Did al-Hajjaj Change The Qur'an? A Reply To Christian Polemic
M S M Saifullah
© 1997, 1998 - Islamic Awareness, Cambridge & Atsugi-shi

Assalamu-alaikum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu:

To start with, my sincere thanks are to brother Abdurrahaman Lomax for his useful comments and drawing my attention to certain points that I missed on the issue of al-Hajjaj. Thanks are also due to Mr. Nicholas, Asst. Librarian, Center For African Studies, University of Cambridge, for drawing my attention to modern scholarship on Islam. The contents of this document are divided as follows:

Christian missionaries these day are using all methods to spread false information regarding the Qur'an and Islam. One of the recent allegations by them can be seen in Jochen Katz's homepage. According to him the role of al-Hajjaj bin Yusuf was:
he gave himself the liberty to change several words of Caliph Uthman's Koran, which is an indication that he did not believe that the Koran was verbally inspired or was inscribed in a "tablet preserved".
Every problem has a source. But the problem of al-Hajjaj seems to have two sources: a Christian and a Muslim one. We will first discuss the origins of the Christian source, the problems with it and then the Muslim source and the problems with interpretation of the source.

The Christian Source

There is a persistent tradition in the eastern Christian churches, often refered to by the oriental Christians even at the present day, to the effect that early in the 8th century there was an exchange of letters on the question of the respective merits of Christianity and Islam, between the Ummayd Caliph 'Umar II and the Byzantine Emperor Leo III. The details of the letter can be seen in an article appeared in Harvard Theological Review in 1944. In the letter to 'Umar II, the Byzantine emperor Leo III writes:

In brief you admit that we say that it (i.e., the Qur'an) was written by God, and brought down from the heavens, as you pretend for your furqan, although we know that it was 'Umar, Abu Turab and Salman the Persian, who composed that, even though the rumour has got around among you that God sent it down from the heavens. [[1], pp. 292]
And this is a rather peculiar statement by Leo III and the author Arthur Jeffery admits that in his footnotes on the same page. (by Abu Turab, Leo III meant 'Ali(R) son-in-law of the Prophet(P)).

Continuing the letter of Leo III to 'Umar II, we see that:

As for your (book), you have already given us examples of such falsifications, and one knows, among others, of a certain Hajjaj, named by you as the governer of Persia, who had men gathered up your ancient books, which he replaced by others composed by himself, according to his taste, and which he propagated everywhere in your nation, because it was easier by far to undertake such a task among the people speaking a single language. from this destruction, nevertheless, there escaped a few works of Abu Turab, for Hajjaj could not make them disappear completely. [[1], pp. 298]
Compare this with the information on al-Hajjaj in Jochen Katz's homepage:
he gave himself the liberty to change several words of Caliph Uthman's Koran, which is an indication that he did not believe that the Koran was verbally inspired or was inscribed in a "tablet preserved".
In the footnotes Jeffery mentions:
This is a rather confused reference to the work of al-Hajjaj on the text of the Qur'an. The orthodox Muslim theory assumes that the text as canonized by 'Uthman was the final canonization, but there is a reason to believe that a recension of 'Uthman's text was made by the direction of al-Hajjaj, so that we only know of the text of 'Uthman in this later recension. This fact was apparently well known to oriental Christian writers, for al-Kindi in his apology, speaks of al-Hajjaj not leaving a single codex that he did not gather up, and left out many things, and of which he sent out copies of his new recension, and directed his attention to destroying the older codices. This statement of al-Kindi has always been looked at askance as a piece of Christian polemic. [[1], pp. 298]
The author also mentions about the putting of diacritical marks in the Qur'anic text by al-Hajjaj to make the reading more certain as mentioned in the work of Ibn Abi Dawud (which will be discussed later, inshallah). and after this the author went on to say:
It would thus seem that some revision of the text, as well as clarification by division and pointing, was undertaken by al-Hajjaj, and that this was known to the Christians of that day, and naturally exagerrated by them for polemical purposes. [[1], pp. 298]
And further
As this work would have been done by al-Hajjaj during the period of office under Caliph 'Abd al-Malik bin Marwan who died in 86AH = 705AD, there is no difficulty in supposing that Leo may have heard of it during his official life in Syria. [[1], pp. 298]
It is quite natural to see whether the document between 'Umar II and Leo III is authentic. The author's opinion on this issue is:
The question remains as to the genuineness of this correspondence, and that is a matter for the historians to argue on the basis of the material itself. [[1], pp. 330-331]
As far as my research goes, the genuineness of this correspondence has not been estabhlished yet. And the next step will be to see the use of this material whose genuineness has not been estabhlished by other authors in proving a point which can not be proven. In his book The Qur'an as Scripture, Arthur Jeffery seems to miss the point that is mentioned in the book Kitab al-Masahif of Ibn Abi Dawud which he quotes to support his point of view. He says:
When we come to examine the accounts of the activity of al-Hajjaj in this matter, however, we discover to our own surprise that the evidence points strongly to the fact that his work was not confined to fixing more precisely the text of the Qur'an by a set of points showing how it was to be read, but he seems to have made an entirely new recension of the Qur'an, having copies of his new text sent to the great metropolitan centres and ordering the destruction of earlier copies in existence there, much as 'Uthman had done earlier. Moreover, this new text promulgated by al-Hajjaj seems to have undergone more or less extensive alterations. [[2], pp. 99]
It is quite surprising that the author Arthur Jeffery on one hand relies on Kitab al-Masahif of Ibn Abi Dawud and on the other hand always makes the statements starting with "he seems" or "al-Hajjaj seems" to draw the attention towards uncertainity of the extent to which al-Hajjaj was responsible for the changes in the text. The nature of changes which al-Hajjaj made can be seen at:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/5603/masahif.html
Also note a sharper tone of the author in this issue. The author again clarifies the issue of al-Kindi:
The Christian writer al-Kindi in his polemical work known as the Apology of al-Kindi, makes a controversial point out of the alterations he claimed that al-Hajjaj, as everyone knew, had made in the text of Qur'an, but this was regarded by scholars as just a polemical exagerration such as one might expect in a controversial writing. [[2], pp. 99]
But not everyone takes controversial writing as controversial. Crone and Cook in their book Hagarism: The Making of The Islamic World use the above two Christian polemics to reconstruct the Islamic history.
Now both Christian and Muslim sources attribute some kind of role to Hajjaj in the history of Muslim scripture. In the account attributed to Leo by Levond, Hajjaj is said to have collected and destroyed the old Hagarene writings and replaced them with others composed according to his own tastes. [[3], pp. 18]
In the book Discovering The Qur'an: A Contemporary Approach To a Veiled Text we see a full chapter (Chapter 3: An Alternative Account Of The Rise Of Islam) devoted to refute the book Hagarism: The Making Of The Islamic World. So, an orientalist refuting another orientalist!! And this point is quite well dealt with in [4].
The letter ascribed to Pope Leo may simply be a convenient literary device used by a Christian polemicist living at a later date. Even if it is authentic, and the allegations which it contains have some substance, the activity of Hajjaj may have been limited to destroying the sectarian writings, and early codices of the Qur'an which preserved the surahs in a different order. [[4], pp. 56]
Very tersely, Waines in his book An Introduction To Islam says:
The Crone-Cook theory has been almost universally rejected. the evidence offered by the authors is far too tentative and conjectural (and possibily contrdictory) to conclude that Arab-Jewish were as intimate as they would wish them to have been. [[5], pp. 273-274]
Summarzing the Christian sources: We see that the Christian sources from Leo III and 'Abd al-Masih al-Kindi have a polemical purpose and exagerration of the events that took place during al-Hajjaj's time. The source lacks factual basis and it has been well understood by the orientalists long back.

Muslims Sources & Non-Muslim Sources: Importance of Oral Transmission of The Qur'an

It is important to look at two things when we talk about the transmission of the Qur'an. Till now the issue has been only with the written text. The oral transmission seems to have taken the backseat and neglected by Arthur Jeffery. Did the changes that al-Hajjaj made were confined to the text of the Qur'an or it even changed the oral transmission? Unless this point is proved by historical evidence we can not say that al-Hajjaj changed the Qur'an. A change should reflect in textual as well as oral transmission of the Qur'an. And this point has been missed by Arthur Jeffery in his work.

In this section we will deal with the Muslim sources as well as some of the non-Muslim sources. Let us first deal with the idea of introduction of vowel signs of in the Qur'an and the need for it. These signs are called tashkil in Arabic and they help to determine the correct pronunciation of the word and to avoid the mistakes. When the Islamic state expanded, more and more Muslims of non-Arab origin and also many ignorant Arabs studied the Qur'an, faulty pronunciation and wrong readings began to increase. Abu 'Ubaydah narrated about Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali:

Abu al-Aswad derived grammar from 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, for whom may there be peace, but he did not disclose to anyone what he had learned from 'Ali, whose countenance may Allah honour, until Ziyad appointed him for the composition of something to serve as a guide to the people, so that they could understand the book of Allah. Abu al-Aswad asked to excused from this task, until one time when he heard a reader recite, Allah is quit of the idolators and of His Apostle (Qu'ran 9:3 should have been read as Allah is quit of the idolators and so is His Apostle). Then he said, "I never supposed that the condition of the people would come to this!" So he returned to Ziyad and said, "I will do what the emir has ordered. Let there be sought for me a scribe who is intelligent and obedient to what I say". They brought, therefore, a scribe from the 'Abd al-Kays Tribe, but he [Abu al-Aswad] was not satisfied with him. Then they came with another one, about whom Abu al-Abbas al-Mubarrad said, "I regard him to be one of those [who are intelligent]." So Abu al-Aswad said [to the new scribe], "If you see that I open my mouth in pronouncing a letter, place a mark above, on top of it. If I close my mouth [making a u sound], place a mark in front of the letter, and if I split [my lips] double the mark." So this was the marking system of Abu al Aswad. [[6], pp. 87-88]
Ahmad von Denffor quotes the above story and explains the mistake which occured in the improper reading of Arabic.
It is related that at the time of Du'ali someone from Basra read the ayah 9:3 from the Qur'an in a faulty way, which changed the meaning completely:

from

that God and his Apostle dissolves obligations with the pagans

to

that God dissolves obligations with the pagans and the Apostle

This mistake occured wrongly reading rasulihi in place of rasuluhu which could not be distinguished from written text, because they were no signs or accents indicating the correct pronunciation. Unless someone had memorized the correct version he could out of ignorance commit the mistake. [[7], pp. 58]

In the footnotes of [[7], pp. 58] we read that:
Yaqut reports in his book that al-Hajjaj bin-Yusuf himself once read ahabba in 9:24 wrongly as ahabbu. [[7], pp. 58]
And hence arose a need to have tashkil in order that the non-Arabs could read the Qur'an in a proper way. and the oriental sources make use of this Muslim source as well as other sources and expand the argument and draw the conclusions.

On this issue Nabia Abbott writes:

When we come to consider the vowel signs, 1st century manuscripts are of no aid, since no such signs appear in any secular document of that date. However, Kur'an manuscripts credited to the period show a consistent vowel system in which a single red dot above, below, or to the side of a letter stood for the vowels A, I, and U respectively, and two such dots indicated the tanwin. The text of early Kur'ans, however, is never completely voweled, the vowel sign for one or more of the letters of a given word being used only where it was essential for a correct reading. The Arabic traditions place the introduction of the system early in the Muslim era, in fact crediting 'Ali with it. Whether 'Ali deserves the credit or not makes little difference for the date in question, for the majority of the sources credit a contemporary of 'Ali , Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali, with the system. They tell how, having at first refused to introduce the system at the request of Ziyad Ibn Abihi, governor of Irak, he finally did so when he heard the Kur'an being wrongly recited. The system could not have been widely spread or generally used, for we find Hajjaj facing the same problem in Irak and ordering Nasr Ibn Asim to safeguard the pronunciation of the Kur'an; Nasr, so the story goes, introduced the double dots for the tanwin. even this did not estabish the general use of the system, for again we find Yahya Ibn Ya'mar given credit for it, which credit is likewise shared by Hasan al-Basri. Still these efforts and their results proved insufficient, for again Khalil Ibn Ahmad is credited with introducing the hamzah and the shaddah, the raum and the ishmam, as he is also credited with the vowel signs that are still in use for A, I, and U. The last were originally miniatures of the letters alif, y and w, respectively. [[8], pp. 39]
In the book Arabic Literature To The End Of The Ummayad Period . Regarding the introduction of dots and strokes in the arabic, we see that:
Dots and strokes were introduced to mark readings, a method apparently copied from the use in Syriac texts. from the limited information we have, it seems that these marking were used at first simply to indicate the variants, with those parts of the texts that were not in dispute being left unmarked. This practice was frowned upon in many quarters as a dangerous innovation. However, with the strong support of the governer of Iraq, the famous al-Hajjaj bin-Yusuf, it was developed into a consistent system which could be applied to the whole text. This allowed not only for letters of the same basic form to be distinguished from one another, but also for short vowels to be added. In addition the use of weak letters to mark long vowels became more systematic, and the marking of hamz was introduced. [[9], pp. 243]
Going further:
It is difficult to assess the role of al-Hajjaj. we may ignore the arguments of the Christian 'Abd al-Masih al-Kindi that al-Hajjaj was very much responsible for our text, as these have a polemical rather than factual basis. the account most widely found has him ordering Nasr bin 'Asim to introduce the markings to safeguard the protection of the text. This is a plausible reason for the innovation, and the story is unchallenged, despite strong hostility of the sources towards al-Hajjaj. [[9], pp. 243]
Now we have established two facts: Firstly, the Christian polemics of 'Abd al-Masih al-Kindi and Leo III have no factual basis. Secondly, the need of tashkil or vowel signs arose because of the wrong readings by non-Arabs and ignorant Arabs. Our aim now is to estabhlish the exact role of al-Hajjaj and what he did after the 'Uthmanic collection.
According to Ibn Abi Dawud eleven changes were made under al-Hajjaj. These are again according to Ibn Abi Dawud, mistakes which were made in the preparation of 'Uthman's copy. [[7], pp. 56]
A further explanation of the changes that al-Hajjaj made is dealt with in [9].
However, this seems to be only a partial explanation of what happened. On the other hand we have the tradition in Ibn Abi-Da'ud that al-Hajjaj was responsible for eleven changes in the consonantal text. If this is so, he is responsible for a minor recension at least. Against this we must set the evidence of early copies of the Qur'an that have survived. These show that for some considerable amount of time the new system was used sparingly and mainly in connection with the variants. [[9], pp. 243]
There is definitely a problem with the sentence If this is so, he is responsible for a minor recension at least. The author did not mention what of kind changes al-Hajjaj made and where did he make! Whether it was made in one copy as described in the reference [[7], pp. 56] is not being taken into consideration. Nevertheless, the above statements brings us to another important point. What happened to the oral transmission? Were there any changes in that part of the transmission when al-Hajjaj corrected the Qur'anic texts of 'Uthman?

The tradition of oral transmission in Arabia is well know and does not need to be emphasized (see the books Literary History of The Arabs by Nicholson (1930, Cambridge University Press), & Arabic Literature by H A R Gibb (1963, Oxford at Clarendon Press), also check reference [11]). A few comments on the oral tradition of the Qur'an will suffice:

Oral tradition has served as the final arbitrator of the written traditions; only those fragments written down in the presence of the Prophet were accepted as material for the written text, and any differences in the fragments were settled by oral tradition. Muhammad spread the message by sending out reciters, not texts, and Caliph 'Uthman sent with each copy of the standard text a reciter who could teach its recitation. [[10], pp. 3]
Adrian Brockett in his article The Value of Hafs and Warsh Transmissions For The Textual History of The Qur'an in [11] deals with various issues of the orally transmitted traditions and the seven Qira'at in which the Qur'an can be recited. His conclusions regarding the oral side of Qur'an's transmission is:
The transmission of the Qur'an after the death of Muhammad was essentially static, rather than organic. There was a single text, and nothing significant, not even allegedly abrogated material, could be taken out nor could anything be put in. [[11], pp. 44]
If this is the case with oral transmission of the Hafs and Warsh Qira'at then can we not conclude that al-Hajjaj did not tamper with the text of the Qur'an as alleged by the Christian polemics (and consequently, Christian missionaries)?

Turning our attention to other people's writing about the Qur'an as a text we see quite a few examples of its integriety. The famous orientalist John Burton had stated in the conclusions of his book The Collection Of The Qur'an:

What we have today in our hands is the mushaf of Muhammad. [[12], pp. 239-240]
His conclusions have come from neglecting the hadith literature as a forgery to justify the concept of al-naskh wa al-mansukh.

People in the West have reached this conclusion long time ago. And this is not something newly discovered. W Muir in his book The Life of Mohammad states:

The recension of 'Uthman has been handed down to us unaltered. so carefully, indeed, has it been preserved, that there are no varaitions of importance, - we might almost say no variations at all, - amongst the innumerable copies of the Koran scattered throughout the vast bounds of empire of Islam. Contending and embittered factions, taking their rise in the murder of 'Uthman himself within a quarter of a century from the death of Muhammad have ever since rent the Muslim world. Yet but ONE KORAN has always been current amongst them.... There is probably in the world no other work which has remained twelve centuries with so pure a text. [[13], pp. xxii-xxiii]
The emphasis is of the author himself!!

Coming back to the modern scholarship and summarizing the issue:

Modern study of the Qur'an has not in fact raised any serious questions of its authenticity. The style varies, but is almost unmistakable. So clearly that the whole bear the stamp of uniformity that doubts of its genuineness hardly arise. [[14], pp. 51]
These are not the statements from Muslims but from the orientalists who are all out to check out the Qur'an and its scholarship by Muslims. In other words if the Qur'an has changed after the death of Muhammad (pbuh) then we would have been seeing lots of changes in the Qur'an but surprisingly one finds that the transmission has been static i.e., unchanging. And historically speaking, there is no evidence for a sudden change in the oral transmission when al-Hajjaj corrected the 'Uthmanic manuscript either.

This leads us to the conclusion that al-Hajjaj did not tamper with the text of the Qur'an or rather he made corrections of the errors which the scribes made in the 'Uthmanic text.

al-Hajjaj and His Influence In The Ummayd Regime

No attempt at the interpolation of the Qur'an are known to have occurred after the era of the four Caliphs, except a report that al-Hajjaj omitted many verses from the Qur'an, which dealt disparagingly with the rule of the Ummayds, and also added to it some which were not there originally. Then he was alleged to have prepared a new codex for distribution in Egypt, Syria, Mecca, Medina, Basra and Kufah. Thus, it is presumed that the present Qur'an is the one prepared by al-Hajjaj, who methodically destroyed all the previous copies, allowing not a single one to remain. This we have already seen in the Christian polemics. [[1], pp. 298]

From a historical point of view, obviously, this claim is based on conjecture and its smacks of delirium. For al-Hajjaj was merely one of the generals in the Ummayd regime, with little influence and almost no ability to do the Qur'an any harm. In fact, incapable of effecting any change in the most elementary laws of Islam, not to speak of the Qur'an which is the foudation of Islamic faith, and pillar of Islamic laws. One wonders how he could influence any change in the Qur'an after it had gained currency in the vast Muslim empire. Not a single historian or commentator has chronicled this change which because of its importance should not have escaped their notice. No contemporary Muslim ever objected to this, and even after his rule, the Muslims seem to have condoned this abominable fact. Moreover, if it is all believed that he managed to withdraw all the copies of the Qur'an, and replacing it with his new codex, how could he eradicate it from the hearts of great numbers of Muslims who had committed it to memory? Had there been anything in the Qur'an which was uncomplimentary to the Ummayds, Mu'awiyah would have been the first to see it omitted because, compared to al-Hajjaj, he was more influential and powerful. Of course, if Mu'awiyah had done this, the companions of 'Ali would have argued with him, the way they did on many occasions, as recorded in the books of history, hadith and theology. An example would be of the battle of Siffin (AH 37), 27 years after the death of the Prophet (pbuh), and five years after 'Uthman's copies were distributed.

Mu'awiyah's troops fixed sheets from the Qur'an on their spears to interrupt the battle. However, nobody accused anyone else of using a 'partsisan' version of the text, which would have made a splendid accusation against the enemy. [[7], pp. 56]
The pretence that the Qur'an has been tampered with has no substance whatsoever.

al-Hajjaj and The State of Arabic Language

Interestingly enough the line of attack against the Qur'an is not yet exhausted. I was trying to skim through various sources to see what are the other ways of attacking the Qur'an by orientalists who have used the Christian polemical sources. One such reference is from the Journal of The Manchester Egyptian and Oriental Society which is about The Transmission of The Qur'an. Since it is a huge article, I am quoting only the conclusions which the author Alphonse Mingana has made from a point of view of rudimentary state of Arabic language during the time of the Prophet (saw). He says:

If all the signs do not mislead us, very few oracular sentences, if any, were written in the time of the Prophet. The kind of life he led, and the rudimentary character of reading and writing in that part of the world in which he appeared, are sufficient witnesses in favour of this view. Our ignorance of the Arabic language in that early period of its evolution is such that we can not even know with certainity whether it had any writings of its own in Maccah or Madinah. If any writing existed in these two localities, it must have been something very similar to the Estrangelo or the Hebraic characters. [[15], pp. 45]
The author also claims that Arabs learnt the art of writing from Jews and Christians. [[15], pp. 46] And only during the time of 'Abd al-Malik and al-Hajjaj (using the al-Kindi polemic) the Qur'an was brought into the shape that we have today.

Now since we are concerned about the state of written Arabic language when the Qur'an was compiled we need to check into the sources. Nabia Abbott answers the above allegations of Mingana in her book [8].

The condition of Arabic writing in Muhammad's time is indicated by perf no. 558 (our plates iv-v), an Arabic papyrus of the reign of 'Umar dated AH 22 and written in a fairly well developed manuscript hand in the distant province of Egypt, where Greek and Coptic were the written languages in general use. If written Arabic was so primitive and rare in its own homeland at the time of Muhammad's death, how do we account for its practical use in egypt only a short dozen years after that event? Again to grant the incomplete development of orthography would give us reason to suspect only the orthographic accuracy of early Qur'anic editions but not the possibility of their existence. In this connection it is interesting to note that nowhere in the traditions of the earliest transmission of the Qur'an is there any hint of serious orthographic or vowel difficulties; rather it is the differences in the arabic tribal dialects and differences arising out of foreigner's use of Arabic that seem to demand attention. the foregoing considerations lead one to believe that, if we allow for such common mistakes as writers and copyists are liable to make, the Arabic writers of Muhammad's time and of the time of early Caliphs were able scribes capable of producing an acceptable edition of a written Qur'an despite the lack of all the improvements of modern written Arabic. [[8], pp. 48]
This proves the point rather well. And Christian missionaries can come up with an argument even along these lines and we never know. so, it is better to be ahead of them in their arguments.

Another interesting point which Nabia Abbott raises that there was no mention of Qur'an in the writings of earlier Christian writers. About the ignorance of Christian writers in early Islam she says:

Why should we expect writers whom their own testimony proves to have been so incapable of keeping up with the march of events all around them that they even failed to realize that a new religious idea, monotheism, was taking hold of their Arab neighbours and masters - why should we expect such men to be so wide awake and so well informed as positively to know of a Muslim book of which, at the best, but a few copies were in existence and those few carefully guarded from "Unbelievers"? even if we suppose that some of them did know what was going on, their interests were largely limited to their congregations and to Christian heresy that the chances are as good, particularly in early Islamic times, for their not mentioning the Qur'an as for their mentioning it; therefore their failure to mention the Qur'an in their writings must be in general viewed as inconclusive, circumstantial evidence. [[8], pp. 48]
This fact does not go unsubstantiated. Let us again have a look at the state of ignorance of Leo III:
In brief you admit that we say that it (i.e., Qur'an) was written by God, and brought down from the heavens, as you pretend for your furqan, although we know that it was 'Umar, Abu Turab and Salman the Persian, who composed that, even though the rumour has got around among you that God sent it down from the heavens. [[1], pp. 292]
And Allah knows the best. Truth is from Allah and mistakes are mine.


References

[1] Ghevond's Text Of The Correspondence Between 'Umar II and Leo III, 1944, Arthur Jeffery, Harvard Theological Review, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

[2] The Qur'an As Scripture, 1952, Arthur Jeffery, Russell F Moore Company Inc., New York.

[3] Hagarism: The Making Of The Islamic World, 1977, P Crone and M Cook, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0 521 21133 6

[4] Discovering The Qur'an: A Contemporary Approach To a Veiled Text, 1996, Neal Robinson, SCM Press Ltd. ISBN 0 334 02649 0

[5] An Introduction To Islam, 1995, David Waines, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0 521 42929 3

[6] The Fihrist of al-Nadim, 1970, Bayard Dodge (Editor and Translator), Columbia University Press. ISBN 231-02925-X.

[7] 'Ulum al-Qur'an, 1994, Ahmad von Denffer, The Islamic Foundation. ISBN 0 86037 248 0

[8] The Rise of The North Arabic Script & Its Kuranic Development, 1939, Nabia Abbott, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

[9] Arabic Literature To The End Of The Ummayad Period, 1983, Ed. A F L Beeston, T M Johnstone, R B Serjeant and G R Smith, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0 521 240158

[10] The Art of Reciting The Qur'an, 1985, Kristina Nelson, University of Texas Press, Austin. ISBN 0-292-70367-8

[11] Approaches Of The History Of Interpretation Of The Qur'an, 1988, Edited by Andrew Rippin, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

[12] The Collection Of The Qur'an, 1979, John Burton, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0 521 29652 8

[13] The Life Of Mohammad, 1912, W Muir, Edinburgh, John Grant.

[14] Introduction To The Qur'an, 1994, W M Watt & R Bell, Edinburgh at University Press. ISBN 0 7468 0597 5

[15] The Transmission of The Quraan, 1916, Alphonse Mingana, Journal of The Manchester Egyptian and Oriental Society, Manchester at the University Press.


courtesy of : Islamic Awareness