Al Qur'an wa Sunnah wa Ijma' wa Qiyas
Preservation of the Quran
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
The very first injunction given to the Prophet - ‘Read in the name of your Lord who created’ - stresses the importance of knowledge (96:1). And the last words of revelation pertain to the life hereafter (2:281).
The Quran was revealed over a period of twenty-three years and was written down in its entirety during the Prophet’s lifetime, although the verses were not gathered together in one volume at that time (Al-Katani, V.2, p.384).
For the first twenty-three years the Prophet himself was the fountainhead of Qur’anic learning. Then he appointed certain of his followers to convey the message of the Qur’an after him. These were men who, having memorized the entire Qur’anic text with complete accuracy, were fully competent to impart its teachings. During the caliphate of Umar Faruq, the second caliph of Islam, a man who had come from Kufa to Madina told the caliph that there was someone in Kufa who was teaching the scriptures from memory. At this Caliph Umar was enraged. But when he found out that the person was none other than Abdullah ibn Masood, he regained his composure, (Istiab, Vol. I, p. 377) the reason being that Abdullah ibn Masood was one of those appointed by the Prophet himself to perform this service. Other more prominent scholars of the Qur’an were as follows: Usman, Ali, Ubayy ibn Kaab, Zayd ibn Thabit, Ibn Masood, Abu Darda, Abu Moosa Ashari, and Salim Maula Abi Huzayfa.
However, these Muslims, who had been assigned this task, could not survive forever. Undoubtedly, they were going to leave the world one by one, and then there would be the risk of the Qur’an falling into the hands of less responsible, less knowledgeable people, who might not preserve it intact and who would almost certainly differ as to its true meaning. There was even the danger of its being entirely lost to posterity. With the death of 700 of the Prophet’s Companions in the Battle of Yamamah in 12 A.H., this danger began to loom large.
Qur'ânic Orthography: The Written Representation Of The Recited Text Of The Qur'ânM A S Abdel Haleem
"Quick! Help the Muslims before they differ about the text of the Qur'ân as the Christians and Jews differed about their scriptures".
Thus demanded Hudhayfa bin al-Yamân of cUthmân, the third Caliph, on returning from battles in Azerbaijan (25/645). Hudhayfa had become perturbed when he saw Muslim soldiers from different parts of Syria and Iraq meeting together and differing in their readings of the Qur'ân[1], each considering his reading to be the correct one. Up to then the only full official written copy which was made under Abû Bakr (d.13/634) had remained unpublished, kept first with Abû Bakr, then with cUmar, and after his death with his daughter Hafsa, a widow of the Prophet[2]. Responding to the urgent demand for help, cUthmân sent word to Hafsa, asking for the copy in her possession to be sent to him so that a number of copies could be made of it, to be publicised and followed as the only authorised Qur'ân in the different parts of the Muslim world. This prevented the possibility of different versions evolving in time, as Hudhayfa had feared, when he urged cUthmân to guard against it.
In the cUthmânic copies, the Qur'ân was written in a particular rasm (orthography) which became known as al-rasm al-cUthmânî (the cUthmânic way of writing the text of the Qur'ân) also referred to as rasm al-mushaf. As the copies made at his orders and distributed to various parts of the Muslim world were meant to be authoritative, it is no wonder that their rasm assumed authority as the correct way of writing the Qur'ân. Arabic orthography at the time was not yet developed in the way we have known for centuries, particularly in two important areas. There was no distinction between letters of the alphabet of similar shape and there were no vowel marks. This may now give the impression that such a system must have given rise to great confusion in reading. This was not actually the case because the morphological patterns of words in Arabic enable readers to read even very unfamiliar material without the short vowels being marked. More important, however, as far as the Qur'ân was concerned, was the fact that learning and reading relied above all on oral transmission.
In the Islamic tradition, writing remained a secondary aid; nevertheless, to ensure correct reading of the written texts of the Qur'ân, particularly for those coming after the first generation of Muslims, steps were taken gradually to improve the orthography. This started with the two above mentioned areas by introducing dots to indicate different vowels and nûnâtion and these were put in different coloured ink from that of the text. There were also dots to distinguish between consonants of similar shape. This work was carried out chiefly by three men: Abû-l-Aswad al-Du'alî (d. 69 / 688), Nasr Ibn cAsim (d. 89 / 707) and Yahyâ Ibn Yacmur (d.129 /746).
Read more: Qur'ânic Orthography: The Written Representation Of The Recited Text Of The Qur'ân
The Complete recitation of the Holy Qur'an by Al Qari Shaykh Muhammad Siddiq al Minshawi.
The recitation can be streamed from the browser or downloaded as small manageable .mp3 files.
Courtesy: aswatalislam.net
Read more: Tilaawatul Qur'an: Shaykh Muhammad Siddiq al Minshawi
