complete work has survived is Ibn Hisham, who died in 833, 200 years after Muhammad. Of the victories over the Persian and Byzantine Empire of the first 200 years of the Islamic empire (futūḥ), "not a single record" has survived to this day. "Neither letters, nor speeches, nor journals, if they were ever so much as written, have survived; no hint as to what those who actually lived through the establishment of the Caliphate thought, or felt, or believed." (In contrast, historical records were being written "even on the most barbarous fringes of civilisation" in Dark Ages era Britain. One fragment of papyrus found that can be dated to a time relatively soon after the time of Muhammad (around 740 CE) and makes mention of a key event in the Islamic historical tradition (decisive victory of the Battle of Badr), contradicts the tradition -- indicating that the battle was not fought during Ramadan.

Examining 7th century Byzantine Christian sources commentary on the Arab "immigrants" (Mhaggraye) who were invading/settling in formerly Byzantine territory at that time, historian Abdul-Massih Saadi found the Christians never mentioned the terms "Quran" nor "Islam" nor that the immigrants were of a new religion. The Christians used secular or political, not religious terms (kings, princes, rulers) to refer to the Arab leaders. Muhammad was "the first king of the Mhaggraye", also guide, teacher, leader or great ruler. They referred to the immigrants in ethnic terms -- "among them (Arabs) there are many Christians...". They did however mention the religion of the Arabs. The immigrants' religion was described as monotheist "in accordance with the Old Law (Old Testament)". When the Emir of the immigrants and Patriarch of the local Christians did have a religious colloquium there was much discussion of the scriptures but no mention of the Quran, "a possible indication that the Quran was not yet in circulation." The Christians reported the Emir was accompanied by "learned Jews", that the immigrants "accepted the Torah just as the Jews and Samaritans", though none of the sources described the immigrants as Jews. The Byzantine Christians did mention "First and Second Civil Wars" among "Arab political and tribal factions" which they saw as destroying the immigrants.

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(end of proposed version, so far)

it was insured that the wording of the Quranic text available today corresponds exactly to the literal, infallible, "perfect, timeless", "absolute" unadulterated word of God revealed to Muhammad. That revelation in turn is identical to an eternal “mother of the book” the archetype/prototype of the Quran. This was not created/written by God, but an attribute of Him, co-eternal and kept with Him in heaven.

Textual history [Current first section]

updating with Sinai-2014 is one sentence from ibn warraq

Sanaʽa manuscript of the Quran.

The Quran is believed to have had some oral tradition of passing down at some point. Differences that affected the meaning were noted, and around AD 650 Uthman began a process of standardization, presumably to rid the Quran of these differences. Uthman's standardization did not completely eliminate the textual variants.

Sanaa manuscript

DE-COPYRIGHTIZE

In the 1970s, 14,000 fragments of Quran were discovered in the Great Mosque of Sana'a in Yemen. The Sanaa manuscript is one of the oldest manuscripts of the Quran (carbon dating gives a 95% probability of parchment being produced between 578 CE and 669 CE) It "exhibits frequent divergences from the canonical rasm," (5000+ according to Ibn Warraq) "ranging from difference in the grammatical person of verbs and suffixed to the omission, addition, and transposition of words and brief phrases." .... it "also arranges the suras in a different order, although the order of verses within a given sura displays almost no deviation from the standard rasm." Consequently the manuscript may be "the most serious rival of the traditional dating of the standard rasm would at present (2014) seem to the the hypothesis that the Quranic text, in spite of having achieved a recognizable form by 660, continued to be reworked and revised until c.700" which if true could be argued to suggest that "during the 60 or 70 years after Muhammad's death a significant reworking of his original preaching might have taken place." p.276

About variant versions of the Quran in general German scholar Gerd R. Puin has said, "the existence of variant readings indicates that neither the oral tradition nor the [textual] context were strong enough to rule out the emergence of alternative readings."

Birmingham

In 2015, some of the earliest known Quranic fragments, dating from between approximately CE 568 and 645, were identified at the University of Birmingham. Islamic scholar Joseph E. B. Lumbard of Hamad Bin Khalifa University has written in the Huffington Post in support of the dates proposed by the Birmingham scholars. Professor Lumbard notes that the discovery of a Qur'anic text that may be confirmed by radiocarbon dating as having been written in the first decades of the Islamic era, and includes variations in the “under text.” recorded in the Islamic historiographical tradition .

Dome of the Rock

The Dome of the Rock in the Old City of Jerusalem is (in its core) one of the oldest extant works of Islamic architecture, and exhibits some of the earliest inscriptions of Quranic verses on copper plates and mosaics inside the building. Some of the verses are slightly different from the standard Quranic rasm (verses from Q.64.1 and 57.2 are conflated; a divine 1st person statement in Q 7:156 appears in 3rd person form, etc.) All this has suggested to historians such as Chase Robinson and Stephen J. Shoemaker that since the Dome was completed in 691/2 CE, and Muslims are not in the habit of making inscriptions of paraphrased verses from the Quran, "Quranic texts must have remained at least partially fluid through the late seventh and early eighth century".

check for duplication in earlier rewrite

Traditional history of Quran

See also: History of the Quran and Historicity of Muhammad

Quran from the 9th century. It was alleged to be a 7th-century original from Uthman era

According to Islamic narrative/historical tradition, the Quran -- bringing a message of uncompromising monotheism to humanity -- was passed down from heaven and revealed to Muhammad, an illiterate Arab trader, by the the angel Gabriel (Jabreel), in the pagan society and desert environment of Western Arabia over 22 years starting in 610 CE. Muhammad became the Prophet of Islam, who despite persecution of the pagan ruling class, built up a following many of whom wrote down his revelations and/or memorized them. From these memories and written scraps the Quran was carefully complied, edited and codified under the supervision of Caliph Uthman (the third successor of Muhammad) not long after Muhammad's death. Islam spread as Arab Muslims conquered the Persian Sasanian Empire and most of the Byzantine empire, fired by religious conviction. According to tradition, seven copies of the standard codex edition of the Quran or "Muṣḥaf" were made and sent to the major centers of this rapidly expanding empire, and all other incomplete or "imperfect" variants of the Quranic revelation were destroyed, and the same Quran has been preserved and cherished by Muslims as ever since. In the next few centuries, the religion and empire of Islam solidified, and an enormous body of religious literature and laws were developed, including hadith, commentaries/exegeses (Tafsir) to explain the Quran.

Thus, according to Islamic teaching, it was insured that the wording of the Quranic text available today corresponds exactly to the literal, infallible, "perfect, timeless", "absolute" unadulterated word of God revealed to Muhammad. "Muslims believe that Allah has already promised to protect the Quran from the change and error that happened to earlier holy texts," quoting Quran 15:9:

إِنَّا نَحْنُ نَزَّلْنَا الذِّكْرَ وَإِنَّا لَهُ لَحَافِظُونَ

"Indeed, it is We who sent down the Quran and indeed, We will be it's guardian."

That revelation in turn is identical to an eternal “mother of the book” the archetype/prototype of the Quran. This was not created/written by God, but an attribute of Him, co-eternal and kept with Him in heaven.

Scholars have identified several pre-existing sources for the Quran. The Quran assumes its readers' familiarity with the Christian Bible and there are many parallels between the Bible and the Quran. Aside from the Bible, the Quran includes legendary narratives about Alexander the Great, apocryphal gospels, and Jewish legends. Thus, the question of the historical reliability of the Quran is tied to the question of the historical reliability of the Bible.

The Quran is viewed to be the scriptural foundation of Islam and is believed by Muslims to have been been sent down by Allah (God) and revealed to Muhammad by the angel Jabreel (Gabriel). Scholarly study or historical criticism of the Quran by secular, (mostly) Western scholars (such as John Wansbrough, Joseph Schacht, Patricia Crone, Michael Cook) who set aside doctrines of its divinity, perfection, unchangeability, etc. accepted by Muslim Islamic scholars; to investigate and verify the Quran's origin, text, composition, history, examining questions, puzzles, difficult text, etc.

(REWRITE THat last SENTENCE WITH SUMMARY OF CRITICISMS)

Many Muslims find not only the religious fault-finding but also Western scholarly investigation of textual evidence "disturbing and offensive".

Background

Traditional Islamic view of Quran

(USED in Quranic text)

According to Islamic tradition, which criticism may question or contradict, the Quran followed a passage from heaven down to the angel Gabriel (Jabreel) who revealed it in the seventh century CE over 23 years to an Hejazi Arab trader, Muhammad, who became the Prophet of Islam. Muhammad shared these revelations -- which brought uncompromising monotheism to humanity -- with his companions who wrote them down and/or memorized them. From these memories and scraps a standard edition was carefully complied and edited under the supervision of Caliph Uthman not long after Muhammad's death. Copies of this codex or "Mus'haf" were sent to the major centers of what was by this time a rapidly expanding empire, and all other incomplete or "imperfect" variants of the Quranic revelation were destroyed. In the next few centuries, the religion and empire of Islam solidified, and an enormous body of religious literature and laws were developed, including commentaries/exegeses (Tafsir) to explain the Quran.

(USED in Quranic text)

Thus, according to Islamic teaching, it was insured that the wording of the Quranic text available today corresponds exactly to the literal, infallible, "perfect, timeless", "absolute" unadulterated word of God revealed to Muhammad. That revelation in turn is identical to an eternal “mother of the book” the archetype/prototype of the Quran. This was not created/written by God, but an attribute of Him, co-eternal and kept with Him in heaven.

(USED Questions about Quranic text)

The Quran itself states that its revelations are themselves "miraculous 'signs'" -- inimitable (I'jaz) in their eloquence and perfection and proof of the authenticity of Muhammad's prophethood. Several verses remark on how the verses of the book set clear or make things clear, and are in "pure and clear" Arabic language At the same time, (most Muslims believe) some verses of the Quran have been abrogated (naskh) by others and these and other verses have sometimes been revealed in response or answer to questions by followers or opponents.

---

NOT USED

In contrast, Muslim consider the contents of the Quran "are a source of doctrine, law, poetic and spiritual inspiration, solace, zeal, knowledge, and mystical experience." "Millions and millions" of Muslims "refer to the Koran daily to explain their actions and to justify their aspirations", and in recent years many consider it the source of scientific knowledge. Revered by pious Muslims as "the holy of holies", whose sound moves some to "tears and esctasy", it is the physical symbol of the faith, the text often used as a charm on occasions of birth, death, marriage. Consequently, "It must never rest beneath other books, but always on top of them, one must never drink or smoke when it is being read aloud, and it must be listened to in silence. It is a talisman against disease and disaster. The monotheist oneness of God; Judgement Day and the delights of paradise that await believers and torments of hell that await those who have rejected God's word are described in repeatedly and in detail. As in the bible, God reveals his will to humanity through prophets — such as Abraham, Moses and Jesus — bringing holy books. Unlike the bible, it is (thought to be) not simply divinely inspired, but the literal word of God; the last and complete message from God, from his final messenger (Muhammad) superseding the Old and New Testament and purified of "accretions of Judaism and Christianity". It has been called "the Word of God made text", the Islamic equivalent not of the bible but of Jesus Christ — "the Word of God made flesh".

Slightly shorter than the New Testament, it is organized in 114 "surahs" or chapters — not according to when they were revealed (nor by subject matter), but according to length of surahs (with some exceptions) under the guidance of divine revelation.

Revered by pious Muslims as "the holy of holies", whose sound moves some to "tears and esctasy", it is the physical symbol of the faith, the text often used as a charm on occasions of birth, death, marriage. Consequently

It must never rest beneath other books, but always on top of them, one must never drink or smoke when it is being read aloud, and it must be listened to in silence. It is a talisman against disease and disaster.

Traditionally great emphasis was put on children memorizing the 6200+ verses of the Quran, those succeeding being honored with the title Hafiz. "Millions and millions" of Muslims "refer to the Koran daily to explain their actions and to justify their aspirations", and in recent years many consider it the source of scientific knowledge.

History and Context

Devotion of believers

For Muslims the contents of the Quran have been "a source of doctrine, law, poetic and spiritual inspiration, solace, zeal, knowledge, and mystical experience." "Millions and millions" of whom "refer to the Koran daily to explain their actions and to justify their aspirations", and in recent years many consider it the source of scientific knowledge. Revered by pious Muslims as "the holy of holies", whose sound moves some to "tears and esctasy", it is the physical symbol of the faith, the text often used as a charm on occasions of birth, death, marriage. Consequently, "It must never rest beneath other books, but always on top of them, one must never drink or smoke when it is being read aloud, and it must be listened to in silence. It is a talisman against disease and disaster." Unlike the bible, it is (thought to be) not simply divinely inspired, but the literal word of God; the last and complete message from God, from his final messenger (Muhammad) superseding the Old and New Testament and purified of "accretions of Judaism and Christianity".

Islamic Quranic Sciences

Muslims have developed their own Quranic studies or "Quranic sciences" (‘ulum al Qur’an) over the centuries, following the Quranic encouragement "Will they not contemplate the Quran?"(4:82). There are two types of exegesis to explain and interpret the Quran: tafsir (literal interpretation) and ta’wil (allegorical interpretation). Other issues studied are kalimat dakhila (the investigation of the foreign origin of some Quranic terms); naskh (studying contradictory verses to determine which should be abrogated in favor of the other), study of "occasions of revelation" (connecting Quranic verses with "episodes of Muhammad's career based on hadith and biographies of him -- which are known as sira), chronology of revelation, the division of quranic chapters (surahs) into "Meccan surah" (those believed to have been revealed in Mecca before the hijra) and "Medinan surah (revealed afterward in the city of Medina). According to Seyyed Hossein Nasr, these traditional religious sciences

"provide all the answers to questions posed by modern western orientalists about the structure and text of the Koran, except, of course, those questions that issue from the rejection of the Divine Origin of the Koran and its reduction to a work by the prophet. Once the revealed nature of the Koran is rejected, then problems arise. But these are problems of orientalist that arise not from scholarship but from a certain theological and philosophical position that is usually hidden under the guise of rationality and objective scholarship. For Muslims there has never been the need to address these 'problems' ..."

History of Western scholarship of Quran

In contrast, many of the original non-Muslim scholars of the Quran worked "in the context of an openly declared hostility" between Christianity and Islam, with an eye to debunking Islam or proselytizing against it. The nineteenth-century orientalist and colonial administrator William Muir, wrote that the Quran was one of "the most stubborn enemies of Civilisation, Liberty, and the Truth which the world has yet known." In the twentieth century, scholars of the early Soviet Union working in the context of dialectical materialism and fighting the "opium of the people" went on about how Muhammad and the first Caliphs were "mythical figures" and that "the motive force" of early Islam was "the mercantile bourgeoisie of Mecca and Medina" and "slave-owning" Arab society.

At least one scholar argues that Biblical criticism -- the idea that "the Bible be read in the same way as other literature" -- emerged from Medieval Quranic criticism, which in its origins was not dispassionate, culturally sensative work but motivated by the hope of proving "that the Quran was not divine revelation".

Not all non-Muslim scholars of Islam are interested in critical examination/analysis. Patricia Crone and Ibn Rawandi argue that Western scholarship lost its critical attitude to the sources of the origins of Islam around the time of the First World War." Andrew Rippin has found a number of students that expressed surprise "at the lack of critical thought that appears in introductory textbooks on Islam" ...

students acquainted with approaches such as source criticism, oral-formulaic composition, literary analysis and structuralism, all quite commonly employed in the study of Judaism and Christianity, ... who express surprise

such naive historical study seems to suggest that Islam is being approached with less than academic candor.

Scholars have complained about "'dogmatic Islamophilia' of most Arabists" (Karl Binswanger); that in one western country (France as of 1983) "it is no longer acceptable to criticize Islam or the Arab countries" (Jacque Ellul); that "understanding has given way to apologetics pure and simple" (Maxime Rodinson complaining about historians "like Norman Daniel").

Current hostility by Muslims to criticism

At least in part in reaction, some Muslim opposition to "The Orientalist enterprise of Qur'anic studies" has been intense. In 1987 Muslim critic S. Parvez Manzoor, denounced it as conceived in "the polemical marshes of medieval Christianity".

At the greatest hour of his worldly-triumph, the Western man, coordinating the powers of the State, Church and Academia, launched his most determined assault on the citadel of Muslim faith. All the aberrant streaks of his arrogant personality—its reckless rationalism, its world-domineering phantasy and its sectarian fanaticism—joined in an unholy conspiracy to dislodge the Muslim Scripture from its firmly entrenched position as the epitome of historic authenticity and moral unassailability.

In recent twenty first century, some Muslim Islamic scholars have warned against lending "legitimacy to non-Muslim scholars’ understanding about Islam" by engaging with them, and that even a rigorously scholarly academic work on Islam such as the Brill Encyclopedia of Islam "is filled with insults and disparaging remarks about the Qur’an".

Textual criticism of the Quran, the structure and style of the surahs, has been opposed on grounds that it questions the divine origin of the Quran. Seyyed Hossein Nasr has denounced the “rationalist and agnostic methods of higher criticism” as similar to dissecting and subjecting Jesus to “modern medical techniques” to determine whether he was born miraculously or was the son of Joseph, In his influential Orientalism, Edward Said declared Western study of the Middle East — including the religion of Islam — inextricably tied to Western Imperialism, making the study inherently political and servile to power.

Reply

These complaints have been compared to those of other religious conservatives (Christian) against textual historical criticism of their own sacred text (the bible). Non-Muslim scholar Patricia Crone acknowledges the call for humility towards the sacred of other cultures — "who are you to tamper with their legacy?" — but defends challenging of orthodox views of Islamic history, saying "we Islamicists are not trying to destroy anyone's faith."

Examples of retribution

Not all Muslims oppose criticism; Roslan Abdul-Rahim writes that critical study of the Quran "will not hurt the Muslims; it will only help them" because "no amount of criticism can change that fact" that the "Quran is truly a divine piece of work as the Muslim theology stipulates and as the Muslims have so strongly defended". But among those who have suffered in the process of attempting to apply literary or philological techniques to the Quran are Egyptian "Dean of Arabic Literature" Taha Husain (lost his post at Cairo University in 1931), Egyptian professor Mohammad Ahmad Khalafallah (dissertation rejected), a non-Muslim German professor Günter Lüling (dismissed), and perhaps most notably Egyptian professor Nasr Abu Zaid (forced to seek exile in Europe after being declared an apostate and threatened with death for violating a "right of God").

Questions about history and origins

Textual history [Current first section]

Sanaʽa manuscript of the Quran.

The Quran is believed to have had some oral tradition of passing down at some point. Differences that affected the meaning were noted, and around AD 650 Uthman began a process of standardization, presumably to rid the Quran of these differences. Uthman's standardization did not completely eliminate the textual variants.

In the 1970s, 14,000 fragments of Quran were discovered in the Great Mosque of Sana'a, the Sana'a manuscripts. About 12,000 fragments belonged to 926 copies of the Quran, the other 2,000 were loose fragments. The oldest known copy of the Quran so far belongs to this collection: it dates to the end of the 7th–8th centuries.

The German scholar Gerd R. Puin has been investigating these Quran fragments for years. His research team made 35,000 microfilm photographs of the manuscripts, which he dated to early part of the 8th century. Puin has not published the entirety of his work, but noted unconventional verse orderings, minor textual variations, and rare styles of orthography. He also suggested that some of the parchments were palimpsests which had been reused. Puin believed that this implied an evolving text as opposed to a fixed one.

In 2015, some of the earliest known Quranic fragments, dating from between approximately AD 568 and 645, were identified at the University of Birmingham. Islamic scholar Joseph E. B. Lumbard of Hamad Bin Khalifa University has written in the Huffington Post in support of the dates proposed by the Birmingham scholars. Professor Lumbard notes that the discovery of a Qur'anic text that may be confirmed by radiocarbon dating as having been written in the first decades of the Islamic era, and includes variations in the “under text.” recorded in the Islamic historiographical tradition .

Traditional history of Quran

See also: History of the Quran and Historicity of Muhammad

Quran from the 9th century. It was alleged to be a 7th-century original from Uthman era

According to Islamic narrative/historical tradition, the Quran -- bringing a message of uncompromising monotheism to humanity -- was passed down from heaven and revealed to Muhammad, an illiterate Arab trader, by the the angel Gabriel (Jabreel), in the pagan society and desert environment of Western Arabia over 22 years starting in 610 CE. Muhammad became the Prophet of Islam, who despite persecution of the pagan ruling class, built up a following many of whom wrote down his revelations and/or memorized them. From these memories and written scraps the Quran was carefully complied, edited and codified under the supervision of Caliph Uthman (the third successor of Muhammad) not long after Muhammad's death. Islam spread as Arab Muslims conquered the Persian Sasanian Empire and most of the Byzantine empire, fired by religious conviction. According to tradition, seven copies of the standard codex edition of the Quran or "Muṣḥaf" were made and sent to the major centers of this rapidly expanding empire, and all other incomplete or "imperfect" variants of the Quranic revelation were destroyed, and the same Quran has been preserved and cherished by Muslims as ever since. In the next few centuries, the religion and empire of Islam solidified, and an enormous body of religious literature and laws were developed, including hadith, commentaries/exegeses (Tafsir) to explain the Quran.

Thus, according to Islamic teaching, it was insured that the wording of the Quranic text available today corresponds exactly to the literal, infallible, "perfect, timeless", "absolute" unadulterated word of God revealed to Muhammad. That revelation in turn is identical to an eternal “mother of the book” the archetype/prototype of the Quran. This was not created/written by God, but an attribute of Him, co-eternal and kept with Him in heaven.

Historical criticism may question or contradict the Islamic historical tradition, and according to Firas Alkhateeb (writing in "Lost Islamic History" posted in Islamicity website), "one of the most dangerous aspects of Orientalism was the European study of the origins of the Quran." "Muslims believe that Allah has already promised to protect the Quran from the change and error that happened to earlier holy texts," quoting Quran 15:9:

إِنَّا نَحْنُ نَزَّلْنَا الذِّكْرَ وَإِنَّا لَهُ لَحَافِظُونَ

"Indeed, it is We who sent down the Quran and indeed, We will be it's guardian."

Until the early 1970's, non-Muslim scholars — while not accepting the divinity of the Quran — did accept its origin story "in most of its details". Ernest Renan famously declared that "Islam was born, not amid the mystery which cradles the origins of other religions, but rather in the full light of history."

But in recent years secular scholars (such as Günter Lüling, John Wansbrough, Yehuda D. Nevo and Christoph Luxenberg) have begun to question much of "what the Muslim historical tradition can tell us about the origins of Islam", specifically questioning the link between the Quran and the traditional beliefs about the life of Muhammad.

Those Quranic studies scholars doubting the traditional Islamic history of the Quran point to the lack of supporting historical evidence for the Islamic historical tradition's date of canonization of the Quran. This includes the lack of mention of the "Quran" nor "Islam", nor "rightly guided caliphs", nor any of the famous futūḥ battles by Christian Byzantines in their historical records describing the Arab invaders advance, leaders or religion; the lack of any surviving documents by those Arabs who "lived through the establishment of the Caliphate"; the fact that coins of the region and era did not use Islamic iconography until sometime after 685 CE. Evidence to suggest there was a break in the transmission of the knowledge of the meaning of much of the Quran not accounted for by Islamic historical tradition (a break somewhere after the time of the Qurans's revelation and before it's earliest commentators) includes the mystery letters and unintelligible words and phrases mentioned above.

Academic scholars who support "the position of the classical Islamic tradition that the Quran as it exists today is a seventh-century document,” point to the carbon dating of parchment and infrared photography of original ink of palimpsest parchment of the Birmingham Quran manuscript to the time of Muhammad, which "render[s] the vast majority of Western revisionist theories regarding the historical origins of the Quran untenable."

Problems with traditional history

Secondary evidence and textual history and their lack

See also: Historiography of early Islam and Revisionist school of Islamic studies

The traditional secular Quranic studies has been criticised for not challenging the received wisdom of Islamic historical tradition and lacking supporting evidence such as archaeological findings or non-Muslim literary sources. What has been described as a "wave of sceptical scholars" (later known as the revisionist school of Islamic studies) argued that the Islamic historical tradition had been greatly corrupted in transmission. They tried to correct or reconstruct the early history of Islam from other, presumably more reliable, sources (i.e. secondary archaeological and textual evidence) — such as archaeological coins, inscriptions, and non-Islamic sources — to address the question "when did the Quran first appear". They argue that evidence suggests it appeared later than Islamic historical tradition maintains, i.e. later than circa 650 CE.

Islamic historians Patricia Crone, Michael Cook, John Wansbrough, and archaeologist Yehuda D. Nevo all argue that all the primary Islamic historical sources which exist are from 150–300 years after the events which they describe, leaving several generations for events to be forgotten, misinterpreted, distorted, garbled, etc. (Michael Cook wonders why the heavenly archetype of the Quran is a book, the Muṣḥaf Quran on Earth is a book, but between these came a revelation to Muhammad that was oral, piecemeal, and not in the same order as the book -- the verse first revealed to Muhammad reputed to be not Q.1:1 but Q.96 -- but mainly his concern was with other issues.)

Cook and Crone argue (as of 1999) that "there is no hard evidence for the existence of the Koran in any form before the last decade of the seventh century," about 40 year later than traditional Islamic history. Referring to the obscure words and phrases and the "mystery letters" and mystery of the Sabians in the Quran, Cook (and Christopher Rose) argue that "someone must once have known" what these mean, and that their meaning was forgotten now suggests the Quran may have been "off the scene for several decades". (Pious Muslims argue that there are many things in Islam known only to God.)

The "earliest Arabic Islamic literary sources" of Islamic origins are the "biographical, exegetical, jurisprudential and grammatical texts written" during the Abbasid Caliphate, according to Fred Donner, leaving a gap of some decades between the traditional date for codification of the Quran and when the "full light of history" of the Abbasids shown, according to historian John Wansbrough (1928–2002). (The claim that the Abbasid Islamic literary texts were simply transmitting earlier sources from the time of Muhammad has been questioned by another scholar, Ignác Goldziher).

Archaeologist Nevo and researcher Judith Koren note coins of the region and era used Byzantine -- not Islamic -- iconography until the reign of Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (646-705 CE).

Tradition tells us the Quran was composed in the early 7th century CE, but according to historian Tom Holland, "only in the 690's did a Caliph finally get around to inscribing the Prophet's name on a public monument; only decades after that did the first tentative references to him start to appear in private inscriptions". The earliest biographer whose complete work has survived is Ibn Hisham, who died in 833, 200 years after Muhammad. Of the victories over the Persian and Byzantine Empire of the first 200 years of the Islamic empire (futūḥ), "not a single record" has survived to this day. "Neither letters, nor speeches, nor journals, if they were ever so much as written, have survived; no hint as to what those who actually lived through the establishment of the Caliphate thought, or felt, or believed." (In contrast, historical records were being written "even on the most barbarous fringes of civilisation" in Dark Ages era Britain. One fragment of papyrus found that can be dated to a time relatively soon after the time of Muhammad (around 740 CE) and makes mention of a key event in the Islamic historical tradition (decisive victory of the Battle of Badr), contradicts the tradition -- indicating that the battle was not fought during Ramadan.

Examining 7th century Byzantine Christian sources commentary on the Arab "immigrants" (Mhaggraye) who were invading/settling in formerly Byzantine territory at that time, historian Abdul-Massih Saadi found the Christians never mentioned the terms "Quran" nor "Islam" nor that the immigrants were of a new religion. The Christians used secular or political, not religious terms (kings, princes, rulers) to refer to the Arab leaders. Muhammad was "the first king of the Mhaggraye", also guide, teacher, leader or great ruler. They referred to the immigrants in ethnic terms -- "among them (Arabs) there are many Christians...". They did however mention the religion of the Arabs. The immigrants' religion was described as monotheist "in accordance with the Old Law (Old Testament)". When the Emir of the immigrants and Patriarch of the local Christians did have a religious colloquium there was much discussion of the scriptures but no mention of the Quran, "a possible indication that the Quran was not yet in circulation." The Christians reported the Emir was accompanied by "learned Jews", that the immigrants "accepted the Torah just as the Jews and Samaritans", though none of the sources described the immigrants as Jews. The Byzantine Christians did mention "First and Second Civil Wars" among "Arab political and tribal factions" which they saw as destroying the immigrants.

Nevo and Koren argue early Christian sources do not mention the "rightly guided caliphs" nor any of the famous futūḥ battles (i.e. the early Arab-Muslim conquests which facilitated the spread of Islam and Islamic civilization).

Cook and Crone believe hints from the Quran are more reliable the narrative of tafsir, sira and hadith and that (as mentioned above) they believe the evidence from the Quran indicates an area around the south Dead Sea and not Mecca and Medina of Hijaz were the area Muhammad lived in. Wansbrough claims that Islamic traditions were often created (i.e. fabricated) "to demonstrate the Hijazi origins of Islam."

Michael Cook argues Jerusalem, not Mecca, is the geographic focus of Muhammad's religious movement rather than just the area Muslims first expanded into after establishing control of Mecca. Cook cites an Armenian chronicler of the era who writes that Muhammad told the Arabs that "as descendants of Abraham through Ishmael, they too had a claim" to Palestine, which "God had promised the to Abraham and his seed".

Scholar Gerd R. Puin claims that 20% of the Quran "simply doesn't make sense" and thinks this one fifth could not have been "understood even at the time of Muhammad".

Also problematic is the reliability of isnads, i.e. the chains of people who transmitted a hadith from Muhammad to when it was collected by a compiler (such as Muhammad al-Bukhari, or Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj), and have been an important part of evidence for dating the Quran from the time of Muhammad. But as mentioned above, the phenomenon of commentaries on Islamic history becoming larger and more informative the farther away they were from the time they wrote about does not inspire confidence in their historical accuracy; and according to Stephen Humphreys, while a number of "very capable" modern scholars defended the general authenticity of isnads, most modern scholars regard isnads with "deep suspicion".

The Quran is the highest ranking source of sharia (Islamic law), according to Islamic teaching, but some aspects of sharia seem to ignore or contradict the Quran. The most notable example of this conflict is that the traditional, universally accepted punishment for zina (adultery) under sharia was stoning to death (rajm), yet Michael Cook point out that the Quran clearly states the perpetrators should be given 100 lashes and says nothing about stoning.

• 24:2 — The [zina committing] woman or [zina committing] man found guilty of sexual intercourse — lash each one of them with a hundred lashes.

An earlier Western scholar, Joseph Schacht, also noted that Sharia "often diverged from the intentions and even the explicit wording of the Koran", and that his evidence showed the law "did not derive directly from the Koran but developed ... out of popular and administrative practice under the Umayyads" (661-750 CE). "Norms derived from the Koran were introduced into Muhammadan law [i.e. sharia] almost invariably at a secondary stage."

Questions of Quranic studies

According to scholar Fred Donner, while it is generally agreed the Quran was intended as "a source of religious and moral guidance" for its readers, "we simply do not know ... things so basic" about the Quran as

How did [it] originate? Where did it come from, and when did it first appear? How was it first written? In what kind of language was -- is -- it written? What form did it first take? Who constituted its first audience? How was it transmitted form one generation to another, especially in its early years? When, how and by whom was it codified?

Was there is "some kind of original version" of the Quran ("Ur-Quran") that today's Quran can "be traced back to"? or was the Quran created gradually, eventually "crystallizing"?

The Islamic historical tradition says there was an original version, which is the same as the current Mus'haf. Traditionally Orientalist scholars also thought there was an original version, though they thought it was possible that "minor" changes may developed between the Ur-Quran and the Mus'haf. Revisionists such as Günter Lüling and John Burton also agree that there was a "prototype text", though Lüling does not think it is from the time of Muhammad. Disagreeing are John Wansbrough and his "followers" such as Andrew Rippin and G. R. Hawting who believe the Quran was "pieced together" over two centuries "or more" in a "long slow process of crystallization".

Where did it come from?

Mecca and then Medina in the Hijaz according to tradition. Wansbrough thinks it was in Abbasid Mesopotamia. Crone and Cook and Tom Holland believe the Quran's mention of closeness to the remains of Lot's people (Q.37:137-8) and wheat, grapes and olives crops indicate southern Palestine.

If there was an original version, what was its "nature"? Christian? Jewish? Oral? some combination?

A source of religious and moral guidance for its audience, but was it Islam as we know it today? Abraham Geiger,C.C. Torrey, argued for a Jewish nature. Tor Andræ and Günter Lüling saw Christianity influencing Islam. Andrew G. Bannister has asked whether the Quran was not just recited by believers but "composed orally", due to its resemblance to orally transmitted literature like epic poems.

"What "kind of language did it represent? And what was the relationship between the written text and that language?" The same Quranic Arabic written and spoken today? Or one of the Arab dialects? poetic Koiné Arabic? Or Arabic combined with Syriac?

The Islamic historical tradition says Arabic, but was it instead "a purely literary vehicle" not intended to represent the sound of a spoken language (like hànzì characters of Chinese)? Did it reflect the dialect of the Quraysh tribe? poetic Koiné language of the Bedouin? Or a mixture of Arabic and an earlier language of Syriac?

"How was it transmitted?" Both orally and in writing? Or was oral transmission lost for a period of time?

By written notes and oral recitation with nothing lost or added in the recension process (nothing that God did not want lost at least) according to the Islamic historical tradition. But could was there have been editing to completely transform the Ur-Quran? And could it (or parts of it) have been transmitted only by written form at some stage in its history? (see: Possible written without oral transmission below)

"How and when did codification and canonization of the Quran take place?" codification a couple of decades after canonization? More than a century later? At the same time?

Canonized, i.e. given authority in the Muslim community from the very beginning, but codified into the Muṣẖaf with the "Uthmanic recession" in the mid 7th century CE, according to historical tradition. John Wansbrough says much later -- 200 + years after Muhammad; John Burton believes earlier than tradition, upon Muhammad's death.

Preexisting sources

Mary shaking the palm tree for dates is a legend derived from the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew.

Quran and History [existing section

Main article: Biblical and Quranic narratives

Creation narrative and the Flood [existing subsection]

Main article: Islamic views on evolution

The Quran contains a creation narrative and refers to the world being created in six days. In Sūrah al-Anbiyāʼ, the Quran states that "the heavens and the earth were of one piece" before being parted. God then created the landscape of the earth, placed the sky above it as a roof, and created the day and night cycles by appointing an orbit for both the sun and moon. Some Muslim apologists, like Zakir Naik and Adnan Oktar advocate creationism. Some British Muslim students have distributed leaflets on campus, advocating against Darwin's theory of evolution and contemporary Islamic scholar Yasir Qadhi believes that the idea that humans evolved is against the Quran. It has to be noted, however, that not all Muslims are against the theory of evolution. Evolution is taught in many Islamic countries, and some scholars have tried to reconcile the Quran and evolution.

Quran also contains the flood narrative. According to the Quran, Noah was a prophet for 950 years, and he built an ark where he filled it with pairs of animals. People who did not believe him, including one of his own sons, are said to have drowned.

Samiri [existing subsection]

Quran recounts a story of the golden calf, where it mentions that Samiri, a rebellious follower of Moses, created the calf while Moses was away for 40 days on Mount Sinai, receiving the Ten Commandments. Due to the fact that as-Samiri can mean the Samaritan, some believe that his character is a reference to the worship of the golden calves built by Jeroboam of Samaria, conflating the two idol-worshiping incidents into one.

Alexander the Great legends [existing subsection]

Silver tetradrachm of Alexander the Great shown wearing the horns of the ram-god Zeus-Ammon.

Main article: Alexander the Great in the Quran

Main article: Dhul-Qarnayn

Quran also employs popular legends about Alexander the Great called Dhul-Qarnayn ("he of the two horns") in the Quran. The story of Dhul-Qarnayn has its origins in legends of Alexander the Great current in the Middle East in the early years of the Christian era. According to these the Scythians, the descendants of Gog and Magog, once defeated one of Alexander's generals, upon which Alexander built a wall in the Caucasus mountains to keep them out of civilised lands (the basic elements are found in Flavius Josephus). The legend went through much further elaboration in subsequent centuries before eventually finding its way into the Quran through a Syrian version.

The reasons behind the name "Two-Horned" are somewhat obscure: the scholar al-Tabari (839-923 CE) held it was because he went from one extremity ("horn") of the world to the other, but it may ultimately derive from the image of Alexander wearing the horns of the ram-god Zeus-Ammon, as popularised on coins throughout the Hellenistic Near East. The wall Dhul-Qarnayn builds on his northern journey may have reflected a distant knowledge of the Great Wall of China (the 12th century scholar al-Idrisi drew a map for Roger of Sicily showing the "Land of Gog and Magog" in Mongolia), or of various Sassanid Persian walls built in the Caspian area against the northern barbarians, or a conflation of the two.

Dhul-Qarneyn also journeys to the western and eastern extremities ("qarns", tips) of the Earth. In the west he finds the sun setting in a "muddy spring", equivalent to the "poisonous sea" which Alexander found in the Syriac legend. In the Syriac original Alexander tested the sea by sending condemned prisoners into it, but the Quran changes this into a general administration of justice. In the east both the Syrian legend and the Quran have Alexander/Dhul-Qarneyn find a people who live so close to the rising sun that they have no protection from its heat.

"Qarn" also means "period" or "century", and the name Dhul-Qarnayn therefore has a symbolic meaning as "He of the Two Ages", the first being the mythological time when the wall is built and the second the age of the end of the world when Allah's shariah, the divine law, is removed and Gog and Magog are to be set loose. Modern Islamic apocalyptic writers, holding to a literal reading, put forward various explanations for the absence of the wall from the modern world, some saying that Gog and Magog were the Mongols and that the wall is now gone, others that both the wall and Gog and Magog are present but invisible.

Death of Jesus [existing subsection]

Payrus of Irenaeus' Against Heresies, which describes early Gnostic beliefs about Jesus' death which influenced Islam.

Main article: Islamic views on Jesus' death

Quran maintains that Jesus was not actually crucified and did not die on the cross. The general Islamic view supporting the denial of crucifixion was probably influenced by Manichaenism (Docetism), which holds that someone else was crucified instead of Jesus, while concluding that Jesus will return during the end-times.

That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah";- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not:-
Nay, Allah raised him up unto Himself; and Allah is Exalted in Power, Wise;-

— Qur'an, sura 4 (An-Nisa) ayat 157–158

Despite these views, scholars have maintained, that the Crucifixion of Jesus is a fact of history and not disputed. The view that Jesus only appeared to be crucified and did not actually die predates Islam, and is found in several apocryphal gospels.

Irenaeus in his book Against Heresies describes Gnostic beliefs that bear remarkable resemblance with the Islamic view:

He did not himself suffer death, but Simon, a certain man of Cyrene, being compelled, bore the cross in his stead; so that this latter being transfigured by him, that he might be thought to be Jesus, was crucified, through ignorance and error, while Jesus himself received the form of Simon, and, standing by, laughed at them. For since he was an incorporeal power, and the Nous (mind) of the unborn father, he transfigured himself as he pleased, and thus ascended to him who had sent him, deriding them, inasmuch as he could not be laid hold of, and was invisible to all.-

— Against Heresies, Book I, Chapter 24, Section 40

Irenaeus mentions this view again:

He appeared on earth as a man and performed miracles. Thus he himself did not suffer. Rather, a certain Simon of Cyrene was compelled to carry his cross for him. It was he who was ignorantly and erroneously crucified, being transfigured by him, so that he might be thought to be Jesus. Moreover, Jesus assumed the form of Simon, and stood by laughing at them. Irenaeus, Against Heresies.

Another Gnostic writing, found in the Nag Hammadi library, Second Treatise of the Great Seth has a similar view of Jesus' death:

I was not afflicted at all, yet I did not die in solid reality but in what appears, in order that I not be put to shame by them

and also:

Another, their father, was the one who drank the gall and the vinegar; it was not I. Another was the one who lifted up the cross on his shoulder, who was Simon. Another was the one on whom they put the crown of thorns. But I was rejoicing in the height over all the riches of the archons and the offspring of their error and their conceit, and I was laughing at their ignorance

Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, likewise, reveals the same views of Jesus' death:

I saw him (Jesus) seemingly being seized by them. And I said 'What do I see, O Lord? That it is you yourself whom they take, and that you are grasping me? Or who is this one, glad and laughing on the tree? And is it another one whose feet and hands they are striking?' The Savior said to me, 'He whom you saw on the tree, glad and laughing, this is the living Jesus. But this one into whose hands and feet they drive the nails is his fleshly part, which is the substitute being put to shame, the one who came into being in his likeness. But look at him and me.' But I, when I had looked, said 'Lord, no one is looking at you. Let us flee this place.' But he said to me, 'I have told you, 'Leave the blind alone!'. And you, see how they do not know what they are saying. For the son of their glory instead of my servant, they have put to shame.' And I saw someone about to approach us resembling him, even him who was laughing on the tree. And he was with a Holy Spirit, and he is the Savior. And there was a great, ineffable light around them, and the multitude of ineffable and invisible angels blessing them. And when I looked at him, the one who gives praise was revealed.

Main article: Biblical and Quranic narratives

Similarities with Jewish and Christian Narratives

In dealing with the question of the origins of the Quran, non-Muslim historian have often focused on Christian and Jewish sources.

The Quran contains references to more than fifty people and events also found in the Bible (including Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Lot, Moses, Saul, David and Goliath, Jonah, Jesus, Mary. Moses, is mentioned 135 times Moses is mentioned in 502 verses in 36 surahs, Abraham in 245 verses, Noah in 131.

The Quran and Bible differ on a number of narrative and theological issues. There is no original sin in the Quran; it specifically denies the Christian Trinity of three persons in one God, holding that the Holy Spirit is actually the angel Gabriel;(2:97; 16:102) it denies that Jesus is the son of God (9:30), was crucified (4:157) and died, or rose from the dead. The Devil, Satan (Shaitan), is regarded as a jinn in most contemporary scholarship (2:34; 7:12; 15:27; 55:15).

Muslims believe the Quran refers to figures, prophets, and events in Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament because these books are predecessors of the Quran, also revealed by the one true omnipotent God. The differences between two books and the Quran can be explained (Muslims believed) by the flawed processes of transmission and interpretation of the Bible and New Testament, distorting revelation that the Quran provides free from any distortions and corruptions.

Non-Muslim historians -- secular but also Jewish and Christian -- in keeping with Occam's razor, have looked for simpler, non-divine/non-supernatural explanations for the connection (that is, in Islam terminology, dealing with shahada, i.e. what can be perceived, described, and studied; and not with the unseen al-Ghaib, made known only by divine revelation). Many stories of the Muhammad hearing about Christianity from Christians and Judaism from Jews come from Muslim sources.

Western academic scholars who have studied "the relationship between the Quran and the Judaeo-Christian scriptural tradition" include Abraham Geiger, Tor Andræ, Richard Bell, and Charles Cutler Torrey.

Jewish influence

In the 19th century, Abraham Geiger argued for Jewish influence on the formation of the Quran, as did C.C. Torrey even more forcefully in the early 20th Century. Micheal Cook believes Muhammad "owed more to Judiasm than to Christianity", and mentions a "fusion" of Jewish-based "monotheism with Arab identity" in Palestine prior to Islam. According to a fifth-century Christian writer -- Sozomen -- some "Saracen" (Arab) tribes rediscovered their "Ishmaelite descent" after coming into contact with Jews and had adopted Jewish laws and customs. (This source has been cited by Michael Cook, Patricia Crone, Irfan Shahid and Rubin Although there is no evidence to show "a direct link" between these Arabs and Muhammad, it is a milieu where Quranic material could "have come into existence" before Muhammad.

Several narratives rely on Jewish Midrash Tanhuma legends, like the narrative of Cain learning to bury the body of Abel in Surah 5:31. Wansbrough seees "similarieties with usages fo the cognate Hebrew words in the Pentateuch and, especially, the later prophets".

Ibn Warraq compares the similarities of Muhammad of Islam and Moses of the Jews. Both bearers of revelation (Pentateuch v. Quran), both receiving revelation on a mountain (Mount Sinai v. Mt. Hira), leading their people to escape persecution (Exodus vs. Hijra).

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, "The dependence of Mohammed upon his Jewish teachers or upon what he heard of the Jewish Haggadah and Jewish practices is now generally conceded." Early jurists and theologians of Islam mentioned some Jewish influence but they also say where it is seen and recognized as such, it is perceived as a debasement or a dilution of the authentic message. Bernard Lewis describes this as "something like what in Christian history was called a Judaizing heresy." According to Professor Moshe Sharon, specialist in Arabic epigraphy, the legends about Muhammad having ten Jewish teachers developed in the 10th century CE:

"In most versions of the legends, ten Jewish wise men or dignitaries appear, who joined Muhammad and converted to Islam for different reasons. In reading all the Jewish texts one senses the danger of extinction of the Jewish people; and it was this ominous threat that induced these Sages to convert..."

Non-orthodox Jewish influence

According to G.R. Hawting, among the scholars believe the Jewish breakaway sect of Samaritanism may have influenced Muhammad in the Quran are Joshua Finkel, Michael Cook and Patricia Crone.</ref> In their book Hagarism, Michael Cook and Patricia Crone postulate that a number of features of Islam may have been borrowed from the Samaritanism: "the idea of a scripture limited to the Pentateuch, a prophet like Moses (i.e. Muhammad), a holy book revealed like the Torah (the Quran), a sacred city (Mecca) with a nearby mountain (Jabal an-Nour -- the Samaratan mountain being Mount Gerizim) and shrine (the Kaaba) of an appropriate patriarch (Abraham), plus a caliphate modeled on an Aaronid priesthood."

Another sect that some scholars believe may have influenced the Quran (according to Hawting) was one related to the group who were responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls. were D.A. Schlatter and Hans Joachim Schoeps

Christian

Tor Andræ, saw Christian "Nestorians of Yemen, monophysites of Ethiopia and especially ... Syrian pietism" influencing Islam". Richard Carrier regards the reliance on pre-Islamic Christian sources as evidence that Islam derived from a heretical sect of Christianity.

Scholar Oddbjørn Leirvik states "The Qur'an and Hadith have been clearly influenced by the non-canonical ('heretical') Christianity that prevailed in the Arab peninsula and further in Abyssinia" prior to Islam. H.A.R. Gibb states that many of the details in the description of Judgement Day, Heaven, and Hell and some vocabulary "are closely paralleled in the writings of the Syriac Christian fathers and monks."

Tom Holland thinks it notable that some doctrines that the Quran mentions in association with Christianity -- that Jesus did not died on the cross (which came from the Gospel of Basilides and is accepted by virtually no Christians) that he was a mortal man and not divine (held by the heretical Ebionites), that the mother of Jesus is divine (which came from the Nazorean Gospel denounced by Saint Jerome and is also supported by virtually no Christians) -- come not only from Christian heresies, but ones that had not been heard from in the heartland of Christianity for some time by the 7th century CE when the Quran was revealed.

Trinity

In Islam, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity -- that God is a single being but three distinct persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit -- is a violation of monotheism (Quran 9:1–15). It is shirk (giving partners to God), and not only a sin but a major al-Kaba'ir sin. Some Christian missionaries who study Islam argue the Quran mistakenly thought that Christians worshiped three gods (Sura 5:73-75), but also mistakenly believed one of the beings of the trinity was Mother (Mary) rather than the Holy Spirit (Sura 5:116).

However, historian Tom Holland suggests a somewhat different theory. He notes that uses the Quran uses the term "Nasara" when talking about Christians, a name Christians themselves did not use, but is similar to "Nazorean", the name of a small Christian sect mentioned by Saint Jerome. A doctrine found in the Nazorean Gospel (that Saint Jerome and other Christians strongly disapproved of) was that the Holy Spirit was the heavenly 'mother' of Christ" (the Virgin Mary not being mentioned). Holland believes this may be alluded to in verse 5:116 where Allah questions Jesus as to whether he told "the people", 'Take me and my mother as deities besides Allah?'" and has Jesus vehemently denying it, ("It was not for me to say that to which I have no right"). While mainstream Christians believed neither that Mary was part of the trinity, nor that the Holy Ghost was the mother of Jesus, this would have made sense as a reaction to Nazorean teaching.

Another variation from Nicene or conventional Christianity in the Quran was the doctrine that Jesus was mortal not divine. Holland quotes Epiphanius, another fighter of heresy in the Christian church, who wrote that a heretical teacher by the name of Ebion who blended Judaism and Samaritanism and held that Jesus was not the son of God, but a man who obeyed the law of Moses and who "turned in the direction of Jerusalem" when performing his daily prayers.

Confusion of Mary, mother of Jesus with Miriam daughter of Amran, sister of Moses

When looking at the narratives of Jesus found in the Quran, some themes are found in pre-Islamic sources such as the Infancy Gospels about Christ. The narration of the baby Jesus speaking from the cradle can be traced back to the Arabic Infancy Gospel, and the miracle of the bringing clay birds to life being found in The Infancy Story of Thomas.

Much of the qur'anic material about the selection and upbringing of Mary parallels much of the Protovangelium of James, with the miracle of the palm tree and the stream of water being found in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. In Pseudo-Matthew, the flight to Egypt is narrated similarly to how it is found in Islamic lore, with Syriac translations of the Protoevangelium of James and The Infancy Story of Thomas being found in pre-Islamic sources.

John Wansbrough believes that the Quran is a redaction in part of other sacred scriptures, in particular the Judaeo-Christian scriptures. Herbert Berg writes that "Despite John Wansbrough's very cautious and careful inclusion of qualifications such as 'conjectural,' and 'tentative and emphatically provisional', his work is condemned by some. Some of the negative reaction is undoubtedly due to its radicalness... Wansbrough's work has been embraced wholeheartedly by few and has been employed in a piecemeal fashion by many. Many praise his insights and methods, if not all of his conclusions." Gerd R. Puin's study of ancient Quran manuscripts led him to conclude that the Quran is a "cocktail of texts", some of which may have been present a hundred years before Muhammad. Norman Geisler argues that the dependence of the Quran on preexisting sources is one evidence of a purely human origin.

Ibn Ishaq, an Arab Muslim historian and hagiographer who collected oral traditions that formed the basis of the important biography of Muhammad, also claimed that as a result of these discussions, the Qur'an was revealed addressing all these arguments – leading to the conclusion that Muhammad may have incorporated Judeo-Christian tales he had heard from other people. For example, in al-Sirah an-Nabawiyyah (an edited version of Ibn Ishaq's original work), Ibn Hishām's report

explains that the Prophet used often to sit at the hill of Marwa inviting a Christian...but they actually also would have had some resources with which to teach the Prophet. ...saw the Prophet speaking with him, they said: "Indeed, he is being taught by Abu Fukayha Yasar." According to another version: "The apostle used often to sit at al-Marwa at the booth of a young Christian slave Jabr, slave of the Banu l-Hadrami, and they used to say: 'The one who teaches Muhammad most of what he brings is Jabr the Christian, slave of the Banu l-Hadrami."

A study of informant reports by Claude Gilliot concluded with "the possibility that whole sections of the Meccan Quran contains elements" from or within groups possessing Biblical, post-Biblical and other sources. One such report (coming from "renowned" exegete Muqatil bin Sulayman Tafsir al-Quran, 2, 487) and likely informant of Muhammad was the Christian slave mentioned in Sahih Bukhari whom Ibn Ishaq named as Jabr for which the Quran's chapter 16: 101-104 was probably revealed. Waqidi names this Christian as Ibn Qumta, with his identity and religious affiliation being contradicted in informant reports. Ibn Ishaq also recounts the story of how three Christians, Abu Haritha Ibn `Alqama, Al-`Aqib `Abdul-Masih and Al-Ayham al-Sa`id, spoke to Muhammad regarding such Christian subjects as the Trinity.

Muhammad's first wife Khadija "had read the ancient writings and knew the history of the prophets, and also the name of Gabriel" according to Balami (d.363/974) "Persian abridgment of the Annals of Tabari" Khadija also had a cousin Waraqa bin Nawfal who was a Christian and who and read the scriptures she took Muhammad to meet and who proclaimed Muhammad a prophet according to Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah, 107

In the 1970s, revisionist historian Günter Lüling argued that the Quran contains earlier Christian writings and that aproximately one-third of the Quran has pre-Islamic Christian origins (specifically is a Christian hymnal). Crone and Cook in their book Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, argued that Muhammad's movement started with an alliance between local Jews and Arabs.

Stories related in the Quran usually focus more on the spiritual significance of events than details. The stories are generally comparable, but sometimes differ from the bible, such as on Jesus' crucifixion.

See also: Wahy, Quran and miracles, and Legends and the Quran

According to Arthur Jeffery numerous early Islamic texts mention Muhammad's contacts with both Syrian and Arabian Christians COPYRIGHT

Crucifixion

Main article: Islamic views on Jesus' death

Quran mentions the crucifixion of Jesus described in the Christian bible but maintains that Jesus was not actually crucified and did not die on the cross.

That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah";- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not:-
Nay, Allah raised him up unto Himself; and Allah is Exalted in Power, Wise;-

— Qur'an, sura 4 (An-Nisa) ayat 157–158

The general Islamic view supporting the denial of crucifixion was probably influenced by Manichaenism (Docetism), which holds that someone else was crucified instead of Jesus, while concluding that Jesus will return during the end-times.

Despite these views, there is little dispute among scholars of the Crucifixion of Jesus. According to Paul Eddy and Gregory Boyd, "...if there is any fact of Jesus' life that has been established by a broad consensus, it is the fact of Jesus' crucifixion."

Christoph Luxenberg's theory of Syriac origin

The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran by Christoph Luxenberg (psuedonym) postulates that the Quran was substantially derived from Syriac Christian liturgy, Syriac lectionaries used in Christian churches of Syria, and that it was the work of several generations who adapted these texts into the Quran we know today. He argues that many "obscure" portions become clear when they are back-translated and interpreted as Syriacisms. An example is verse 37:103, considered to be about Ibrahim's sacrifice of his son, reads when translated into English from Arabic:

• And when they had both submitted and he put him down upon his forehead. But using Syriac instead of Arabic for almost the same Arabic rasm, he put him down upon his forehead, changes the meaning to he tied him to the firewood".

Ancient Greek influence

It has been suggested by Walid Saleh that the Quranic reference to eternally boyish cup-bearers, "handsome like hidden pearls" (Quran 52:24), and the "lovely eyed" houri(Quran 56:22–23) as a reward for the faithful in heaven, may have come from legends of the head Greek god Zeus who was said to have "an exquisitely pearl-like youth" (Ganymede) bearing his cup and a wife (Hera) with beautiful large-eyes. Saleh suggests that in general, the "joyful" emphasis on the pleasures of heaven in the Quran "is more akin the lives of the gods of Olympus than to the asceticism and sensibilities of late antique Christianity", and may be because the pre-Islamic Arabs "were the last upholders of paganism" and likely familiar with the pagan Greek myths.

Legends/parables

Main article: Legends and the Quran

One legend/story recounted in the Quran concerns,

• The story of "the two-horned one" (Quran 18:83–102) tells of the journeys of Dhu l-Qarnayn -- generally thought to be the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great -- to "the setting of the sun" (Q.18:85–88), the place of the rising of the sun (18:89–91), a place threatened by Yajuj and Majuj, where he is asked to build a protective wall, his giving a prophecy (18:92–98), and ending with God's warning of ominous future events (18:99–102). At least one scholar (Kevin van Bladel) finds striking similarities between the verses and a Syriac legend thought to be written as propaganda for Roman Emperor Heraclius which van Bladel dates to before Muhammad's death. The Syriac legend matches many of the details of the verses as well as making sense of them (at roughly 20 page it is much longer than the 20 verses). Van Bladel finds it more plausible that the Syriac legend is the source of the Quranic verses than vice versa, as the Syriac legend was written when the Hijazi Muslim community was still little known to the Mesopotamian site of the legend's creation, whereas Arabs worked as troops and scouts for Romans during the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 and could have been exposed to the legend.

Folklorist Alan Dundes has noted three legends/parables/tales in the Quran that fit the pattern of folktales included in the Aarne–Thompson classification system of folklore narratives of (primarily) Europe and Western Asia (and he believes predate the Quran):

• "The Seven Sleepers" (Quran 18:9–25), where seven believers seek refuge in a cave from pagans threatening them with death, fall asleep for three hundred years, fits Aarne-Thompson story type 766; (Christians celebrated the "Seven Sleepers of Ephesus" as a miracle of Christians escaping pagan persecution and the Roman church celebrated its feast day on 27 July. The earliest version of this story pre-date the Quran and come from the Syrian bishop Jacob of Serugh (c. 450 – 521).
• The story of Al-Khidr and Moses (Quran 18:65–82), where a servant of God (Al-Khidr) is followed and questioned by Moses about his many apparently unjust or inappropriate actions (sinking a ship, killing a young man, repaying inhospitality by repairing a wall) that Al-Khidr later explains are actually fully justified because of circumstances unknown to Moses (preventing capture of the ship, murder of parents, etc.). This parable fits Aarne-Thompson 759 "The Angel and the Hermit" where a hermit plays a role similar to that of Moses and an angel to that of Al-Khidr. and is thought to have origins in a Jewish legend pre-dating the Quran.
• The story of Solomon and the ant (Quran 27:16–19) — where the Jewish king Solomon has been taught the language of animals and overhears an ant warning his fellow ants to take shelter from Solomon's approaching army — fits Aarne-Thompson 670, "The Animal Languages". (Among the versions of a story where a king overhears a conversation of insects is a Buddhist one from the Third Century CE.)

While Dundes agrees these stories appear to uphold the unbelievers criticism in the Quran that it (the Quran) contains `ancient fables,` he defends his claim, asking:

`What's wrong with that?` The presence of ancient fables in the Quran (and in the Bible) in no way diminishes the religious or moral value of these great sacred documents. Quite the contrary, the presence of folklore is a guarantee of their basic humanity, and, if one chooses to believe so, their divine character."

Compilation and redaction of Uthman Codex

*Rasm (in black) was the only script found in the earliest surviving fragments of the Quran, including Uthman's codex. There are only 18 "letters" of rasm so many consonant sounds share the same letter.
*I‘jām or nuqat al-I'jam (examples in red) was added in later arabic (possibly around 700 CE) so that consonants letters such as ـبـ ـتـ ـثـ ـنـ ـيـ (y, n, th, t, b) could be distinguished. This provides a "consonantal skeleton" that is sufficient for most educated Arab readers. (y in arabic can be both the consonant y and the long vowel ee.)
*Ḥarakāt or nuqaṭ ali'rab (examples in blue) indicate short vowels. These are not found in most written arabic, but are in (today's) Quran. They were added to the arabic language even later than I'jam, around "the first half of the tenth century", according to Gerhard Böwering.
(The phrase illustrating the markings is from Al-Fatiha, the first surah of the Quran, is pronounced Alhamdu lillaahi Rabbil 'aalameen and translated as "Praise to Allah, Lord of the worlds".)

The script of Uthman Codex of the Quran is more likely to use this Hijazi script (from the Sanaʽa manuscript), than the Naskh script used above.

Traditional account of compilation

According to the tradition Islamic account of the compilation of the Quran, following the death of Muhammad the Quran ceased to be revealed, and companions who had memorized the Quran began to die off (particularly after the Battle of Yamama in 633). Worried that parts of the Quran might irretrievably lost, senior companion Umar urged Caliph Abu Bakr to order the collection of the pieces of the Quran which had hitherto been scattered among "palm-leaf stalks, thin white stones, ... [and] men who knew it by heart, ..." put them together.

Some years later (around 644 CE) as the Islamic empire spread and conflict arose from "divergences in Quranic recitation" that appeared among the now larger and more diverse Muslim population, Caliph Uthman (644–656 CE) thought it necessary to make one standard and official Quran (i.e. to codify the Quran). A committee of five copied the scraps into a single volume, "monitoring the text as they went", resolving disagreements about verses, tracking down a lost verse. This muṣḥaf -- that became know as the "Uthmanic codex" -- was finished around 650 CE, (the date was not recorded by early Arab annalists), whereupon Uthman issued an order for all other existing personal and individual copies and dialects of the Quran (known as Ahruf) to be burnt:

According to part of a hadith from Sahih al-Bukhari,

... 'Uthman sent to every Muslim province one copy of what they had copied, and ordered that all the other Quranic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt. ...^{[Bukhari Sahih al-Bukhari, 6:61:510]}

After the variant maṣḥaf copies were ordered destroyed, there were still differences in "readings" of the Quran still cropped up. In the 10th century, scholar Abu Bakr Ibn Mujāhid canonized one system of consonants (one rasm) and limited the variation of vowels (Ḥarakāt, see above) to seven different recognised schools of Qira'at (recitation).

Today, "for all practical purposes", one Quranic version is in "general use" in the Muslim world — an Egyptian standard edition of the Qur'an originally "produced in 1924". It is a descendant of one of the readings of the Quran — namely the reading of Ḥafṣ (d 190/805) for the reading of ʾĀṣim (d.127/744)) (or going back even farther to 'Ali ibn Abi-Talib according to one scholar). Thus (Muslims believe), the official Uthman compilation, carefully collected and redacted by followers -- at least some of whom had learned it at the time of the revelation, committed it to memory and recited it regularly -- has been scrupulously preserved for 1400 odd years until the present day.

The view that the Quran authentically attests to what Muhammad taught, and "expressed in his own words" during his mission in Mecca and Medina is supported by some Western academics as well as Muslims. F. E. Peters states that no "significant variants" have been found from Uthman's standard edition of the Quran in the partial versions found by researchers, and claims by some Muslims who allege "tampering with the original texts" in the making of Uthaman's standard edition, is "so patently tendentious that "few" have been convinced. The French scholar Theodor Noldeke wrote (before 1930): “The efforts of European Scholars to prove the existence of later interpolations in the Holy Quran have failed.” Richard Bell, W. M. Watt assert that "modern study of the Quran has not in fact raised any serious question of its authenticity. The style varies, but is almost unmistakable."

Furthermore, studies of early Quranic manuscripts, "appear to suggest" the Quran was codified "around the time of its traditional historical date", according to Gabriel Said Reynolds. thus (according to Muslim convert and scholar Joseph Lumbard) "render[ing] the vast majority of Western revisionist theories regarding the historical origins of the Quran untenable". Some have Uthman's predecessor Caliph Umar collecting bits of the Quran and creating a codex. In other narratives Umar only assembles what his predecessor Abu Bakr had collected. And in some Abu Bakr assembles a codex from bits collected in the time of the Prophet.

Which of these narratives is true matters because the earlier the Quran was compiled the less time there was for its source material to have been lost or altered; a concern (Cook believes) if you consider the admonition of the son of Umar: "Let none of you say that he has the whole Quran in his possession. ... Much of the Quran has gone." (Pious Muslims argue Ibn ‘Umar is referring to verses deliberately abrogated (naskh) by God, not lost.)

Despite Uthman's order to burn all other codices, some older ones with variant rasm apparently survived "well into the 4th century"; and even among those using the Uthman codex more than one "reading" of the text are possible because it did not include diacritical or vowel markings. (see illustration above).

Problems with fixed text by mid 7th century

Cook argues that a number of issues indicate that the text of the Quran was "not yet as firmly fixed in the decades after Uthman as it came to be later". He writes of a verse found in an "early theological epistle" circa 700 CE that quoted a Quranic verse similar to, but not the same as two other verse in the Uthmanic codex, and in a codex attributed to Abdullah ibn Masud yet another verse not found in the Uthmanic codex that is slightly different from the first three. Coins from the Islamic empire dated 698 or 699 CE is inscribed with a "somewhat deviant" version of Q.9:33. Fragments from the 7th or late 6th century Sanaʽa manuscript have a "considerably greater ... range of variants", though again not deviating in character from the Uthman muṣḥaf.

Charles Adams states,

It must be emphasized that far from there being a single text passed down inviolate from the time of Uthman's commission, literally thousands of variant readings of particular verses were known in the first three (Muslim) centuries [622-922 CE]. These variants affected even the Uthmanic codex, making it difficult to know what its true form may have been.

The eight volume collection of variants, Mu'jam al-qira'at al-qur'aniyyah, contains over ten thousand different "readings" of the Quran. While in most of these the variations are only of diacritical marks, "about a thousand are variants of or deviations in the rasm", according to Ibn Warraq. In the contemporary world, three variants have circulation, Warsh (d.812) from Nafi of Medina, Hafs (d.805) from Asim of Kufa, and al-Duri (d.860) from Abu Amr of Basra. Of the three, "Hafs from Asim" dominates everywhere in the Muslim world except North Africa). Charles Adams calls the differences "real and substantial", Muslim scholar Alfred Guillaume, "not always trifling in significance".

Codification time controversy

Fred Donner argues that (as of 2008) there is evidence for both the hypotheses that the Quran was codified earlier than the standard narrative and for codification later. The large numbers of qira'at or variant readings of the Quran. ... multiple recensions of each of the fourteen collections of variants stemming from early "regional traditions" of Medina, Kufa, Basra, Syria, etc. While many of the variants vary only by "voweling of the text", some vary by the rasm (usually consonants) "as well". Logically then, Donner argues, the large number of qira'at means that the Quran could not have been "crystalized into a single , immutable codified form .. within one generation of Muhammad".

But Donner also says that despite the presence of "some significant variants" in the qira'at literature, there are not "long passages of otherwise wholly unknown text claiming to be Quran, or that appear to be used as Quran -- only variations within a text that is clearly recognizable as a version of a known Quranic passage". Revisionist historian Michael Cook also states that the Quran "as we know it", is "remarkably uniform" in the rasm.

Examining early manuscripts

An examinations of textual variants in small sections (specifically, six verses in surah 14 (35-41)) of 22 of the earliest Quranic manuscripts analysing "orthographic variants involving long vowels, copyist mistakes, diacritical mark variants and variants affecting grammar, rasm (i.e. consonantal) variants, variant verse divisions, physical corrections to manuscripts."

In his book, Small states:

"'Though Muslims may take pride in the fidelity of the preservation of this text, it does not reproduce precisely what was originally considered to be the Qur'an in the early seventh century. Because of the standardizations of the text in 653-705/33-86 AH and 936/324 AH, together with the constant pressure throughout Islamic history to have one text match their dogma, many texts which had equally good claims to containing authentic readings were suppressed and destroyed. And, because of the emphasis on oral transmission and the vagaries of Arabic as it developed, the written text was constantly vocalized in new ways which did not preserve the original vocalization. The original vocalization must have been lost very early on if it did indeed exist. While bearing testimony to the careful preservation of one particular consonantal text, the history of the transmission of the text of the Qur'an is at least as much a testament to the destruction of Qur'an material as it is to its preservation. It is also testimony to the fact that there never was one original text of the Qur'an.'"

According to Fred Donner Small's study of the Quranic verses demonstrates "that there was a very early attempt to establish a uniform consonantal text of the Qurʾān from what was probably a wider and more varied group of related texts in early transmission. [...] After the creation of this standardized canonical text, earlier authoritative texts were suppressed, and all extant manuscripts—despite their numerous variants—seem to date to a time after this standard consonantal text was established," Donner also states that Small's conclusions are tentative, because similar work on larger passages of the Quran may give different results.

Standard version of Uthman

Arguments against perfect preservation for 1400 years

According to John Burton, there was disagreement among the companions of Muhammad (earliest supporters of Muhammad), over the compilation of the Quran with some objecting to the form it took after Muhammad's death. (Specifically, Abdullah ibn MasudAbdullah ibn Masud, Ubay ibn Ka'b and Abu Musa al-Ash'ari objecting to the compilation done by Zayd ibn Thabit.){#tag:ref| Companions of the Prophet who were early Islamic experts disagreed among themselves, some complaining about Uthman codices and specifically Zaid ibn Thabit (who was one of the compilers of the Quran appointed by Uthman). Abdullah ibn Masud was one of four people Muhammad recommends learning the Quran from (according to two hadith related by Al-Bukhari). But in a Tabaqat (طبقات) (a book of Islamic biographical literature) written by Ibn Sa'd, Ibn Masud calls the Uthman/Zaid ibn Thabit codices a deception: “The people have been guilty of deceit in the reading of the Qur’an. I like it better to read according to the recitation of him [i.e. Muhammad] whom I love more than that of Zayd ibn Thabit.” Another source (Jami` at-Tirmidhi, one of the Kutub al-Sittah) has him declaring “O you Muslim people! Avoid copying the Mushaf and recitation of this man [Zayd ibn Thabit]," urging Muslims to keep and hide their own versions (Muṣaḥif) of the Quran. Another companion of the prophet, Ubay ibn Ka'b, known for his beautiful recitation of the Quran, believed that Zayd’s Qur’an was missing parts of several verses. Ibn Umar stated “Let none of you say, ‘I have learned the whole of the Koran,’ for how does he know what the whole of it is, when much of it has disappeared? Let him rather say, ‘I have learned what is extant thereof.’” Abu Musa al-Ash’ari also talked of forgotten surah, a long and difficult as Surah Bara’at According to Muhammad’s wife Aisha “Surat al-Ahzab (33) had 200 verses at the time of the Prophet, but only 73 verses were known when Uthmanic codex was compiled. According to another well known hadith Aishah maintains that verse on stoning adulterers and regulations for breastfeeding have been lost because their notes were eaten by a sheep. The source for the complaints above about Zaid ibn Thabit along with other hadith by companions suggesting text of the true Quran was missing or misquoted, were raised not by Burton but by Christian missionary David Wood to debunk the interpretation of 15:9 “We have, without doubt, sent down the Message; and We will assuredly guard it (from corruption)” that holds it is proof that the Qur’an has been "perfectly preserved for nearly fourteen centuries".|group=Note}}

John Burton's work The Collection of the Quran claims that disputes between schools of fiqh (human understanding of Sharia) led to the altering of the wording of certain Quranic texts.

Extant copies prior to Uthman version

See also: Early Quranic manuscripts

ALREADY USED (sentence below)

"Manuscript studies appear to suggest a date for the codification of the Quran around the time of its traditional historical date", according to Gabriel Said Reynolds

Sana'a manuscript

Sana'a manuscripts of the Qur'an

See also: Sana'a manuscript

In 1972 a "paper grave" of ancient Qur'ans in the Grand Mosque of Sana'a, Yemen was discovered – commonly known as the Sana'a manuscripts. It included tens of thousands of fragments from close to a thousand different discarded parchment codices of the Koran "of perhaps the oldest Korans in existence". The German scholar Gerd R. Puin has been investigating these Quran fragments for years. His research team "Painstakingly ... flattened, cleaned, treated, sorted, and assembled", and made 35,000 microfilm photographs of the manuscripts, which he dated to early part of the 8th century. Puin has not published the entirety of his work, but noted "small but intriguing" variances from the standard Uthmanic Quranic text -- unconventional verse orderings, minor textual variations, and rare styles of orthography. He also suggested that some of the parchments were palimpsests which had been reused. Puin believed (as of 1999) that this implied "an evolving text" as opposed to a fixed one.

Andrew Rippin (also as of 1999) agrees that "these manuscripts say that the early history of the Koranic text is much more of an open question than many have suspected: the text was less stable, and therefore had less authority, than has always been claimed."

However, according to Christopher Rose, a comparison of the consonantal skeleton of the Ṣanā’a manuscript and the standard Qur’ān, finds the structure "surprisingly intact". The variations amount to "things like shifting from third person to first person, or shifting singular to plural, or occasionally changing a pronoun."

Birmingham manuscript

See also: Birmingham Quran manuscript

In 2015, the University of Birmingham disclosed that scientific tests indicated that a Quran manuscript in its collection (known as the Birmingham Manuscript) was one of the oldest known. Using Radiocarbon dating, the date the animal used to make the parchment was killed is estimated to be between 568 and 645 CE -- slightly before the Uthmanic codex and close to the time of Muhammad. Since parchments are thought to have been used shortly after being prepared (after the animal was killed), the dating is thought to hold for the manuscript as well as the parchment. According to the New York Times, "researchers say it may have been transcribed by a contemporary of the Prophet Muhammad".

At least some Western scholars have found the findings in 2015 of the Birmingham Manuscripts to provide “further evidence for the position of the classical Islamic tradition that the Quran as it exists today is a seventh-century document.” (according to Omid Safi, of the Duke Islamic Studies Center). Joseph E. B. Lumbard commented,

These recent empirical findings are of fundamental importance. They establish that as regards the broad outlines of the history of the compilation and codification of the Quranic text, the classical Islamic sources are far more reliable than had hitherto been assumed. Such findings thus render the vast majority of Western revisionist theories regarding the historical origins of the Quran untenable.

and that the "manuscript discovery in Birmingham and the analysis of several previously discovered manuscripts" provide proof that "the Islamic historiographical and exegetical traditions have provided honest and accurate information regarding the history of the Quranic text."

Early Islamic sources, “still provide a more compelling framework for understanding the Qurʾan than any alternative yet proposed.” (Carl Ernst)

"Assuming that it isn’t a palimpsest -- and that is definitely a question -— it would put to rest the idea that the Qur’ān was authored after the middle of the seventh century. So, definitely not the 9th, definitely not the 8th" (Christopher Rose) Rose notes that there is little indication in the text of a work in flux, notes and scraps being put together. The text is "much more fully formed then we might have expected". Divisions between surahs where not added after the text was written but have titles and decorations to separate the surahs.

"Muslim accounts are much earlier and thus much nearer in time to the time of the alleged events than hitherto assumed in Western scholarship" (Harald Motzki).

Epigraphic data and historical evidence “would allow us to take most of what the Islamic sources say at face value, and it is not clear why, in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, this should not be our default position” (Nicolai Sinai of Oxford University).

Lumbard notes that as of 2015, subjecting the "extant parchment to infrared photography" allows the "under text" (original ink before the parchment was reused as a palimpsest) to be read and finds the slight variations in text and ordering of surahs (chapters) to be what was already .. recorded in the Islamic historiographical tradition," thus confirming "the accuracy of early Islamic historiography."

Too early?

While the manuscript disproves the the revisionist idea that the Quran was formed in the 8th or 9th century CE, according to some it raises the question of whether it was codified earlier than the standard Islamic account. If the carbon dating of between 568 and 645 CE "is accurate", it means that there is only a five to 10% possibility the parchment is from after 645, while the standard narrative dates the Uthmanic codex at 650. This would put in question whether it was actually Uthman who codified the Quran or "the dates of Muhammad's ministry" Islamic scholars believe Muhammad lived between 570 and 632 CE, assuming those dates are right the carbon dating indicates the text may have been "compiled either before the Prophet’s birth or during his childhood."

Even if the manuscript was from the time of Muhammad's ministry (traditionally dated from 610-632 CE) -- that is while the Quran was being revealed and within the 90% probability of the carbon dating -- it would violate the traditional history because the Quran is not organized in chronological order of when verse were revealed. Consequently, Muslim Islamic scholars such as Saud al-Sarhan{#tag:ref| Director of Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh|group=Note}} and other Saudi-based experts in Quranic history have strongly denied this early date hyppothesis. In addition some scholars (Francois Deroche) have questioned the reliability of carbon dating or stated that the early date is inconsistent with the style of the text or "graphical evidence", such as how the verses are separated and the grammatical marks, since writing styles developed and grammatical rules of early Arabic changed over time (Mustafa Shah).{#tag:ref|from the Islamic studies department at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London|group=Note}} .

Other manuscripts

Professor Süleyman Berk of the faculty of Islamic studies at Yalova University has noted the strong similarity between the script of the Birmingham leaves and those of a number of Hijazi Qurans in the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum; which were brought to Istanbul from the Great Mosque of Damascus following a fire in 1893. Professor Berk recalls that these manuscripts had been intensively researched in association with an exhibition on the history of the Quran, The Quran in its 1,400th Year held in Istanbul in 2010, and the findings published by François Déroche as Qur'ans of the Umayyads in 2013. In that study, the Paris Quran, BnF Arabe 328(c), is compared with Qurans in Istanbul, and concluded as having been written "around the end of the seventh century and the beginning of the eighth century."

According to BBC News, "academics are increasingly confident the Birmingham manuscript has an exact match in the National Library of France, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France." In December 2015 Professor François Déroche of the Collège de France confirmed the identification of the two Birmingham leaves with those of the Paris Qur'an BnF Arabe 328(c), as had been proposed by Dr Alba Fedeli. Prof. Deroche expressed reservations about the reliability of the radiocarbon dates proposed for the Birmingham leaves, noting instances elsewhere in which radiocarbon dating had proved inaccurate in testing Qur'ans with an explicit endowment date; and also that none of the counterpart Paris leaves had yet been carbon-dated. Jamal bin Huwareib, managing director of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation, has proposed that, were the radiocarbon dates to be confirmed, the Birmingham/Paris Qur'an might be identified with the text known to have been assembled by the first Caliph Abu Bakr, between 632–634 CE.

A 09/02/2015 article stated that a radiocarbon testing of a piece of the ancient parchment from the Quran discovered in Birmingham University Library in July of that year dated "the tome from between 568 and 645 AD". Since Islamic scholars believe Muhammad lived between 570 and 632AD, the dating means "the text was compiled either before the Prophet’s birth or during his childhood."

Further research and findings

Ibn Warraq quotes Suliman Bashear:

For, our attempt to date the relevant traditional material confirms on the whole the conclusions which Schacht arrived at from another field, specifically the tendency of isnads to grow backwards.

Postulating alternative history

See also: Revisionist school of Islamic studies

SUMMARIZE THIS STUFF ABOUT PROBLEMS ITS REPETITION

Scholar Gerd R. Puin claims that 20% of the Quran "simply doesn't make sense" and suggests the reason is:

... the Koran is a kind of cocktail of texts that were not all understood even at the time of Muhammad. Many of them may even be a hundred years older than Islam itself. Even within the Islamic traditions there is a huge body of contradictory information, including a significant Christian substrate; one can derive a whole Islamic anti-history from them if one wants.

Referring to obscure words and phrases and "mystery letters" in the Quran, Islamic historian Michael Cook argues that "someone must once have known" what these mean (pious Muslims argue that there are many things in Islam known only to God), and adds another question: why some aspects of sharia law seem to ignore or contradict the Quran, which in theory should be the highest ranking of the sources of sharia. The most notable example of this conflict is that the traditional, universally accepted punishment for zina (adultery) under sharia was stoning to death (rajm), yet the Quran clearly states the perpetrators should be given 100 lashes and says nothing about stoning.

• Q.24:2 — The [zina committing] woman or [zina committing] man found guilty of sexual intercourse — lash each one of them with a hundred lashes.

An earlier Western scholar, Joseph Schacht, also noted that Sharia (what he called "Muhammadan law") "often diverged from the intentions and even the explicit wording of the Koran", and that his evidence showed the law "did not derive directly from the Koran but developed ... out of popular and administrative practice under the Umayyads" (661-750 CE). "Norms derived from the Koran were introduced into Muhammadan law almost invariably at a secondary stage."

Cook argues that one explanation for this is a break somewhere in the transmission of the Quran from its revelation to Muhammad to around the second century of Islam -- a theory that violates an basic Islamic doctrine of how the Qur'an was "born". Cook (as well as Christopher Rose) suggests that the Quran may have been "off the scene for several decades" and/or that the mysterious words, letters, Sabian religion, and ignored laws "might have been appropriated from elsewhere". Rose proposes that the break may have happened as the Islamic empire was expanding rapidly, spread thin the relatively small original core group of companions and their descendants with a strong knowledge of the Quran.

Rose also questions how reliable the traditional narrative is in dating Muhammad's age (40) at the time of his first revelation, and whether it was "decided on later because the actual date had been lost." In the "Abrahamic tradition" 40

"is a number of significance. It’s the number of days that Noah was in the Ark, it’s the number of years the Israelites wandered in the desert. It’s a number that indicates that you are mature, that you have been purified in the eyes of God.

Cook and Patricia Crone argue that "there is no hard evidence for the existence of the Koran in any form before the last decade of the seventh century." Crone, Wansbrough, and Nevo argue that all the primary sources which exist are from 150–300 years after the events which they describe, and thus are chronologically far removed from those events. G. R. Hawting and Andrew Rippin argue (according to Tom Holland) that it took "at least" decades for the Quran "to reach anything like its final form.”

In their book Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, Crone and Cook depict early Islam conquests and the formation of the caliphate as a peninsular Arab movement inspired by Jewish messianism and in alliance with the Jews. The Quran was not 7th century revelation, but a product of 8th-century edits of various materials drawn from a variety of Judeo-Christian and Middle-Eastern sources. Muhammad was the herald of Umar "the redeemer", a Judaic messiah. Crone and Cook argue that features of Islam such as "the idea of a scripture limited to the Pentateuch, a prophet like Moses, a holy book revealed like the Torah, a sacred city with a nearby mountain and shrine of an appropriate patriarch, plus a caliphate modeled on an Aaronid priesthood," was borrowed from Samaritanism. The theory has been almost universally rejected and its authors have "backed away from some of its most radical propositions". (less than 100 km south of Sodom and Gomorrah)

As to why the traditional Islamic account would claim Mecca as Muhammad's home when it was several hundred km north, Crone states

It is difficult not to suspect that the tradition places the prophet's career in Mecca [which was unknown prior to the rise of Islam] for the same reason that it insists that he was illiterate: the only way he could have acquired his knowledge of all the things that God had previously told the Jews and the Christians was by revelation from God himself. Mecca was virgin territory; it had neither Jewish nor Christian communities.

She sees much promise for answering the question what was Muhammad "reacting to, and why was the rest of Arabia so responsive to his message?" in research of databases of hadith, in archaeology and in focusing on the context of the world of late antiquity.

Revisionist historians

Revisionist historians (i.e. ones offering alternatives to the Islamic historical tradition) are not in agreement. Some believing the Quran is older and some more recent than the tradition,

John Wansbrough

See also: John Wansbrough

Wansbrough argues that the Quran is more recent than thought, and should be dated not from the 1st century Hijaz, Western Arabia, but from the 2nd 3rd Islamic century in Abbasid Iraq when it "became a source for biography, exegesis, jurisprudence and grammar", and following the model of an older monotheist religion -- Judiasm -- provided a fixed, sacred scripture revealed by (a) prophet to form the basis for their (sharia) code of law. Wansbrough argues that variants of Quranic text are so minor they are not "recollections of ancient texts that differed from the Uthmanic text," but the outcome of exegesis. And also that classical Arabic was developed later than the colloquial forms, "contemporaneously with the codification of the Quran." His theories have neither been "widely accepted" nor rejected according to Gabriel Said Reynolds.

Yehuda D. Nevo

See also: Crossroads to Islam

In his work Crossroads to Islam, Israel archaeologist Yehuda D. Nevo his co-author Judith Koren also argued Islamic doctrine developed later than its historical tradition claimed, and that the Quran was developed by the Abbasids to create a fixed canon upon which to base their code of law. He believed that Arabic inscriptions he studied in the Negev desert indicated a "progressive religious development" of Islam "during the first two Islamic centuries", moving from "indeterminate monotheism to formal Islamic doctrine". Rather than conquering Byzantine provinces, Arab tribes were made "clients" (foederati) by the declining Byzantine Empire as it withdrew from its Eastern provinces and tried to maintain some control over the area, encouraging "heterodox Christianity". Nevo argues that rather than being the fifth Caliph, Muawiyah I was the first historical ruler of the Arab Empire, and arose from the other foederati to become a warlord/strongman.

Christoph Luxenberg

See also: The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran

Unlike Wansbrough and Nevo, Luxenberg and Lüling argue that "the genesis of the Quran" was much earlier than the Islamic historical tradition, and began with Christian writings" Rather than speaking an Arabic dialect, he argues "the inhabitants of Mecca ... must" have spoken some kind of "Aramaic-Arabic hybrid language" at the time the Quran was revealed, and that parts of the Quran that are "inexplicable from the point of view of Arabic", make more sense when translated as Syro-Aramaic. The "writing conventions" of this Syro-Aramaic were later forgotten or misunderstood and read "as though they were Arabic".

Günter Lüling

See also: Günter Lüling

Lüling attempted to demonstrate a link between the composition of the Quran and pre-Islamic hymns of Christians in Mecca. He theorized that the early believers of what later became Orthodox Islam were non-Trinitarian Christian whose theological positions were adopted by later generations to become an Arab religion Islam (i.e. "religion of Abraham and the tribes"). He also proposed that "mushrikun" (usually translated as polytheists) adversaries of Muhammad denounced in the Quran were not pagans but Trinitarian Christians. He theorized that approximately one-third of the Quran has pre-Islamic Christian origins (specifically one-third is made up of a Christian hymnal).

Five questions Donner sees are

Transmission of the Quran

Islamic historical tradition

Islamic tradition teaches that the Quran was transmitted in written form started from the time scribes wrote down what had been revealed to Muhammad, and continues to the present with publication and reading of millions of Quranic mushaf codexes. The importance of the oral form of the Quran is also widely noted. The standardized written mushaf was created in part from Quranic revelations memorized by Muhammad's companions, and the decision to create it came after the death in battle of a large number of Muslims who had memorized the work.

Furthermore, the very first Qurans were written in "defective" script, or rasm, which lack diacritical marks to distinguish between arabic letters for b, t, th, n, y. This would imply "that written copies were initially intended to serve only as a memory for those who already knew the test by heart", according to Fred Donner.

Even after diacritical marks were added, for centuries physical Qurans were written, not printed, and their scarcity made reciting it from memory the predominant mode of teaching and conveying the book to others. To this day it is memorized by millions and its recitation can be heard throughout the Muslim world from recordings and minarets. Muslims state that some teachers of memorization/recitation constitute the end of an "un-broken chain" whose original teacher was Muhammad himself. It has been argued that "the Qur’an’s rhythmic style and eloquent expression make it easy to memorize," and is so to facilitate the "preservation and remembrance" of the work. (Another enormously important body of work in Islam, the hadith, were transmitted by "oral preachers and storytellers" for two centuries before being committed to written work.)

Secular historians

Fred Donner calls the "question of oral vs. written transmission of the Quran text ... a very enigmatic issue and one with potentially profound implications for our understanding of the origins and history of the text."

"firmly controlled by the practice of oral recitation; the recitations received by Muhammad were learned from him as recitations by his followers, and were sometime later written down to form the Quran text we have today".

Different revisionist historians also find both oral and written transmission explain aspects of the Quran. Oral without written transmission during the composition of at least parts of the Quran explains characteristics such as repetition and repetition of stories with slight variations. Written without accompanying oral transmission explains parts whose meaning has been forgotten.

Possible oral origins

But at least one non-Muslim scholar (Andrew G. Bannister) has examined the possibility that the Quran was not just "recited orally, but actually composed orally." Bannister postulates that some features of the Quran — such as the telling of stories that are very similar but not identical (the story of the Iblis and Adam, for example, is told seven times), and the repeated phrases “which of the favours of your Lord will you deny?” in Sura 55 — make more sense addressed to listeners than readers.

Perhaps more importantly, Banister and other scholars (Alan Dundes, Shabbir Akhtar, Angelika Neuwirth, Islam Dayeh) have also noted the large amount of "formulaic" phraseology in the Quran, like that found in orally transmitted literature such as epic poems. Oral tradition was the main mode of passing on literature at the time of the Quran's revelation, when few were literate and mass production of physical books did not exist (paper not being available in the Middle East and and printing presses not invented at the time). The Arab poetry that preceded the Quran and the hadith that followed it were orally transmitted.

According to the "oral-formulaic composition" theory, long works of folk literature which are passed down by word of mouth over many generations are not memorized word-for-word. Instead performers found/find it easier to use catch-phrases or "formulas", which they reused "to express key ideas. (Examples of formulas in the epic literature include ‘rosy-fingered’ Dawn, the ‘wine dark’ sea, ‘ox-eyed’ Hera in Homer.)

In the Quran, the most common formulas are the attributes of Allah — all-mighty, all-wise, all-knowing, all-high, etc. — often found as doublets at the end of a verse. Using a concordance of the Quran translated into English, Alan Dundes notes the many dozens of other repeated phrases — a few examples being: "Allah created the heavens and the earth" (found 19 times in the Quran) -- and estimates as much as one third of the Quran is made up of "oral formulas". Using a computer database of (the original arabic) words of the Quran and of their "grammatical role, root, number, person, gender and so forth", Andrew Bannister estimates that depending on the length of the phrase searched, somewhere between 52% (searching by three word phrases) and 23% (five word phrases) are oral formulas.

The large percentage of oral formulas in the Quran indicates to Dundes and Bannister that it at one point the Quran was not fixed but had formulas that could be interchangable in different "slots", and might explain the story of Abdollah bin Sa'd, a scribe of Muhammad's revelations, who is alleged to have suggested that the attributes "knowing and wise" be substituted for "mighty and wise" in one revelation told to him by Muhammad, (and later abandoned Islam after becoming disillusioned with Muhammad's agreement to his alteration).. However, the suggestions of oral formulas violates the Islamic doctrine that from Gabriel to today the Quran has never been altered.

Possible transmission without oral help

Non-Muslim scholars Michael Cook and Fred Donner suggest that confusion/questions over "language, stories, and events" in the Quran might be explained by its being "off the scene for several decades" -- long enough for the meaning of some of its contents to be forgotten, i.e. that there was a time between the creation of the Quran's and the creation of explanations of the Quran by exegetes/commentators when there was no recitation (and so no explanation of words, phrases, stories that now seem unclear) and that this period was long enough for memories of explanations to have been lost by the time the written Quran was rediscovered.

Journalist and scholar Toby Lester states that the Quran "assumes a familiarity with language, stories, and events that seem to have been lost even to the earliest of Muslim exegetes". Michael Cook also notes that the meaning of some Quranic words and phrases and the "mystery letters" (see "Obscure words and phrases" above), have puzzled commentators "from the earliest times", arguing that "someone must once have known" what these mean. (Pious Muslims argue that there are many things in Islam known only to God.) That their meaning has now been forgotten suggests the Quran may have been "off the scene for several decades" .

Fred Donner writes there is "mounting evidence that the Quran text, or parts of it at least, must at some stage in its history have been transmitted in purely written form, without the benefit of a controlling tradition of active recitation. ... This evidence takes the form of recognizing in the Quranic text misunderstood words, hypercorrected words, or stray marks which then became incorporated into the recitation, something that could only happen if the oral recitation were derived from the written text rather than the other way around." Donner also notes that if parts of the Quran were Syriac but later came to be read as Arabic (as some like Luxenberg believe) "this only makes sense if the passages in question were transmitted only in written form -- otherwise the proper pronunciation of Aramaic would have been retained." Donner notes studies by J.A. Bellamy that "clearly imply that the text was at least in part transmitted in purely written form without a controlling tradition of oral recitation, as does research on the word furqan (title of the 25th surah)

Cook postulates the gap may be

1. "materials that make up the Quran did not become generally available as scripture until several decades after the Prophet's death, with the result that by the time this happened, memory of the original meaning of the material had been lost."
2. "much of what found its way into the Quran was already old by the time of Muhammad." Cooks adds that "the two approaches do not exclude each other".

(Cook adds that while it is not uncommon for a gap of time separating the writing of scriptures or classics, and explanations of the work by commentators, according to Islamic tradition there is no such gap with the Quran.)

Questions about Quranic text

THIS SECTION ADDED TO CRIT OF QURAN

The Quran itself states that its revelations are themselves "miraculous 'signs'" -- inimitable (I'jaz) in their eloquence and perfection and proof of the authenticity of Muhammad's prophethood. (For example 2:2, 17:88-89, 29:47, 28:49) Several verses remark on how the verses of the book make things clear, and are in the "pure and clear" Arabic language. Alan Dundes points out the Quran itself denies that there can be errors within it, "If it were from other than Allah, they would surely have found in it many contradictions". (Q.4:82)

At the same time, (most Muslims believe) some verses of the Quran have been abrogated (naskh) by others and these and other verses have sometimes been revealed in response or answer to questions by followers or opponents.

Early Western scholars or "Orientalists" often attacked the literary merit of the Quran, criticizing it for being unclear among other things. Thomas Carlyle, called the Quran "toilsome reading and a wearisome confused jumble, crude, incondite" with "endless iterations, long-windedness, entanglement" and "insupportable stupidity." Salomon Reinach wrote that the book warrants "little merit ... from a literary point of view". (Even one early Muslim-turned-skeptic Ibn al-Rawandi (d.911) dismissed the Quran as "not the speech of someone with wisdom, contain[ing] contradictions, errors and absurdities".

Another Christian apologist, the author of the Apology of al-Kindy Abd al-Masih ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (not the famed philosopher al-Kindi) writing some time before as early as the twelfth century CE, claimed that the narratives in the Quran were "all jumbled together and intermingled" and that this was "an evidence that many different hands have been at work therein, and caused discrepancies, adding or cutting out whatever they liked or disliked". Bell and Watt suggested that the variation in writing style throughout the Quran, which sometimes involves the use of rhyming, may have indicated revisions to the text during its compilation. They claimed that there were "abrupt changes in the length of verses; sudden changes of the dramatic situation, with changes of pronoun from singular to plural, from second to third person, and so on". At the same time, however, they noted that "[i]f any great changes by way of addition, suppression or alteration had been made, controversy would almost certainly have arisen; but of that there is little trace." (While the Orientalists were often Christians hoping to debunk Islam, other scholars have not had obvious interests to advance.)

Scholar Gerd R. Puin attempts to quantify the number of unclear verses:

The Koran claims for itself that it is 'mubeen,' or 'clear,' but if you look at it, you will notice that every fifth sentence or so simply doesn't make sense. Many Muslims—and Orientalists—will tell you otherwise, of course, but the fact is that a fifth of the Koranic text is just incomprehensible. This is what has caused the traditional anxiety regarding translation. If the Koran is not comprehensible—if it can't even be understood in Arabic—then it's not translatable. People fear that. And since the Koran claims repeatedly to be clear but obviously is not—as even speakers of Arabic will tell you—there is a contradiction. Something else must be going on.

More specifically, "peculiarities" in the text have been alleged. Iranian rationalist and scholar Ali Dashti points out that before its perfection became an issue of Islamic doctrine, early Muslim scholar Ibrahim an-Nazzam "openly acknowledged that the arrangement and syntax" of the Quran was less than "miraculous".

Ali Dashti states that "more than one hundred" aberrations from "the normal rules and structure of Arabic have been noted" in the Quran.

sentences which are incomplete and not fully intelligible without the aid or commentaries; foreign words, unfamiliar Arabic words, and words used with other than the normal meaning; adjectives and verbs inflected without observance of the concords of gender and number; illogically and ungrammatically applied pronouns which sometimes have no referent; and predicates which in rhymed passages are often remote from the subjects.

Scholar of the Semitic languages Theodor Noldeke collected a large quantity of morphological and syntactic grammatical forms in the Quran that "do not enter into the general linguistic system of Arabic".

Obscure words and phrases

NOT YET ADDED

The Quran "sometimes makes dramatic shifts in style, voice, and subject matter from verse to verse, and it assumes a familiarity with language, stories, and events that seem to have been lost even to the earliest of Muslim exegetes", according to journalist and scholar Toby Lester.

While "most English translations" of the Qur’an make no mention of any ambiguity of meaning of words in the text, rarely if ever listing variants, in fact the Quran is known to contain a number of words the meaning of which is not clear and for which Muslim commentators (and Western scholars) have created "a welter of competing guesses".

• qaḍb (8:28) possible meaning "green herbs" of some kind.
• ʿābb (8:31), possible meaning "pasture"
• Jibt (4:51), "no explanation has been found" guesses include "idol or priest or sorcerer, or sorcery, or satan, or what not".
• Ghislīn (69:36), unknown. guess: "what exudes from the bodies of the inmates" of Hell.
• Iram (89:7), unknown. foreign word, possibly a name of city or country.
• Qurbān (46:28), evidently means "sacrifice", but maybe "favorites of a prince" or then again "a means of access to God"
• ṣābiʿīn (2:62), literally "the baptizers", but does not make sense in that context.

• abābīl (105:3)
• sijjīl (105:4)
• samad (112:2)
• shurra'an (7:163, guesses seemed to based totally on the context of the verse. they include "swimming shoreward", "appearing on the surface of the water", "following one another in sequence", "raising their heads", and "from every place".
• kalāla (4:11–12, 4:176)
• an yadin (9:29) usually translated as "out of hand" as a means of payment, but what this means has not been agreed upon.
• ar-raqīm (18:9) quesses by exegetes include "books", "inscription", "tablet", "rock", "numbers", or "building", or a proper name for "a village, or a valley, a mountain, or even a dog".

Explanations include that God is "making the point that He knows something we don't" (for example qāriʿah in Q:101), or that in some cases the words are used to rhyme a verse.("The use of many rare words and new forms may be traced to the same cause (comp. especially Q.9:8-9, 11, 16)."

Michael Cook argues that there may be even more obscure words than have been recognized because exegetes have made up stories to give them an explanation.

• Quran 106:1–2: "For the accustomed security of the Quraysh - Their accustomed security [in] the caravan of winter and summer",

Contains the word ilaf, translated as "accustomed security", which is thought to mean arrangements with local tribes for protection of the caravan journey. According to hadith, the foundation of Mecca's trade were two annual commercial caravans by the Quraysh tribe from Mecca to Yemen and back in the winter and another to Syria in the summer. But the Arabic word rihla simply means journey, not commercial travel or caravan; and there was uncertainty among commentators as to how to read the vowels in ilaf or how the term was defined. Consequently Cook wonders if Quran 106:1–2 is a brief mention of Mecca's basic commerce or if the hadith about the two caravans (many hadith being known to be fabricated) was made up to explain Quranic passages whose meaning was otherwise unclear.

Arabic words

Several verse -- Q.16:103, 12:2, and 42:7 -- state the Quran is revealed in Arabic, pure and clear. However the scholar al-Suyuti (1445–1505 C.E.) enumerated 107 foreign words in the Quran, and Arthur Jeffery found about 275 words that of Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, Ethiopic, Perisan, and Greek origin according to Ibn Warraq. Andrew Rippin states that not only Orientalists but medieval Arabs admitted the Quran contained foreign words. Al-Jawālīqī (Abu Mansur Mauhub al-Jawaliqi), a 12-century Arab grammarian, spoke of "'foreign words found in the speech of the ancient Arabs and employed in the Quran' without any cautious restrictions." Denying these charges, Ansar Al 'Adl of "call to monotheism" states that "pure arabic" actually really refers to the "clarity and eloquence" of the arabic language in the Quran, and that the words were actually Arabic having been "naturalized".

"Mystery letters"

Another peculiarity (or mystery) is why about one quarter of surahs of the Quran begin with a group of between one and four letters that do not form words. These are known as Muqattaʿat ('disjointed letters'):

• Alif Lam Ra – Q. 10, 11, 12, 14, 15.
• Alif Lam Mim – Q. 2, 3, 29, 30, 31, 32.
• Alif Lam Mim Ra – Q. 13.
• Alif Lam Mim Sad – Q. 7.
• Ha Mim – Q. 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46.
• Ha Mim ‘Ain Sin Qaf – Q. 42.
• Sad – Q. 38.
• Ta Sin – Q. 27.
• Ta Sin Mim – Q. 26, 28.
• Ta Ha – Q. 20.
• Qaf – Q. 50.
• Ka Ha Ya 'Ain Sad – Q. 19.
• Nun – Q. 68.
• Ya Sin – Q. 36.

According to the Muslim translator and expositor Muhammad Asad:

"The significance of these letter-symbols has perplexed the commentators from the earliest times. There is no evidence of the Prophet's having ever referred to them in any of his recorded utterances, nor any of his Companions having ever asked him for an explanation. None the less, it is established beyond any possibility of doubt that all the Companions — obviously following the example of the Prophet — regarded the muqatta'at as integral parts of the suras to which they are prefixed, and used to recite them accordingly: a fact which disposes effectively of the suggestion advanced by some Western orientalists that these letters may be no more than the initials of the scribes who wrote down the individual revelations at the Prophet's dictation, or of the Companions who recorded them at the time of the final codification of the Qur'an during the reign of the first three Caliphs.

"Some of the Companions as well as some of their immediate successors and later Qur'anic commentators were convinced that these letters are abbreviations of certain words or even phrases relating to God and His attributes, and tried to 'reconstruct' them with much ingenuity; but since the possible combinations are practically unlimited, all such interpretations are highly arbitrary and, therefore, devoid of any real usefulness …"

The 'The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary (2015) calls the letters "one of the most enigmatic features of the Quran and have been a subject of debate and speculation among Muslims since the revelation of the Quran. It is reported by many Quran commentators that Abu Bakr, the first Caliph said, 'Every book has a mystery (sirr) and the mystery of the Quran is the beginnings of the surahs.'" It also cites Al-Razi's stating that "although we can know the wisdom in certain kinds of legislation, such as the prohibitions against alcohol and gambling, there are other actions required by religion whose wisdom we do not know, such as some of the rituals of the hajj" (no page, Commentary 1. Alif Lam. Mim. in Chapter 2. The Cow. |group=Note}}

Mystery religion

The Quran mentions the "Jews, Christians, and Ṣābiʼūn" in three different verses (2:62, 5:69, 22:17). The identity of the first two religions is/was widely known among Muslims and non-Muslims, but the Ṣābiʼūn (usually Romanized as Sabians) was not, even among the earliest Quranic commentators of the 7th and 8th century.

Narrative voice: Mohammed or God as speakers

Since the Quran is God's revelation to humanity, critics have wondered why in many verses, God is being addressed by humans, instead of Him addressing human beings. Or as sympathetic Western scholars Richard Bell and W. Montgomery Watt point out, it is not unheard of for someone (especially someone very powerful) to speak of themselves in the third person, "the extent to which we find the Prophet apparently being addressed and told about God as a third person, is unusual", as is where "God is made to swear by himself"..)

Folklorist Alan Dundes notes how one "formula" or phrase ("... acquit thou/you/them/him of us/your/their/his evil deeds") is repeated with a variety of voices both divine and human, singular and plural:

• `Our Lord, forgive Thou our sins and acquit us of our evil deeds` 3:193;
• `We will acquit you of your evil deeds`, 4:31;
• `I will acquit you of your evil deeds`, 5:12;
• `He will acquit them of their evil deeds`, 47:2;
• `Allah will acquit him of his evil deeds`, 64:9;

The point-of-view of God changes from third person ("He" and "His" in Exalted is He who took His Servant by night from al-Masjid al-Haram to al-Masjid al- Aqsa), to first person ("We" and "Our" in We have blessed, to show him of Our signs), and back again to third ("He" in Indeed, He is the Hearing) all in the same verse. (In Arabic there is no capitalization to indicate divinity.) Q.33:37 also starts by referring to God in the third person, is followed by a sentence with God speaking in first person (we gave her in marriage ...) before returning to third person (and God's commandment must be performed). Again in 48:1 48:2 God is both first (We) and third person (God, His) within one sentence.

The Jewish Encyclopedia, for example, writes: "For example, critics note that a sentence in which something is said concerning Allah is sometimes followed immediately by another in which Allah is the speaker (examples of this are Q.16.81, 27:61, 31:9, 43:10) Many peculiarities in the positions of words are due to the necessities of rhyme (lxix. 31, lxxiv. 3)." The verse 6:114 starts out with Muhammad talking in first person (I) and switches to third (you).

• 6:114 Shall I seek other than Allah for judge, when He it is Who hath revealed unto you (this) Scripture, fully explained? Those unto whom We gave the Scripture (aforetime) know that it is revealed from thy Lord in truth. So be not thou (O Muhammad) of the waverers.

While some (Muhammad Abdel Haleem) have argued that "such grammatical shifts are a traditional aspect of Arabic rhetorical style", Ali Dashti (also quoted by critic Ibn Warraq) notes that in many verses "the speaker cannot have been God". The opening surah Al-Fatiha which contains such lines as

Praise to God, the Lord of the Worlds, ....
You (alone) we worship and from You (alone) we seek help. ...

is "clearly addressed to God, in the form of a prayer." Other verses (the beginning of 27:91, "I have been commanded to serve the Lord of this city ..."; 19:64, "We come not down save by commandment of thy Lord") also makes no sense as a statement of an all-powerful God.

Many (in fact 350) verses in the Quran where God is addressed in the third person are preceded by the imperative "say/recite!" (qul) -- but it does not occur in Al-Fatiha and many other similar verses. Sometimes the problem is resolved in translations of the Quran by the translators adding "Say!" in front of the verse (Marmaduke Pickthall and N. J. Dawood for Q.27.91, Abdullah Yusuf Ali for Q.6:114).

Dashti notes that in at least one verse

• 17:1 -- Exalted is He who took His Servant by night from al-Masjid al-Haram to al-Masjid al-Aqsa, whose surroundings We have blessed, to show him of Our signs. Indeed, He is the Hearing, the Seeing.

This feature did not escape the notice of some early Muslims. Ibn Masud — one of the companions of Muhammad who served as a scribe for divine revelations recieved by Muhammad and is considered a reliable transmitter of ahadith — did not believe that Surah Fatihah (or two other surah — 113 and 114 — that contained the phrase "I take refuge in the Lord") to be a genuine part of the Quran. He was not alone, other companions of Muhammad disagreed over which surahs were part of the Quran and which not. A verse of the Quran itself (15:87) seems to distinguish between Fatihah and the Quran:

• 15:87 -- And we have given you seven often repeated verses [referring to the seven verses of Surah Fatihah] and the great Quran. (Al-Quran 15:87)

Al-Suyuti, the noted medieval philologist and commentator of the Quran thought five verses had questionable "attribution to God" and where likely spoken by either Muhammad or Gabriel.

Cases where the speaker is swearing an oath by God, such as surahs 75:1–2 and 90:1, have been made a point of criticism. But according to Richard Bell, this was probably a traditional formula, and Montgomery Watt compared such verses to Hebrews 6:13. It is also widely acknowledged that the first-person plural pronoun in Surah 19:64 refers to angels, describing their being sent by God down to Earth. Bell and Watt suggest that this attribution to angels can be extended to interpret certain verses where the speaker is not clear.

The Saudi Wahhabi website Islam Question and Answer maintains that "the variation of pronouns in the Qur’an is a sign of its eloquence and miraculous nature".

Grammar

Examples of lapses in grammar include 160:4 where the word "performers" should be in the nominative case but instead is in the accusative; 66:20 where "these two" of "These two are sorcerers" is in the nominative case (hādhāne) instead of the accusative case (hādhayne); and 9:49 where "have started to fight is in the plural form instead of the dual like the subject of the sentence. Dashti laments that Islamic scholars have traditionally replied to these problems saying "our task is not to make the readings conform to Arabic grammar, but to take the whole of the Quran as it is and make Arabic grammar conform to the Quran."

Spelling, syntax and grammar

In 2020 article a Saudi website published an article claiming that while most Muslims believe the text established by third caliph 'Uthman bin 'Affan "is sacred and must not be amended", there were are some 2500 "errors of spelling, syntax and grammar" within it. The author (Ahmad Hashem) argues that while the recitation of the Quran is divine, the Quranic script established by Uthman's "is a human invention" subject to error and correction. Examples of some of the errors he gives are:

• Surah 68, verse 6, [the word] بِأَيِّيكُمُ ["which of you"] appears, instead of بأيكم. In other words, an extra ي was added.
• Surah 25, verse 4, [the word] جَآءُو ["they committed"] appears, instead of جَاءُوا or جاؤوا. In other words, the alif in the plural masculine suffix وا is missing.
• Surah 28, verse 9, the word امرأت ["wife"] appears, instead of امرأة.

Phrases, sentences or verse that seem out of place and were likely to have been transposes.

An example of an out-of-place verse fragment is found in Surah 24 where the beginning of a verse — (Q.24:61) "There is not upon the blind [any] constraint nor upon the lame constraint nor upon the ill constraint ..." — is located in the midst of a section describing proper behavior for visiting relations and modesty for women and children ("when you eat from your [own] houses or the houses of your fathers or the houses of your mothers or the houses of your brothers or the houses of your sisters or ..."). While it makes little sense here, the exact same phrases appears in another surah section (Q.48:11-17) where it does fit in as list of those exempt from blame and hellfire if they do not fight in a jihad military campaign.

Theodor Nöldeke complains that "many sentences begin with a 'when' or 'on the day when' which seems to hover in the air, so that commentators are driven to supply a 'think of this' or some such ellipsis." Similarly, describing a "rough edge" of the Quran, Michael Cook notes that verse Q.33:37 starts out with a "long and quite complicated subordinate clause" ("when though wast saying to him ..."), "but we never learn what the clause is subordinate to."

Reply

A common reply to questions about difficulties or obscurities in the Quran is verse 3:7 which unlike other verses that simply state that the Quran is clear (mubeen) states that some verses are clear but others are "ambiguous".

• 3:7 It is He who sent down upon thee the Book, wherein are verses clear that are the Essence of the Book, and others ambiguous. As for those in whose hearts is swerving, they follow the ambiguous part, desiring dissension, and desiring its interpretation; and none knows its interpretation, save only God. And those firmly rooted in knowledge say, 'We believe in it; all is from our Lord'; yet none remembers, but men possessed of minds.

Intended audience

The Quran describes itself as a book of guidance for mankind (2:185), but just as the speaker often seems to be someone other than God, so the audience often seems to be other than humanity in general, i.e. many verses are obviously addressed to contemporaries of Muhammad. Some are directed specifically towards Muhammad and his wives, while others only make sense if directed towards Muhammad's followers at the time of revelation. (33:28, 33:50, 49:2, 58:1, 58:9, 66:3). One surah (Surah al-Masad) is devoted to informing a relative of and opponent of Muhammad (Abū Lahab) that he will go to hell. (111:1–5)

Wansbrough states that stylistic analysis of the Quran showes that its audience "was expected to be familiar with the stories of Judaic-Christian scripture".

In defense of this practice, one scholar (Barbara Freyer) has argued that Muhammad's wives "specific divine guidance, [is] occasioned by their proximity to the Prophet (Muhammad)", which gives them "special responsibility to overcome their human frailties and ensure their individual worthiness", another has argued that the Quran must be interpreted on more than one level.

Questions of interpretation

The Islamic origin story tells us an orphan from a prosperous trading hub and pagan pilgrimage site in the deserts of Western Arabia (Hejaz), is blessed with the revelation of the Quran but then forced to emigrate by the city's wealthy pagan elite, etc. -- and what the text of the mushaf Quran actually says, is another issue raised by both historians and by Christian antagonists of Islam.

The Quran is sometimes described as "referring" or "alluding to" events rather than "narrating" them, not telling stories but "providing sufficient detail to identify a story the books' audience already knows (or as some Muslims prefer it, being "succinct" in its writing style). Narration of these events, and thus much of the "classical Muslim understanding" of the Quran, comes not from the Quran but from the interpretation of its contents provided by commentaries written several generations after the Quran was revealed. (Not unreasonable if the Quran is a message of guidance from God -- as it says it is -- rather than a story of Islam's origins.)

Few names of places, people, etc. are given in the Quran; in the entire book, four religious communities (Jews, Christian, Magians, Sabians), three human beings, three Arabian deities, two ethnic groups (Quraysh, Romans), and nine places are named (according to Michael Cook), often only a few times -- Muhammad, for example is named only four or five times. (Muslims believe more are mentioned, although often not by name.) Consequently, "identifying what the Quran is talking about in a contemporary context is ... usually impossible without interpretation". Fredrick Paxton agrees: "The Qur'an itself is historically incomprehensible without commentary"

This commentary has been described as a "great cladding of commentary that has been woven tightly around the the holy text since the early ninth century", involves analysis /"criticism" of the Quran but in doing so raises doubts about the hadith, sira, tafsir, khabar commentary, rather than the Quran itself.)

Interpretation using commentaries

But its authenticity has been strongly challenged by historical criticism. Examining them, Patricia Crone found a pattern, where the farther a commentary was removed in time from the life of Muhammad and the events in the Quran, the more information it provided, despite the fact it depended on the earlier sources for its content. This defied logic, since later commentary, if it differed from earlier work, should be briefer as some facts about the early days were lost or forgotten. Crone attributed this phenomenon to storytellers' embellishment.

If one storyteller should happen to mention a raid, the next storyteller would know the date of this raid, while the third would know everything that an audience might wish to hear about.

An example was the oldest prophetic biography, that of Ibn Ishaq (died 767), which was much smaller than the commentary of Al-Waqidi (d.823). But Waqidi's later works covered a shorter periods of time (only Muhammad's period in Medina), so how could it be longer?

Waqidi will always give precise dates, locations, names, where Ibn Ishaq has none, accounts of what triggered the expedition, miscellaneous information to lend color to the event

making him a popular source for scholars. But Ibn Ishaq's profession was finding and telling stories about the Prophet. Why wouldn't he -- living closer in time to the Prophet when memories were that much fresher -- have heard all this?

... given that this information was all unknown to Ibn Ishaq, its value is doubtful in the extreme. And if spurious information accumulated at this rate in the two generations between Ibn Ishaq and al-Waqidi, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that even more must have accumulated in the three generations between the Prophet and Ibn Ishaq.

Examining tafsir commentary on the Quraysh chapter in Quran, Crone finds the traditional exegesis contradictory and "concludes the Islamic commentators had no more idea of what it means than we do today. She writes that the

"numerous purported historical events that are supposed to have occasioned a revelation (Badr, Uhaud, Hudaybiyya, Hunayn, and so on) owe many of their features and often their very existence to the Quran itself. That is to say, wherever the Quran mentions a name or an event, stories were invented to give the impression that somehow, somewhere, someone, knew what they were about. This means that `much of the classical Muslim understanding of the Quran rests on the work of popular storytellers, such storytellers being the first to propose particular historical contexts for particular verse`" in short: `What tradition offers is a mass of detailed information, none of which represents straightforward facts'"

Crone believes that there is no core of actual events underneath the embroidery of storytellers, "it was the storytellers who created the tradition".

Cook compares explanations of verses of the Quran by traditional Muslim sources to that of a "Just-so story", giving as an example Satanic Verses where a edifying story -- of how even a great man of God may succumb to temptation before matters are put right by God -- is constructed from three verses{#tag:ref| (In 53:19–20 Satan is taking advantage of Muhammad's love of this pagan kinsmen to put in his head the false verses giving recognition to the power of pagan goddesses to be "legitimate intermediaries between man and God"; the pagans then join Muhammad in prostration enjoined in 53:62; but after Muhammad is upbraided and becomes fearful, God reassures Muhammad "that such things had happened to other prophets before him" in 22:52|group=Note}} scattered around the Quran.

(Non-Muslims like Crone are not alone in this criticism. And testimony that religious works passed down over time in the first two or three centuries of Islam have been corrupted is also verified by "the fact that Muhammad al-Bukhari, the great collector of reports of the saying and doings of the Prophet Muhammad (hadith), "who traveled from land to land to gather from the learned the hadith ... came to conclusion, after many years sifting, that out of 600,000 traditions, ascertained by him to be then current, only 4000 were authentic! And of this selected number the European critic is compelled without hesitation to reject at least one-half," according to Orientalist scholar William Muir.)

Outside the commentary

Reading the Quran for clues about Muhammad and his environment, but being ignorant of commentary, we could "probably" infer that

"the protagonist of the Quran was Muhammad, that the scene of his life was in western Arabia, ... But we could not tell that the sanctuary was in Mecca, or that Muhammad himself came from there, and we could only guess that he established in Yatrib. We might indeed prefer a more northerly location altogether, on the ground that the site of God's destruction of Lot's people (i.e. Sodom) is said to be one which those addressed pass by "morning and night" (37:137–138).

Cook's former co-author Patricia Crone agrees references in the Quran suggest a more northerly location for Muhammad's homeland than central Hejaz since, "the Qur'an describes the polytheist opponents as agriculturalists who cultivated wheat, grapes, olives, and date palms" (80:27–31 and 6:99) -- which cannot be grown in Mecca -- and living near the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah (Q.37:137-8), also not believed to be located nowhere near Mecca.

Another hint of the location is verse 30:1 "The Romans have been defeated in a nearby land, and yet after their defeat they shall be victorious in a nearby land." Q.30.1 Holland notes "it is hard to know what this is referring to if not the loss of Palestine to Khusrow II", again suggesting a more northerly location since Mecca and Medina cannot be called close to Palestine.

Concerning the Prophet's polytheist enemies, historian Tom Holland writes that nowhere are pagan idols, goddesses, pagan sanctuaries or shrines mentioned in the Quran, and that instead revelation seems to be attacking the mushrikun practice of asking angels for intercession. (chapter about what we don't know. page77-79) Similarly Judith Koren and Yehuda D. Nevo also claim that "the most elementary stylistic and analysis" demonstrates that readers or listeners of the Quran were "expected to be familiar with the stories of Judiaic-Christian scripture" rather than polytheist pagans.

See also [current list]

• Historicity of the Bible
• Criticism of the Quran
• History of the Quran
• Corpus Coranicum
• Syriac Infancy Gospel
• Noah in Islam

See also

• Islam: What the West Needs to Know
• Islam and science
• Creation–evolution controversy
• The Syro-Aramaic Reading Of The Koran
• War against Islam

Criticism

• Apostasy in Islam
• Censorship by religion
• Criticism of Muhammad
• Criticism of Islam
• Homosexuality and Islam
• Islam and antisemitism
• Women in Islam
• Child marriage

Controversies

• Islamic view of Ezra, concerns Al-Quran 9:30 which quotes, "and Jews said Ezra (Uzair) is the son of God"

References

Bibliography

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Category:Criticism of Islam Category:Quran Category:Islam-related controversies