Answering Islam

A central question regarding the transmission of the Qur’an is whether this transmission was essentially written or oral. (This is a distinct subject from the question of the Qur’an’s original orality, discussed earlier.) Islamic tradition argues that the Qur’an’s transmission was firmly controlled by the practice of oral recitation; the revelations received by Muhammad were learned from him as recitations by his followers, and were sometime later written down to form the Qur’an text we have today. These traditional accounts usually revolve around the stories of the so-called ‘Uthmanic recension or vulgate of the Qur’an prepared at the orders of the third caliph, ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan (d. 35/656). The doctrine of the “ ‘Uthmanic recension” was long accepted by a number of Western scholars as well, and with it the belief in an unbroken tradition of oral recitation.52
Doubts have been shed, however, on this traditional view. Burton, de Prémare, and many others have emphasized the suspect character of the traditional reports about the ‘Uthmanic recension.53 Moreover, there is mounting evidence that the Qur’an 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.54 This evidence takes the form of recognizing in the Qur’anic text misunderstood words, hypercorrected words (the “lectio facilior”), 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.

Fred Donner

www.tgoop.com/islam_answers/4121

402 viewsNov 18 at 15:20

A central question regarding the transmission of the Qur’an is whether this transmission was essentially written or oral. (This is a distinct subject from the question of the Qur’an’s original orality, discussed earlier.) Islamic tradition argues that the Qur’an’s transmission was firmly controlled by the practice of oral recitation; the revelations received by Muhammad were learned from him as recitations by his followers, and were sometime later written down to form the Qur’an text we have today. These traditional accounts usually revolve around the stories of the so-called ‘Uthmanic recension or vulgate of the Qur’an prepared at the orders of the third caliph, ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan (d. 35/656). The doctrine of the “ ‘Uthmanic recension” was long accepted by a number of Western scholars as well, and with it the belief in an unbroken tradition of oral recitation.52
Doubts have been shed, however, on this traditional view. Burton, de Prémare, and many others have emphasized the suspect character of the traditional reports about the ‘Uthmanic recension.53 Moreover, there is mounting evidence that the Qur’an 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.54 This evidence takes the form of recognizing in the Qur’anic text misunderstood words, hypercorrected words (the “lectio facilior”), 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.

Fred Donner

BY Answering Islam