Gerhard Böwering. Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an. Editor: Jane Dammen McAuliffe. Volume 1, Brill Academic Publishers, 2003.
Qurʾanic Perception of Time
The qurʾanic text reflects an atomistic concept of time, while lacking a notion of time as divided into past, present and future. Chiefly this is because Arabic grammar knows only two aspects of time (q.v.), complete and incomplete, without distinguishing precisely between present and future. The Qurʾan also rejects the pre-Islamic fatalism of impersonal time (dahr) which holds sway over everything and erases human works without hope for life beyond death (cf. Q 39:42; 45:24; 76:1). Affirming resurrection (q.v.) of the body and life in the world to come, the Qurʾan explains time from the perspective of a transcendent monotheism that promises paradise (q.v.) and threatens eternal damnation. Obliterating the spell of fate and subduing the all-pervading power of time, God almighty made the heavens and the earth (Q 6:73; 7:54; 10:3; 11:7; 25:59; 32:4; 50:38; 57:4) and formed the first human being in an instant through his command, “Be!” (Q 3:59; for other references to God’s creative ability, cf. Q 2:117; 3:47; 16:40; 19:35; 36:82; 40:68). He gives life and brings death according to his will and rules each moment of human existence (Q 53:44-54; cf. 35:12; 39:42; 40:69; 50:42): God is the Lord of each instant; what he has decreed happens. The most common term adopted in Arabic for time, zaman, does not appear in the Qurʾan, nor does qidam, its counterpart for eternity. The Qurʾan, however, has a great variety of terms for time understood as a moment or short duration (e.g. waqt, hin, An, yawm, saʾa). These terms give expression to an atomism of time that includes a vision of God acting instantaneously in the world as the sole true cause. Of itself, creation (q.v.) is discontinuous. It appears to be continuous only because of God’s compassionate consistency.
Qurʾanic Perception of History
Bolstered by the lack of genuine verbs for “to be” and “to become” in the Arabic language, the atomism of time also underlies the qurʾanic vision of history, which is typological in nature and focused on the history of the prophets. In the Qurʾan, history is seen as the scenario of God’s sending messengers as warners and guides to successive generations (q.v.), each of whom rejects the monotheistic message that the prophets proclaim and is over taken by a devastating divine punishment. Whether it refers to the legendary peoples of the ancient Arabs and their leaders or to biblical figures such as Noah (q.v.), Lot (q.v.) and their people, the same typology is repeated from messenger to messenger. Each of them comes with an essentially identical message and is himself saved, while his disobedient people are destroyed. History in the Qurʾan is principally portrayed as a series of such typological events, in which the features of similarity override the actual differences among individual stories of the prophets. The best explanation for this recurrent typological pattern is Muhammad’s ingenious interpretation of history in the light of his own life and time, which he took as the yardstick, projecting his own experience back onto all other messengers before him. Just as the qurʾanic emphasis on the atomism of time had frozen the flux of time into that of reiterated instants of God’s action, so its typology of history had collapsed the rich variety of past events into a regularly recurring pattern. Not pretending to be a document of historical record, the Qurʾan simply represents the prophetic preaching of Muhammad, making passing references to his personal situation, the opposition of his adversaries and the questions of his followers. Consequently it often lacks precise historical information, mention of the specific dates of events and determination of detailed or approximate historical settings.
Qurʾanic References to Events Contemporaneous with the Lifetime of Muhammad
There are certain allusions, however, which may be retrieved from the text of the Qurʾan as indicators of historical circumstances that relate to Muhammad’s life and times. These references are often obscure. They refer to Muhammad’s orphanage, his uncle Abu Lahab, his persecution at the hands of the Meccans, the tribal boycott of his clan at Mecca, the political rivalry of Mecca with Ṭaʾif and the religious practices observed at the Meccan sanctuary of the Kaʿba (q.v.), the hills of, afa (q.v.) and Marwa (q.v.), Mount ʿArafat and the sanctuary in al-Muzdalifa. A somewhat cryptic reference to the military defeat of the Byzantine forces at the hands of their Persian enemies—probably leading to their loss of Jerusalem in 614 C.E.—is found in Q 30:2-5. The return to Mecca of some of Muhammad’s followers who had emigrated to Abyssinia (q.v.)—probably in 615 C.E.—and had recited Q 19 to the Negus, may be connected with Q 53:19-23 on the basis of references found in the traditional biography of Muhammad. The conversion of ʿUmar (q.v.)—dated on the basis of extra-qurʾanic sources to the year 618 C.E.—occurred after the revelation of Q 20. The emigration (hijra) of Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina, which is generally understood as the first firm date of the Islamic era, is implied in Q 2:218, although its actual dating to September, 622 can only be determined with the help of extra-qurʾanic sources. The change of the direction toward which ritual prayer must be performed (qibla, q.v.), which Muhammad initiated more than a year after settling in Medina, is signaled in Q 2:142-4 in association with Q 2:150.
For the time after the emigration, there are explicit references to battles fought by Muhammad at Badr (q.v.; 2/624) and Hunayn (q.v.; 8/630), and circumstantial references to the battle of Uhud (q.v.; 3/625), the encounter at the Trench (5/627), and the expeditions to Khaybar (q.v.; 7/628) and Tabuk (9/630). We find as well implicit refer ences to the pledges made by Muhammad at ʿAqaba in the year prior to the emigration (cf. Q 40:12) and at al-Hudaybiya (q.v.) in 6/628 (cf. Q 48:27 in association with 48:18), the expulsion of the Jewish tribe of Banu l-NaEir from Medina (cf. Q 59:1-24), an episode involving Muhammad’s adopted son Zayd b. Haritha (q.v.; cf. Q 33:37) and a reference to Muhammad’s qurʾanic address at his farewell pilgrimage (cf. Q 5:3). The dates for these events, however, can only be supplied from extra-qurʾanic sources such as the biographical literature on the Prophet. Qurʾanic pas sages with chronological implications that are linked to the inner development of Muhammad’s prophetic career and religious experience are Q 96:1-5 and 74:1-7 (Muhammad’s call to prophethood), Q 53:1-18 and 81:15-29 (Muhammad’s visions) and Q 17:1 (Muhammad’s night journey) among others. As is evident from all of these mainly circumstantial references, the framework for dating qurʾanic verses in relation to Muhammad’s life is rather tenuous. There are no reliable chronological references in the Qurʾan itself that could be matched with the period prior to the emigration and there are only a few firm dates concerning events of Muhammad’s biography after the emigration that can be coordinated chronologically with qurʾanic verses. Again, hardly any of the historical events in question can be established purely by reference to the Qurʾan without recourse to extra-qurʾanic sources.
Early Islamic Methods for Determining the Order in Which Muhammad Received the Revelations
From the earliest centuries of Islam, the jurists and scholars of religious law (fuqahaʾ) developed a particular sensitivity for chronological inconsistencies affecting a variety of legal stipulations in the Qurʾan. Acknowledging the differences and variations of regulation found in disparate verses of the Qurʾan, they dev eloped a theory of abrogation (al-nasikh wa-l-mansukh), which established lists of abrogating and abrogated verses on the basis of their chronological order. This analysis had its earliest example in the systematic work entitled al-Nasikh wa-l-mansukh of Abu ʿUbayd al-Qasim b. Sallam (d. 224/838). For this theory—the qurʾanic basis for which is found in Q 2:106 and 16:101—examples into the hundreds were cited. Q 5:90, prohibiting the drinking of wine, was understood as abrogating Q 2:219 and 4:43, which tolerated it. Q 4:10-1 on inheritance (q.v.), allotting to the relatives specific shares in a deceased’s estate, were seen as revoking Q 2:180, which had instituted testamentary provisions for parents and nearest kin. Q 8:66 was taken to reduce from ten to two the number of unbelievers against whom the Muslims in Q 8:65 were required to fight. The “sword verse” (Q 9:5) alone was thought to have replaced 124 other verses. The “Ibn Adam verse” and verses praising the martyrs of Biʾr Maʿuna were claimed to have been lost altogether. The locus of the spurious “stone verse,” mandating ritual stoning (q.v.) as a punishment for fornication, was believed to have been omitted from the qurʾanic text. The highly controversial and infamous “Satanic verses” (q.v.), cited in the extra-qurʾanic literature (e.g. Ṭabari, Taʾrikh, i, 1192-3), were understood as having been actually replaced by Q 53:19-23 with the significantly later Q 22:52-3 explaining the Satanic interference.
Other Muslim scholars, especially the early works of qurʾanic exegetes (mufassirun), were fully aware of the scanty amount of chronological information that could be retrieved from the Qurʾan and hence turned to the Prophet’s biography (siraz), the reports about his actions and words (hadith) and the early historiography of Muhammad’s campaigns (maghazi) for circumstances that might be seen as linked to individual passages of the Qurʾan. This led to the development of a separate genre of literature called “the occasions of the revelation” (asbab al-nuzul, exemplified by the work of al-Wahidi, d. 468/1075-6) that connected a small portion of qurʾanic verses with actual occurrences and with stories about Muhammad’s time and career, many of which were legendary. The method of the scholars dealing with the theory of abrogation was primarily intra-qurʾanic, i.e. replacing the legislative force of one qurʾanic verse with that of another. It, how ever, also made ample room for a hadith to be abrogated by another hadith and cited cases where a qurʾanic passage was abrogated by a hadith or vice versa. On the contrary, the method of the scholars dealing with the occasions of the revelation was primarily extra-qurʾanic, relating qurʾanic verses to circumstances that could be established through recourse to the extra-qurʾanic literature of the Islamic scholarly tradition. Both methods focused their chronological analysis on individual or isolated qurʾanic verses and small passages rather than on qurʾanic chapters and suras as integral units of revelation. This approach, attentive to individual qurʾanic passages, was very much in step with the piecemeal character of the qurʾanic revelation itself.
Another group of Muslim scholars active in later medieval times based their analysis of qurʾanic chronology on the assumption that the individual suras formed the original units of revelation and could best be divided into two sets, Meccan and Medinan, according to whether they were revealed before or after the emigration (hijra). This division into Meccan and Medinan suras became the most characteristic method of chronological analysis. The first attempt of this kind was the list of suras attributed to Ibn ʿAbbas (d. 68/688), the traditional father of qurʾanic exegesis. Later scholars further elaborated this system until it achieved fixation in the qurʾanic commentary of al-BayEawi (d. 716/1316) and the Ḍtqan of al-Suyuṭi (d. 911/1505). Centuries later the latter became the principal starting point for Western scholarship on qurʾanic chronology. Muslim scholars, however, had to cope with the fact that the exact chronological listing of suras had been in dispute since Qatada (d. 112/730) and that qurʾanic scholars had not managed to agree on whether certain suras were either Meccan or Medinan, and thus had furnished a list of 17 disputed suras, namely Q 13; 47; 55; 57; 61; 64; 83; 95; 97; 98; 99; 100; 102; 107; 112; 113; 114). To these other scholars added six more (Q 49; 62; 63; 77; 89; 92). The traditional chronological order attributed to Ibn ʿAbbas, however, became widely accepted and was generally adopted by the Egyptian standard edition of the Qurʾan published in 1924. It enumerated 86 Meccan suras and added headings to each sura indicating its exact chronological locus in the traditional order of revelation established by Muslim scholarship. It also noted later Medinan verses which were inserted into a number of the earlier Meccan suras and cited three Medinan suras (Q 8; 47; 9) that incorporated earlier verses. This Muslim method of chronological analysis, separating Meccan from Medinan suras, reflected two basic assumptions, namely that the sources of traditional Muslim scholarship provided a solidly reliable basis for the chronological ordering of the suras and that the suras could be treated and dated as integral units of revelation.
Western Historical-Critical Qurʾanic Analysis
From the mid-nineteenth century Western scholars began to engage in serious literary research on the Qurʾan linking the scholarly findings of traditional Muslim scholarship with the philological and text-critical methods that biblical scholarship was developing in Europe. An intensive scholarly attempt was made to arrive at a chronological order of qurʾanic chapters and passages that could be correlated with the development and varying circumstances of Muhammad’s religious career. Beginning with Gustav Weil (Historisch-kritische Einleitung, Bielefeld 1844), this Western chronological approach to the Qurʾan achieved its climax in the highly-acclaimed Geschichte des Qorans by Theodor Nöldeke (Göttingen 1860). It was later revised and expanded by Friedrich Schwally (Leipzig 1909-19) and later by Gotthelf Bergsträsser and Otto Pretzl (Leipzig 1938) into a three-volume work. This work became the classic of Western qurʾanic scholarship and the foundation of its widely-accepted framework of qurʾanic chronology, one to which Règis Blachère (Introduction, Paris 1947-50) added further refinements. The chronological sequencing of the suras, elaborated by Western qurʾanic scholarship, largely adopted the distinction of traditional Muslim scholarship between Meccan and Medinan suras. It further subdivided the Meccan phase of Muhammad’s proclamation of the Qurʾan into three distinct periods.
A different method leading to similar chronological results, however, was chosen by Hartwig Hirschfeld (Composition and exegesis, London 1902), who proposed an arrangement of the Meccan suras into periods according to five literary criteria—confirmatory, declamatory, narrative, descriptive and legislative—followed by the group of Medinan suras. Some years earlier (The Corân. Its composition and teaching, London 1875), William Muir made the innovative suggestion in his rearrangement of the suras that eighteen short suras, termed rhapsodies, dated from before Muhammad’s call (Q 103; 100; 99; 91; 106; 1; 101; 95; 102; 104; 82; 92; 105; 89; 90; 93; 94; 108). A drastically different approach was taken by Richard Bell (The Qurʾan, 2 vols., Edinburgh 1937-9 and posthumously A commentary on the Qurʾan, 2 vols. Manchester 1991), who abandoned the chronological division into Meccan and Medinan periods and designed a highly subjective and disjointed dating system for individual verses in the Qurʾan taken as a whole. The two summary follow-up reactions to R. Bell in 1977 by John Wansbrough (Quranic studies, London 1977) and John Burton (The collection of the Qurʾan, Cambridge 1977) challenged the assumptions underlying the Western chronological approach from totally opposite sides. Rudi Paret (Der Koran: Kommentar und Konkordanz, Stuttgart 1971), on the other hand, integrated the major findings of Western scholarship on qurʾanic chronology with the principal ancillary studies authored in the West in his balanced manual of commentary and concordance to the Qurʾan.
The overriding goal of the chronological framework of the Qurʾan, elaborated in Western scholarship, was to divide the qurʾanic proclamation into four periods—Mecca i, Mecca ii, Mecca iii, and Medina—and to link these with a vision of the gradual inner development of Muhammad’s prophetic consciousness and political career that Western scholarship had determined through biographical research on the life of Muhammad, worked out in lockstep with its research on the Qurʾan. This was initiated by Alois Sprenger (Leben und Lehre, 3 vols., 1861-5) and Hubert Grimme (Mohammed, 1892-5) and was later developed by Frants Buhl (Das Leben Mohammeds, 1934) and with certain modifications by W. Montgomery Watt (Muhammad at Mecca, 1953; Muhammad at Medina, 1956). Chronological research on the Qurʾan and biographical research on Muhammad’s career were closely dependent on each other. For this reason, the threat of a circular argument remained a constant danger for this approach because the subjective evaluation of Muhammad’s religious development had to be read back into a great variety of disparate qurʾanic verses from which it had been originally culled. Nevertheless, the division of the Meccan suras into three sequential periods offered many new insights into Muhammad’s genesis as a prophet prior to the emigration and opened novel perspectives into significant stages of development in his early qurʾanic proclamation.
In general, the fourfold division of periods of the qurʾanic proclamation proceeded on the basis of two major principles. It related qurʾanic passages source-critically to historical events known from extra-qurʾanic literature and it systematically analyzed the philological and stylistic nature of the Arabic text of the Qurʾan passage by passage. It also placed clear markers between the Meccan periods at the approximate time of the emigration to Abyssinia (about 615 C.E.) and Muhammad’s disillusioned return from Ṭaʾif (about 620 C.E.) and retained the emigration in 622 C.E. as the divide between Meccan and Medinan suras. An overview of major versions of the chronological re-arrangement of the suras in comparison to their actual numbered order in the Qurʾan may be found in Watt-Bell, Introduction, 205-13.
The group of suras classified as belonging to the first or early Meccan period—forty-eight suras in T. Nöldeke’s chronology—were identified by a similarity of style which gives expression to Muhammad’s initial enthusiasm in a language that is rich in images, powerful in passion, uttered in short and rhythmic verses, marked by a strong poetic coloring and with about thirty oaths or adjurations introducing individual suras or passages. Most of these suras, which are understood as a group rather than as standing in the exact chronological order of their revelation, are short. Twenty-three of them have less than twenty and fourteen less than fifty verses. They are driven by a heightened awareness of the apocalyptic end of this world and God’s final judgment of humanity. They include Muhammad’s vehement attacks against his Meccan opponents for adhering to the old Arab tribal religion and his vigorous rebuttals of their damaging accusations against his claim of divine inspiration, when they dismissively characterized him as a soothsayer (kahin), poet (shaʿir) and a man possessed (majnun).
The suras of the second or middle Meccan period, twenty-one in number, have longer verses and longer units of revelation, which are more prosaic and do not exhibit a clearly distinct common character. They mark the transition from the excitement of the first phase to a Muhammad of greater calm who aims to influence his audience by paranetic proofs selected from descriptions of natural phenomena, illustrations from human life and vivid depictions of paradise (q.v.) and hellfire. The stories of earlier prophets and elements from the story of Moses, in particular, are cited as admonitions for his enemies and as encouragement for himself and the small group of his followers. The place of the oaths (q.v.) is taken by introductory titles such as “This is the revelation of God” and by the frequently recurring, “Say!” (qul), the divine command for Muhammad to proclaim a certain qurʾanic passage. The name al-rahman (the merciful), a name for God in use prior to Islam in southern and central Arabia, although rejected by the pre-Islamic Meccans, is frequently employed although it dies out in the third period (see below for a discussion on the names of God).
The suras of the third or late Meccan period are also 21 in number but cannot be seen as standing in any kind of inner chronological order. They exhibit a broad, prosaic style with rhyme patterns that become more and more stereotyped, frequently ending in -un and -in. The formula “You people” (ya ayyuha l-nas) is frequently employed by Muhammad in addressing his followers as a group. Muhammad’s imagination seems to be subdued, the revelations take on the form of sermons or speeches and the prophetic stories repeat earlier ideas. Overall, this group of suras could be understood to reflect Muhammad’s exasperation at the stubborn resistance to his message on the part of his fellow Meccan tribesmen.
The suras of the Medinan period, 24 in number, follow one another in a relatively certain chronological order and reflect Muhammad’s growing political power and his shaping of the social framework of the Muslim community. As the acknowledged leader in spiritual and social affairs of the Medinan community, a community that had been torn by internal strife prior to his arrival, Muhammad’s qurʾanic proclamation becomes preoccupied with criminal legislation, civil matters such as laws of marriage, divorce and inheritance (q.v.), and with the summons to holy war (jihad, q.v.) “in the path of God” (fi sabil Allah). Various groups of people are addressed separately by different epithets. The believers, the Meccan emigrants (muhajirun) and their Medinan helpers (anṣar), are addressed as “You who believe” (ya ayyuha lladhina Amanu), while the Medinans who distrusted Muhammad and hesitated in converting to Islam are called “waverers” (munafiqun). The members of the Jewish tribes of the Qurayẓa (q.v.), NaEir (q.v.) and Qaynuqaʾ (q.v.) are collectively called Jews (yahud) and the Christians are referred to by the group name of Nazarenes (naṣara). More than thirty times—and only in Medinan verses—the peoples who have been given a scripture in previous eras are identified collectively by the set phrase “the people of the book” (ahl al-kitab). They are distinguished from the ummiyyun (Q 2:78; 3:20, 75; 62:2), who have not been given the book previously but from among whom God selected Muhammad, called al-nabi al-ummi in the late Meccan passage Q 7:157-8, as his messenger. A significant group of qurʾanic passages from Medinan suras refers to Muhammad’s breach with the Jewish tribes and his subsequent interpretation of the figure of Abraham, supported by Ishmael (q.v.), as the founder of the Meccan sanctuary and the prototypical Muslim (hanif, q.v.) who represents the original pure religion designated “the religion of Abraham” (millat Ḍbrahim) and now reinstated by Muhammad.
The most radical chronological rearrangement of the suras and verses of the Qurʾan was undertaken by R. Bell who concluded his elaborate hypothesis with many provisos. He suggested that the composition of the Qurʾan followed three main phases: a “Sign” phase, a “Qurʾan” phase and a “Book” phase. The earliest phase in R. Bell’s view was that of “sign passages” (Ayat) and exhortations (q.v.) to worship God. These represent the major portion of Muhammad’s preaching at Mecca of which only an incomplete and partially fragmentary amount survive. The “Qurʾan” phase included the later stages of Muhammad’s Meccan career and about the first two years of his activity at Medina, a phase during which Muhammad was faced with the task of producing a collection of liturgical recitals (sing. qurʾan). The Book phase belonged to his activity at Medina and began at the end of the second year after the emigration from which time Muhammad set out to produce a written scripture (kitab). In the present Qurʾan, each of these three phases, however, cannot be separated precisely because sign passages came to be incorporated into the liturgical collection and earlier oral recitals were later revised to form part of the written book. In explaining his complex system of distinguishing criteria, Bell often remained rather general in his remarks. He dissected suras on the basis of subjective impressions and suggested arbitrarily that certain passages had been discarded while the content of other “scraps of paper” that were meant to be discarded had been retained. He convincingly argued, however, that the original units of revelation were short, piecemeal passages which Muhammad himself collected into suras and that written documents were used in the process of redaction, a process undertaken with the help of scribes during Muhammad’s career in Medina. Regarding the redaction of the Qurʾan during Muhammad’s lifetime, the starting point for the Qurʾan as sacred scripture, in Bell’s view, had to be related to the time of the battle of Badr (q.v.; 2/624). For Bell, this was the watershed event while the emigration (hijra) did not constitute a great divide for the periodization of the suras.
None of the systems of chronological sequencing of qurʾanic chapters and verses has been accepted universally by contemporary scholarship. T. Nöldeke’s sequencing and its refinements have established a rule of thumb for the approximate order of the suras in their chronological sequence. Bell’s hypothesis has established that the final redaction of the Qurʾan was a complex process of successive revisions of earlier material whether oral or already available in rudimentary written form. In many ways, Western qurʾanic scholarship reconfirmed the two pillars on which the traditional Muslim views of qurʾanic chronology were based. First, the Qurʾan was revealed piecemeal and, second, it was collected into book-form on the basis of both written documents prepared by scribes on Muhammad’s dictation and qurʾanic passages preserved in the collective memory of his circle of companions. All methods of chronological analysis, whether traditional Muslim or modern Western, agree that the order of the suras in Muhammad’s proclamation was different from the order found in the written text we hold in hand today where, in general, the suras are arranged according to the principle of decreasing length.
One consequence of the chronological periodization of suras was the attention given to the first and last qurʾanic proclamations. There is a general consensus that either Q 96:1-5 or 74:1-7 represent the first proclamation of qurʾanic verses uttered by the Prophet. In particular Q 96:1-5 which includes the command, “Recite!” (iqraʾ), derived from the same Arabic root as the word “Qurʾan” but also Q 74:1-7 which may refer to Muhammad being raised from sleep at night, especially if seen in parallel to Q 73:1-5, are linked in hadith literature with Muhammad’s call to prophet-hood. This call, the beginning of qurʾanic revelation, occurred according to Islamic tradition during the night of destiny (laylat al-qadr, Q 97:1-3; cf. 44:3), ordinarily identified as the twenty-seventh day of the month of RamaEan (q.v.). As is to be expected, the last passages of the Qurʾan were sought among the Medinan suras and Muslim scholarship identified suras 5, 9 or 110 as the last to be revealed. Some pointed to either Q 2:278 or 281 or Q 4:174 as the last verse of the Qurʾan, while others opted for Q 9:128-9, two verses said to have been finally found during the collection of the qurʾanic material into book-form. The most suitable candidate for the last verse, however, is Q 5:3 which includes Muhammad’s affirmation, “Today I have completed your religion,” and one on which there is much agreement among Muslim and Western Qurʾan scholars.
Thematic Manifestations of Qurʾanic Chronology
Qurʾanic chronology is also manifest in the development of innerqurʾanic topics, four of which may be analysed as cases in point: disconnected letters, ritual prayer, the name for God and the figure of Abraham. From a stylistic perspective, a particular and characteristic phenomenon of the Qurʾan with chronological implications is the so-called mysterious or disconnected letters (al-huruf al-muqaṭṭaʿa) found immediately after the introductory basmala (q.v.; the formulaic saying “In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate”) of twenty-nine suras. Muslim sources, which consider the disconnected letters an integral part of the qurʾanic revelation, record no recollection of their real significance as is shown by the great variety of explanations given for them. Many Muslim and Western scholars have attempted to interpret the function of the disconnected letters in the Qurʾan, but no satisfactory explanation has been found. Among the theories put forward are that the letters represent abbreviations of the divine names, the initials of the owners of manuscripts used in the redaction of the Qurʾan, numbers written in Arabic letters or simply letters possessing an inscrutable or mystical meaning known only by God. Three consistent factors, however, can be observed that may undergird a chronological explanation of their function in the Qurʾan. First, the disconnected letters at the beginning of the twenty-nine suras belong to later Meccan and early Medinan suras. The letters sometimes occur singly and sometimes in groups of two to five. Some of these occur only once while others are repeated before two, five or six suras. Secondly, these letters are pronounced separately in recitation as the letters of the alphabet, and the literature on the variant readings of the Qurʾan reveals no differences regarding their recitation. Thirdly, they represent every consonantal form of the Arabic alphabet in Kufic script, the earliest Arabic script (q.v.), namely fourteen forms, and no form is used for more than a single letter of the alphabet.
On the basis of these constant factors it may be argued that the disconnected letters are related to an ordering of suras, using the letters of the Arabic alphabet in the time when Muhammad collected suras (q.v.) for liturgical purposes and began to take the first steps toward a written scripture. This rather general explanation of the function of the disconnected letters in the chronological genesis of the text of the Qurʾan could be confirmed by the fact that certain groups of suras introduced by the same letters—especially those beginning with the letter patterns alif -lam -mim, alif -lam – raʾ, haʾ – mim and ṭaʾ – sin -[mim] — have been kept together in the actual order of the Qurʾan despite their sometimes widely varying lengths and by the fact that in almost all cases the disconnected letters are followed by a usually explicit or occasionally implicit reference to the revelation of scripture as a “Book” sent down or a “Qurʾan” made clear. Because the disconnected letters appear only at the beginning and never within the body of a sura, such as at points of incision indicated by a change of style, rhyme or content, they belong to the initial phase of redaction by Muhammad himself rather than to either the original proclamation of qurʾanic passages by Muhammad or to the final redaction of the Qurʾan after his death. The insertion of the letters after Muhammad’s death would presuppose the sporadic introduction of letter patterns into the final text by a later hand. This general explanation favors the view that Muhammad as redactor was the author of the disconnected letters affixed to the beginning of suras and that he began quite early to produce his own scriptural text with the help of scribes, by piecing together passages of similar content in certain suras. Some of these he then marked as a liturgical unit through the insertion of the disconnected letters, a marking scheme that the final redactors of the Qurʾan felt obliged to respect.
Yet another phenomenon that manifests significant chronological parameters is the genesis of central religious institutions introduced by Muhammad such as the ritual prayer (ṣalat) of Islam. The institution of the ritual prayer cannot be traced to the earliest phase of Muhammad’s qurʾanic proclamation in which the root ṣalla is used in reference to the tribal practice of animal sacrifice (Q 108:2) and the prayers of unbelieving Meccans (Q 107:4-7). At this stage the recitation of the Qurʾan is as yet not linked with ritual prayer but is connected with Muhammad’s labor in composing qurʾanic passages (Q 73:1-8). Somewhat later, about the middle of the Meccan period of his qurʾanic proclamation, Muhammad began to observe a night vigil (tahajjud) which combined the recitation of the Qurʾan with the beginnings of a prayer practice called ṣalat (Q 17:78-9; cf. 25:64; 51:17-8) that was performed both by day and by night (Q 76:25-6; 52:48-9). At first Muhammad alone is called to perform the ṣalat (Q 17:110; 20:130) but, then, in Q 20:132, he is clearly summoned to command his relatives or followers (ahlaka) to perform the ṣalat together with him and to persevere with those who invoke God morning and evening (Q 18:28) or prostrate themselves in prayer at night (Q 39:9). During this phase, Muhammad also draws attention to the great qurʾanic models of prayer, Abraham (Q 26:83-9), Moses (Q 20:25-35) and Zechariah (q.v.; Q 19:3-6) and points to God’s servant, Jesus, as a prophet divinely commissioned to practice ṣalat (Q 19:30-1). Perhaps somewhat later in the Meccan phase of his proclamation Muhammad is prompted, again in the singular, to perform the ṣalat at three different times of day, in the morning and in the evening, and also during the night (Q 11:114-5; 50:39-40). His followers are admonished to join in the practice, which clearly includes the recitation of the Qurʾan and prostration in prayer (Q 7:204-6). The evolution of ritual prayer can also be traced in the varying yet vacillating qurʾanic vocabulary used in the late Meccan and early Medinan periods for the prayer times: in the morning (at the dawning of the day and before the rising of the sun), in the evening (at the declining of the day and before the setting of the sun) and during the night (tahajjad, Q 17:79; zulafan min al-layl, Q 11:114; anaʾ al-layl, Q 3:113).
After the emigration (hijra), qurʾanic chronology demonstrates that the ṣalat becomes a firm institution of the individual and communal ritual prayer for Muslims. References to ṣalat (generally used in the singular) occur with high frequency in the Medinan suras (33 times in Q 2, 4, 5, 9 and 24 alone, representing half of all occurrences of this term in the entire Qurʾan) and are now frequently linked with its sister religious institution of almsgiving (zakat, the development of which can itself be traced in the Qurʾan from an act of free giving to a religious duty and communal tax). The frequent reference to a normative obligation to perform ṣalat is paralleled by the emphatic introduction of the obligatory direction of prayer (qibla). At first this may have been observed in the direction of Jerusalem (q.v.), emulating Jewish-Christian custom, but then was changed toward the Kaʿba of Mecca by a qurʾanic command (Q 2:142-52). These particular early Medinan verses were proclaimed by Muhammad at about the time of the battle of Badr in 2/624 although they may actually reflect a gradual process of change in the ritualization of the ṣalat and the fixation of its qibla. Furthermore, in Medina, the specific prayer times are fixed for what has now clearly become a daily ritual prayer that is repeatedly enjoined in the plural (aqimu al-ṣalat), is performed standing upright (cf. Q 4:102) and includes the recitation of the Qurʾan (cf. Q 7:204-5). Finally, the Medinan verse Q 2:238 firmly establishes a ritual mid-day prayer (al-ṣalat al-wusṭa) which may already have been introduced toward the end of Muhammad’s career in Mecca when he summoned his followers to praise God in the morning, the evening and during the middle of the day (wa-hina tuŻhirun, Q 30:17-8). From this point on, the ṣalat is enjoined upon the believers at fixed times (kitaban mawqutan, Q 4:103) and the communal prayer during the week is explicitly fixed on Friday (yawm al-jumʿA), the market day of Medina (Q 62:9). The believers are called to prayer (Q 5:58; 62:9) and ritual ablutions before prayer (wuḍaʾ, ghusl) are established in detail, including such specificity as the substitution of sand in the absence of water (tayammum, cf. Q 4:43; 5:6) and provisos for people who are traveling.
It is more difficult to trace stages of chronological development for the proper name for God in the Qurʾan, which relies principally on Allah (al-ilah, lit. the deity), Lord (rabb) and the Merciful (al-rahman) but ultimately establishes Allah as the predominant designation and the one adopted by Islam throughout the centuries. In what the Islamic tradition identifies as the first verses of qurʾanic revelation, Muhammad is summoned to speak in the name of “your Lord” (rabbika, Q 96:1; rabbaka, 74:3). A non-secular usage of lord (q.v.) or master (rabb, never used with the definite article in the Qurʾan yet very often linked with a personal pronoun), was familiar to the Meccans from pre-Islamic times. This is demonstrated by the phrase “the lord of this house” (rabba hadha l-bayt, Q 106:3), the house being the Kaʿba in Mecca. It is most frequently employed in the first Meccan period (e.g. “Extol the name of your lord the most high [sabbihi sma rabbika l-aʿla]” Q 87:1), less often in the second and third (as in Pharaoh’s [q.v.] blasphemous utterance, “I am your lord the most high [ana rabbukumu l-aʿla]” Q 79:24), and only rarely in Medinan verses. On the contrary, the term Allah, known to the Meccans prior to Muhammad as a proper name for God, is attested in pre-Islamic poetry and pre-Islamic personal names. In all probability it is a contraction of al-ilah which, itself, is never used in the Qurʾan, though the form ilah, without the definite article but in a genitive construction, is employed to denote a specific deity as in “the deity of the people,” ilah al-nas, Q 114:3, used interchangeably with “the lord of the people,” rabb al-nas, Q 114:1). The term Allah occurs very rarely in the first Meccan period, is still infrequent throughout the second and into the third Meccan periods but finally becomes so dominant that it appears on average about every five verses in the Medinan suras. The Merciful (al-rahman, probably derived from the personal name for God in southern and central Arabian usage), makes a strong entry into the qurʾanic vocabulary for God in the second Meccan period but then is almost entirely subsumed by “Allah,” except for its inclusion (albeit in a subordinate position to Allah) in the formula of the basmala (Q 27:30) that becomes the introductory verse to each qurʾanic chapter except Q 9.
One crucial stage of transition toward the breakthrough of the finally dominant “Allah” may be traced in God’s declaration of his unicity before Moses (Q 20:12-4; cf. 27:8-9). Immediately following the declaration, “I am your Lord” (innani ana rabbuka, Q 20:12), the name Allah is affirmed by the first form of the emphatic, “I, I am God (innani ana llah), there is no deity save me” (la ilaha illa ana, Q 20:14) in a passage that belongs to the second Meccan period. This verse is chronologically later than sura 79 including Pharaoh’s blasphemous utterance, “I am your Lord the most high” (ana rabbukum al-aʿla, Q 79:24). After Q 20:12 the use of rabb decreases noticeably in frequency, while the affirmations, “there is no deity save me” (la ilaha illa ana, in late Meccan verses, i.e. Q 16:2; 20:14; 21:25) and “there is no deity save him” (la ilaha illa huwa, in late Meccan verses, i.e. Q 28:70, 88, and increasingly in Medinan verses, i.e. Q 2:163, 255; 3:6, 18) occur repeatedly. Since rabb was applied to a variety of deities in pre-Islamic Arabia, it proved less suitable to serve as the name for the one God of Muhammad’s monotheistic message than Allah, a name that by its very nature is definite and unique. An explanation for the rare occurrence of Allah in the early Meccan suras may also be found in the possibility of Muhammad’s original reluctance to adopt any name associated with polytheistic practices as a proper name for a supreme God. For pre-Islamic Arabs swore solemn oaths “by Allah” (billahi, Q 6:109; 16:38; 35:42), worshipped Allah as creator and supreme provider (Q 13:16-7; 29:60-3; 31:25; 39:38; 43:9, 87) and asserted Allah to have a kinship with the jinn (cf. Q 6:100, 128; 37:158; 72:6) and a relationship to subordinate deities such as al-ʿUzza, Manat and al-Lat, identified as his daughters (cf. Q 53:19-21; 16:57; 37:149), and others anonymously as his sons (kharaqu la-hu banina wa-banat, Q 6:100). The sheer amount of references to God in the Qurʾan, which number in the thousands, makes it difficult to develop a precise curve of chronological development. Nevertheless, the overwhelming inner-qurʾanic evidence suggests that Muhammad moved from a forceful personal experience of God who could be addressed as “my Lord” (rabbi), to a conception of the unique godhead of Allah, the one and only God of his message (la ilaha illa llah), to whom a great number of epithets and attributes (al-asmaʾ al-husna) were applied in the Qurʾan.
The figure of Abraham (q.v., Ibrahim), who appears with many details of his story in twenty-five suras, also provides an important touchstone for inner-qurʾanic chronology. In the first Meccan period the “sheets” (ṣuhuf) of Abraham are cited as previously revealed scriptures and Abraham stands as a prophetic figure next to Moses (Q 87:18-9). In the second and third Meccan periods Abraham is identified as “a prophet, speaking the truth” (ṣiddiqan nabiyyan, Q 19:41) and depicted in detail as a staunch monotheist who attacks the idol-worship of his father and his people (Q 37:83-98; 26:69-89; 19:41-50; 43:26-8; 21:51-73; 29:16-27; 6:74-84). Next to many other details (e.g. Abraham’s rescue from the fire and his intercession for his idolatrous father), the same periods also record men sent by God to visit Abraham and to announce the punishment imposed on Lot’s people (Q 51:24-34; 15:51-60; 11:69-76; 29:31-2). They also refer to Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son (Q 37:100-11), ordinarily understood to be Isaac (q.v.) on account of Q 37:112-3 and, anonymously, Q 51:28 and 15:53. In the Medinan suras, Abraham, supported by his son Ishmael, erects the Kaʿba in Mecca as a place of pure monotheistic belief and as a center of pilgrimage (q.v.; cf. Q 2:124-41; 3:65-8, 95-7; 6:125; 22:26-9, 78). Called emphatically a “true monotheist” (hanif), who did not belong to the idolaters (mushrikun, cf. Q 2:135; 3:67, 95; 4:125; 22:31, 78) and mentioned once as God’s friend (khalil, Q 4:125), Abraham becomes the exemplary prototype for Muhammad who identifies the religion he himself proclaims as “the religion of Abraham” (millat Ḍbrahim, Q 2:130, 135; 4:125; 6:161; 16:123).
The characteristic features of the qurʾanic story of Abraham have been the subject of much scholarly research by Snouck Hurgronje (Mekkaansche feest), A.J. Wensinck (Muhammad and the Jews) and Y. Moubarac (Abraham), and more recently R. Firestone (Journeys). These scholars have laid great stress on the re-interpretation of Abraham in the Medinan suras as provoked by Muhammad’s break with the Jewish tribes of Medina. Muhammad’s re-orientation to Mecca, linking the figure of Abraham with the change of the prayer-orientation (qibla) to Mecca, is most certainly a significant chronological incision in the interpretation of Abraham and in the thrust of the qurʾanic message. What tends to be de-emphasized in the chronological analysis, especially of the Meccan verses, however, is an indisputable fact analyzed by E. Beck (Die Gestalt des Abraham). According to Beck, Abraham was already understood in the Meccan verses as connected with Mecca, prior to his association with Ishmael in the Qurʾan, and Muhammad had developed his idea of the millat Ḍbrahim, at least initially, already at Mecca prior to his break with the Jews of Medina. In this perspective, some of G. Lüling’s observations about Muhammad’s “religion of Abraham” (pruned of their bitterly controversial aspects, cf. Wiederentdeckung, 213-303), call for a more substantive examination as to whether Muhammad possessed a distinct knowledge of Hellenistic and Judaeo-Christian trends in Christianity that facilitated his turning to a pre-Islamic Arab tradition of Abraham, closer akin to the latter, while rejecting the icon-worship of the former.
These four examples of a detailed approach to inner-qurʾanic chronology that concentrates upon central themes—i.e. the literary phenomenon of the disconnected letters, the institutional genesis of the ritual prayer, the qurʾanic development of the proper name for God and the tradition of the prophetic figure of Abraham and his religion—may open ways to complement the standard approach to qurʾanic chronology based on the four-period classification advanced by T. Nöldeke or the three-phase hypothesis advocated by R. Bell. The mosaic stones of such inner-qurʾanic approaches, case by case and limited to a manageable amount of verse analysis, may help to fill the somewhat indistinct and conjectural framework of the chronological approach to the Qurʾan as a whole.
Compilation of the Qurʾan
As mentioned above, it is a well-known fact that in the “completed” Qurʾan, i.e. that finally produced as Islam’s holy book, the suras are generally arranged according to decreasing length. This order was established in the final redaction of the written text of the Qurʾan, which reached its canonical completion many years after Muhammad’s death in 11/632. This process of final redaction and canonical completion represents the history of the text from Muhammad’s last qurʾanic proclamation, shortly before his death, until the appearance of the final vocalized text of the Qurʾan in the fourth/tenth century. This history of the text moves the Qurʾan from the life of the Prophet into the life of the Muslim community and from the principal historical author of the qurʾanic message to the chief redactors who produced the final written version we hold in our hands today. Due to its very nature, the history of this process is a minefield of chronological problems that are deeply rooted in the highly complex and contradictory evidence included in the Islamic tradition, especially the hadith.
After Muhammad’s death, the Muslim community faced three major tasks with regard to establishing the Qurʾan as canonical scripture: it had to collect the text from oral and written sources, establish the consonantal skeleton of the Arabic text and finalize the fully-vocalized text that came to be accepted as the canonical standard. The traditional view depicting the accomplishment of these tasks covers three centuries and telescopes the history of the text into a basic scheme (the principal objections to which are examined in volumes ii and iii of Nöldeke’s revised Geschichte des Qorans). This scheme proceeded on the assumptions that Muhammad did not leave a complete written text of the Qurʾan and that the Qurʾan was preserved primarily in oral form in the memory of a considerable number of Muhammad’s direct listeners with a sizeable amount of the text having been recorded in writing by scribes during Muhammad’s lifetime. A group of the Companions, led by Zayd b. Thabit (q.v.; d. 46/665), whom Muhammad himself had employed as a scribe in Medina, collected and arranged the oral and written materials of the Qurʾan in a complete consonantal text during the second half of the caliphate of ʿUthman (q.v.; r. 23/644-35/656). The final fully-vocalized text of the Qurʾan was established and completed only in the first half of the fourth/tenth century after different ways of reading—either seven, ten or fourteen in number—displaying slight variations in vocalization, came to be tolerated and accepted as standard. In addition to these standardized variations of vocalization, however, thousands of other textual variants were recorded in the literatures of Islamic tradition and Qurʾan commentary (tafsir al-Qurʾan), many of which cannot be found in the myriad, complete and fragmentary, manuscripts of the Qurʾan, extant in libraries all over the world.
It is unlikely, as is maintained in a number of early accounts, that the initial collection of the Qurʾan took place in the short reign of the first caliph Abu Bakr (II/632-13/634) at the instigation of ʿUmar. ʿUmar is supposed to have perceived a serious threat to the integrity of the transmission of the qurʾanic text in the many casualties at the battle of al-Yamama because these included a number of reciters (qurraʾ) who knew the text by heart. According to this story, Abu Bakr, though hesitating for fear of overstepping Muhammad’s precedent, ordered Zayd b. Thabit to collect all of the qurʾanic fragments written on palm leaves, tablets of clay and flat stones and “preserved in the hearts of men” and to write them out on sheets (ṣuhuf) of uniform size. These written sheets came into the possession of ʿUmar upon his accession to the caliphate in 13/634 and when he died in 23/644, his daughter Hafṣa, one of the Prophet’s widows, inherited them from him. Another account credits the creation of the first collected volume (muṣhaf) to ʿUmar while yet another refutes this by asserting that ʿUmar did not live to see this collection completed. The historicity of these accounts, placing the collection of the Qurʾan within the caliphates of Abu Bakr and ʿUmar, has been challenged on the grounds that critical study shows only two of the dead at the battle of al-Yamama actually qualified as reciters, that ʿUthman’s widely-attested role in establishing the official text has been intentionally neglected and that Muhammad’s role in the preparation of the text and the scribal work done during his lifetime have been under-emphasized.
The most widely-accepted version of the traditional history of the Qurʾan places the collection of the final consonantal text in the caliphate of ʿUthman about twenty years after Muhammad’s death. The occasion for the final collection of the Qurʾan, according to this account, was a military expedition to Azerbayjan and Armenia under the leadership of the general Hudhayfa. Apparently his Muslim contingents from Syria and those from Iraq fell into dispute about the correct way of reciting the Qurʾan during the communal prayers. Trying to establish order, ʿUthman appointed a commission of four respected Meccans, presided over by Zayd b. Thabit, to copy the “sheets” that were in Hafṣa’s personal possession. Where variant readings of words were encountered, they chose the one in the dialect of the Quraysh. When the scribes completed their assignment, ʿUthman kept one copy in Medina and sent other copies to al-Kufa, al-Baṣra and Damascus. He then commanded that all other extant versions be destroyed. His order, however, was not heeded in al-Kufa by the Companion Ibn Masʿud (d. 32/653) and his followers. The difficulties of this version of the story center on essential points, namely the doubt that accuracy in the recitation of the Qurʾan would have caused significant unrest in the military during the early conquests of Islam, the widely-accepted view that the Qurʾan is not actually in the dialect of the Quraysh (q.v.) and the improbability that the caliph would have given an order to destroy the already existing copies of the Qurʾan. Further, the appearance of Hafṣa in this narrative probably functions simply as a mechanism to link the Abu Bakr/ʿUmar and ʿUthman versions to gether and to establish an unbroken chain of custody for an authoritative text that remained largely unnoticed in the community. Despite the difficulties in this version of the chronology of the collection of the Qurʾan, scholars generally accept that the official consonantal text of the Qurʾan was established in ʿUthman’s caliphate and that Zayd b. Thabit played a significant role in effecting it.
To gain a clearer picture of the collection of the standard consonantal text of the Qurʾan, one may have to consider the possibility of a number of factors, among them the following: I) that Muhammad himself had begun the work of establishing a written version of the Qurʾan without completing it; 2) that during the first two decades after his death, the Muslim community was focused on expansion and conquest rather than on standardizing the qurʾanic text; 3) that the need for a standardized text of the Qurʾan manifested itself only after local Muslim communities began to form in the newly established garrison cities (amṣar) such as al-Kufa, al-Baṣra and Damascus; and 4) that the “ʿUthmanic text” established in Medina by the chief collector Zayd b. Thabit has to be seen as a parallel phenomenon to the codices containing textual variants—all of which are said to have been begun during Muhammad’s lifetime—the one attributed to ʿAbdallah b. Masʿud and accepted in alKufa, the one attributed to Ubayy b. Kaʿb (d. ca. 29/649) and accepted in Syria, the one attributed to Abu Musa al-AshʿAri (d. 42/662) and accepted in al-Baṣra as well as to other “primary” codices of individuals (see A. Jeffery, Materials). ʿAli b. Abi Ṭalib (q.v.; d. 40/661), Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, is also cited in the early sources as the first to collect the Qurʾan after the Prophet’s death. It is said that he arranged the suras in some form of chronological order and that he allowed his codex to be burned when the “ʿUthmanic text” was promulgated.
While the establishment of the consonantal text of the Qurʾan, the “ʿUthmanic text,” is intertwined with the question of the parallel personal or metropolitan codices (maṣahifz), the promulgation of the fully vocalized text involves the question of the various “readings” (qiraʾat) of the Qurʾan. Since the non-vowelized “ʿUthmanic text” was written in a “scriptio defectiva” that was merely a consonantal skeleton lacking diacritical marks that distinguish certain consonants from each other, oral recitation was needed to ascertain the intended pronunciation of the text. As the qurʾanic orthography developed step by step over more than two centuries and as the linkage between the consonantal skeleton and the oral recitation became more and more defined, the deficiencies of the Arabic script were gradually overcome. The variations of recitation, in the vast majority of a minor nature, were either reconciled or accommodated and the written text became increasingly independent of its linkage to oral pronunciation. This process culminated with the “scriptio plena,” the fully-vocalized and pointed text of the Qurʾan.
This text may be considered as a “textus receptus, ne varietur” with the proviso that no single clearly identifiable textual specimen of the Qurʾan was ever established or accepted with absolute unanimity. Rather the final, fully-vowelized and pointed text of the Qurʾan, accepted as normative and canonical, may best be understood as a construct underlying the work of Abu Bakr b. Mujahid (d. 324/936), who restricted the recitation of the Qurʾan to seven correct readings, termed ahruf (lit. letters) on the basis of a popular hadith. Ibn Mujahid accepted the reading (qiraʿa) of seven prominent Qurʾan scholars of the second/eighth century and declared them all as based on divine authority. In 322/934 the ʿAbbasid establishment promulgated the doctrine that these seven versions were the only forms of the text and all others were forbidden. Nevertheless, “three after the seven” and “four after the ten” ways of reading were added somewhat later to form, respectively, ten or fourteen variant readings. Finally, each of the ten ways of reading was eventually accepted in two slightly varying versions (sing. riwaya), all of which, at least theoretically, belong within the spectrum of the “textus receptus, ne varietur.” For all practical purposes today, only two versions are in general use, that of Hafṣ (d. 190/805) from (ʿAn) ʾaṣim (d. 127/744), i.e. Hafṣ’s version of ʾaṣim’s way of reading, which received official sanction when it was adopted by the Egyptian standard edition of the Qurʾan in 1924; and that of Warsh (d. 197/812) from (ʿAn) Nafiʿ (d. 169/785), i.e. Warsh’s version of Nafiʿ’s way of reading, which is followed in North Africa, with the exception of Egypt.
The hypothetical nature of the scholarly arguments about the textual variants of the parallel codices ultimately led those scholars who most meticulously examined them (e.g. G. Bergströsser, O. Pretzl, A. Jeffery, and A. Fischer) to pronounce a very guarded judgment about their authenticity. It became the increasingly accepted scholarly view that most of the allegedly pre-ʿUthmanic variants could be interpreted as later attempts by Muslim philologists to emend the “ʿUthmanic text.” In the second half of this century two scholars came to the conclusion that these “codices” were virtual fabrications of early Muslim scholarship without offering, however, substantive and irrefutable proof for their claims. Arguing in opposite directions, J. Wansbrough (QS) concluded that the Qurʾan was not compiled until two to three hundred years after Muhammad’s death while J. Burton contended that Muhammad him-self had already established the final edition of the consonantal text of the Qurʾan. Such widely-differing hypotheses, as well as the fact that there is no single uniform text of the Qurʾan that would represent a text-critical edition composed on the basis of the essential extant manuscripts and the critically evaluated variant readings, demonstrate that much of the chronological reconstruction of the Qurʾan’s fixation as a written text has reached an impasse. Only the future will tell whether a possible computer analysis of the sheer mass of textual material may enable scholarly research to develop a more consistent picture of the Qurʾan’s textual chronology.
Certain breakthroughs with regard to qurʾanic chronology, however, may be achieved through a more systematic chronological analysis of the major themes within the Qurʾan such as the four examples cited in this survey. Another challenge might be a more consistent search for an Ur-Qurʾan, initiated by G. Löling, that would reopen scholarly debate about the sources of Muhammad’s proclamation and whether he only began to produce religious rhymed prose after the defining religious experience that the sources identify as his call to prophethood, an event that took place when he was a man of about forty years of age. Searching the text for segments that could antedate this experience may reveal their roots in usages of religious worship and liturgy within the Arab environment in which Muhammad grew up and reached his maturity. Finally, it may be necessary for scholarly research to espouse more unequivocally the view that Muhammad was not the mere mouthpiece of the Qurʾan’s proclamation but, as its actual historical human author, played a major role in its collection and compilation.