Daily Times

Two years into his Khilafat, Abu Bakr, the first Caliph of Islam, was approached by a worried Omar Ibn Al-Khattab. Omar, who was destined to be the second Caliph, had a serious concern. Wars, known as the Huroob Ar Ridda, had broken out between the tribes of Arabia after the death of the Prophet. They were claiming victims. “The companions of the Prophet”, said Omar, “are flocking to the wars like moths to a flame. They are the bearers (in their memories) of the Quran. I am afraid that we will lose them all.”

This was the start of a process that would end some 200 years later with the publication of a work entitled ‘The seven readings’ by a man named Ibn Mujahid (d. 324H). It involved committing the revealed Word accurately and faithfully to the pages of a book.

The Quran did not descend as a single organised whole. It was revealed in bits and pieces to its human receptacle, the heart of the Prophet, over a period of some 20 years. The timing of revelation of each verse tailored to the circumstances and the needs of the believers.

The Prophet would read the verses to his companions as soon as they were revealed. They would memorise what they heard. The verses were then repeated time and again in prayers during the day and night. Some of the companions devoted themselves to writing the verses on pieces of parchment, leather, palm fronds and stones. But in the main the revelation remained an oral tradition safeguarded in the memories of the companions. These ‘bearers’ of the Quran were known as the Huffaz (singular Hafiz) derived from the Arabic verb Hafaza — to safeguard, protect.

Omar’s concern was that if the Huffaz were lost to the wars, there should be in one place a full written version of the scripture. Abu Bakr agreed. And so a team of Huffaz were assembled at the masjid in Madina and given the task to produce a single written version of the Quran. The team asked everyone in Madina who was in possession of written fragments of the Quran to bring these to the masjid. And there a complete version of the Quran was assembled in line with the collective recollection of the Huffaz who had heard it being recited by the Prophet himself.

The compiled version was left with Abu Bakr for safeguarding. After his death it passed to Omar. When Omar died, it fell into the possession of his daughter Hafsa. There it remained until the third khalifa Uthman encountered a concern of a different nature.

Since Abu Bakr’s time, Islam had spread well beyond the Arabian Peninsula. People from diverse races and cultures were assimilated. From among them arose Huffaz who would memorize the Quran from their masters, who had heard it recited either by the Prophet or his companions. As time went by these Huffaz, in far flung areas, started to differ in their readings each believing he or his ilk had the right version.

Things came to a head as the Muslim army gathered for the battle of Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Syrians and Iraqis in the army disagreed about the correct rendition of the Quran and almost came to blows. When the news reached Uthman he was alarmed and worried that differences such as this would cause splits in the Muslim nation (the Ummah). He decided that all Muslim provinces should have a reliable written copy of the Quran.

The problem was that only one such copy existed. It was in the possession of Hafsa. So he sought Hafsa’s permission to loan him her copy. She promptly agreed. He deputed several Huffaz, who had memorized it directly from the Prophet, to prepare eight manuscripts from Hafsa’s original.

These were then dispatched to the different Muslim territories: One each to Kufa, Basra, Syria, Makkah, Yemen, and Eastern Arabia (known at the time as Bahrain). The seventh copy was retained in Madina and the eighth with the Caliph himself. Two of these originals, or atleast replicas of them, still exist. One in Tashkent in modern day Uzbekistan. The other at the Topkapi museum in Istanbul.

The book’s value is such that since the publication of Mujahid’s ‘Seven Readings’ there have been no further disputes in the Ummah over the contents of the Quran

Once this ‘Book of Uthman’ (Uthman’s Mushaf), as it came to be known, was completed and dispatched, all other written material containing verses from the Quran was destroyed. So that there should not remain any material which was at variance with the Mushaf.

But there was a problem. It was customary at that time for Arabic to be written without diacritical marks such as vowels (tashkeel) or i’jam (dots over and below some letters). This was because Arabic was largely a spoken language. Writing was a memory device mainly for poetry. It was assumed the reader would know where to put the vowels and the dots. All that was needed was a rough guide. And so diacritical marks were thought to be superfluous.

Further complicating matters was the fact that the Prophet himself read the same verses somewhat differently at different times. He did this to take into account the fact that the Arabic of some tribes differed somewhat from that of his own, theQuresh. So he would adjust the language to make it understandable to his audience as needed.

Uthman’s Mushaf addressed this issue rather neatly: The absence of diacritical marks meant that all renditions traceable to the Prophet were in fact contained in the book. It was only a matter of where to put what diacritical marks. Different Huffaz could ‘read’ it as they had heard the Prophet recite it. The differences would be minor and faithful to the Prophet’s readings.

But the fundamental issue of the absence of diacritical marks would not go away. Time went by. Decades turned to centuries. The generations of Huffaz who had memorized the Quran from the Prophet, or his companions and followers faded into history. Those that came after them grew ever more reliant on Uthman’s Mushaf. But the absence of diacritical marks in the Mushaf led to different readings in different parts of the now much wider Muslim world. Something needed to be done to prevent this divergence going too far.

Into this milieu was born Abu Musa ibn Abbas ibn Mujahid in 245H in Baghdad – the seat of the Abbasids, and the center of Muslim learning and culture. He studied the Quran and Hadith from some of the most accomplished scholars of the time. As his learning grew, Ibn Mujahid became acutely aware of the different ways in which the Quran was being read from Uthman’s Mushaf. He came to believe that it was absolutely necessary to establish standard ‘readings’ of the Quran on which all could agree.

The solution he adopted was to identify seven sheikhs (scholars), each from a different part of the Muslim world, who had been known in their time for faithful oral rendition of the Quran. From Madina, he chose a man called Nafi’ ibn Abi Nuaim (d.169H), a respected scholar and reciter of the Quran. Ibn Mujahid then established a sanad – a pedigree – of Nafi”s teachers, linking each to those who came before them – until he could see a clear link directly to the Prophet. So at the end of his research he was able to show that Nafi”s recitation could be traced back directly to the Prophet.

He did similar painstaking exercises to establish the credentials of the six other reciters that he chose to ensure that all of them could be linked directly to the oral tradition of the Prophet himself.

He summarised his research in his book ‘The seven readings’. In it he lists the seven scholars he chose, the reasons for choosing them, and the sanad of each to the Prophet. He explains the differences in their respective readings of the Quran and deems all of the seven readings to be in conformance with the way the Prophet himself read the Quran from time to time at different gatherings.

By the time of his death in 324H Ibn Mujahid’s ‘The seven readings’ had become widely accepted as a seminal work which defined acceptable readings of the Quran. From then onward it became the standard reference for all exegesis of the Quran, such as those of Ibn Kathir and Zamakhshari, who would freely reference the seven readings to explain differing interpretations.

And the proof of the book’s value is that since its publication there have been no further disputes in the Ummah on this crucial issue.

The writer is Chairman of Mustaqbil Pakistan. He is an M.A. in Arabic from the University of Karachi

Published in Daily Times, February 5^th 2019.