The Nature of the Qur’an’s Spelling in Early Islamic Centuries

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Abstract

The reports extant in the oldest written books on the Qur’an’s spelling (such as Abū ‘Amr al-Dānī’s al-Muqni‘), introduce the application of different spelling styles of a particular word in certain positions of the Qur’an’s text as enjoying methodical and constant rules throughout the Qur’an, to such an extent that it seems that these rules are to be followed while copying the text of the Qur’an. However, comparison of many reports with various evidences from the oldest copies of the Qur’an extant from the early three Islamic centuries contradicts the reports presented in these books and shows that the scribes of the early copies of the Qur’an were not unanimous in the spelling of some of the Qur’an’s words. On the other hand, the study of the writing rules in the pagan figures and written texts of the first century of the post-Islamic period indicates that writing copies of the Qur’an in such instances as occasional i‘jām (marking a consonant with diacritical points) of some similarly scribed letters, omission or retainment of the middle alif in words, drawing the feminine tā with long tā in circular form, substituting prolonged alif with abbreviated alif are similar to these figures and there has not been a universal (muṭṭaradī) rule in style of i‘jām and spelling specific letters, either in copying the Qur’an or other than that. Therefore, noticing such a practice by the scribes would confirm Farrā‘’s view concerning non-commitment of the early Arab scribes to a single style in copying.

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