variant readings of the sana manuscripts

One fault Donner sees is that Small does not engage with the work of Christoph Luxenberg. Reception įred Donner of the University of Chicago writes that the book is of 'manifest excellence and importance', with 'but minor blemishes'.

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.' ĭonner also says though that Small's conclusions are tentative, because analogous work on larger passages of the Quran may give different results. '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. Fred Donner interprets Small's work as showing He states 'there never was one original text of the Qur'an', that the Uthmanic destruction of variant texts around 850 CE, eliminated 'many texts which had equally good claims to containing authentic readings', that before the three century-long 'process of development and improvement' to standardize the Quran phonetically, there were '50 different ways' of reciting the Quran. Neither do they yet provide the necessary information for reconstructing the text from the time immediately after Muhammad's death until the first official edition of the Qur’ān traditionally ordered by the Caliph ‘Uthmān'. '.the available sources do not provide the necessary information for reconstructing the original text of the Qur’ān from the time of Muhammad. a scholarly reconstruction of the original Quran, using reasonable, educated guesses) cannot currently be constructed. Small concludes that a critical text of the Quran (i.e. ġ) chapters 1&2 covering the introduction and photographs and descriptions of the manuscripts used 2) chapters 3-8 describing the textual variants in the manuscripts 3) chapters 9-11 include comparisons of these variants with Islamic records of variants, discussing possible causes, including unintentional mistakes in oral transmission or intentional changes 4) a concluding, twelfth chapter.

38- 41 Abraham prays for himself and children that they may be kept from idolatry.

35- 36 True believers exhorted to steadfastness and prayer.Small comes to the conclusion that while it's not possible to determine the forms of text going back to the very beginning, a 'significantly early edited form of the consonantal text' of the Qur'an can be. It uses an application of ' reasoned eclecticism' or (in the words of the publisher's blurb) 'a method of textual analysis commonly used in studies of ancient Western and Eastern manuscripts', to attempt to 1) determine what the text was for these verses in the earliest versions of the Quran and 2) 'to trace the historical development' of the small portion of seven verses 'to the current form of the text of the Qur'an. The book examines a small portion of the holy book of Islam, the Quran-specifically seven verses from Surah 14 ( Ibrahim 35-41) -found in twenty-one early Qur'an manuscripts. Small, a researcher and lecturer at the Centre for Islamic Studies and Muslim–Christian Relations at the London School of Theology. Textual Criticism and Qurʼān Manuscripts is a 2011 book on the textual criticism of the Quran by Keith E. Print ( Hardcover and Paperback) and E-book

Variant readings of the sana manuscripts