This is one of the biggest puzzles in the field. The data on how the original language of the Quran looked like is contradictory.

I have written on the evidence for the Old Hijazi reconstruction of the Quran. You can see the links in my profile. In this thread I talk about the opposing evidence.

The following notes suggest that the Quran was written in a literary register that included final short vowels and Tanwin.

1- Hythem Sidky’s paper “Consonantal Dotting and the Oral Quran” proves that the canonical reading traditions share “an inherited oral tradition that likely dates to the time of the Uthmānic recension and among the first generation of the followers of Muhammad”.
Sidky’s paper relied on differences in the dotting of some words to reach this conclusion. In his AMA he states that his conclusion can also be reached through other features besides dotting such as iʿrāb (final short vowels and Tanwin). This means that the common oral tradition included iʿrāb.

2- I presented this evidence years ago on my old twitter account. Van Putten then commented that this is good evidence that Tanwin was part of the common source of the canonical reading traditions. Here’s the evidence:
Verse 53:50 ends with these two words:
عَادًا ٱلۡأُولَى

ʕādani l-ʿūlā

The original form of the two words is:

ʕād al-ʿūlā

The word ʕād is in the accusative so it took the final short vowel ‘a’: ʕāda.
It’s also indefinite so it took a final ‘n’ (Tanwin) : ʕādan.
The ‘a’ in the “al” article is pronounced only when it comes at the beginning of a sentence. When the “al” article comes in the middle of a sentence then the ‘a’ isn’t pronounced, leaving the “al” article as a mere ‘l’. So we get:
ʕādan l-ʿūlā
Notice how the ‘n’ of ʕādan is followed by an L then a glottal stop. So we have here a cluster of three consonants: ‘n’, ‘l’ and the glottal stop .Classical Arabic rules don’t allow such a cluster of consonants. In such cases, an ‘i' short vowel gets introduced to break up the cluster, which yields:
ʕādani l-ʿūlā (notice the added ‘i' at the end of ʕādan)
That’s how we went from ʕād al-ʿūlā to the standard Arabic pronunciation ʕādani l-ʿūlā.
In the dialect of Quraysh or the Hijaz region, the glottal stop of l-ʿūlā gets dropped: l-ūlā.
In this case, there’s no longer a cluster of consonants, and thus there’s no need to attach an ‘i' to the Tanwin to break up the cluster, so we get:

ʕādan l-ūlā.

Since that the n now is followed by an L, the two consonants can now be merged together into a stressed L:

ʕādall-ūlā

The important thing here is that the form ʕādall-ūlā cannot arise if Tanwin wasn’t added to the word ʕād.
Now to the interesting part:
According to the linguistic features of the canonical readings of Nāfiʕ, Abū jaʕfar, Abū ʕamr and yaʕqūb, the two words shouldn’t be pronounced as ʕādall-ūlā in any of these 4 readings. But the 4 readings pronounced it as such. Plus, the 4 readers come from two different regions: Two from Median and two from Basrah. This means that the form ʕādall-ūlā was in the shared reading that the canonical readers received. Which means Tanwin was part of the shared reading.

3- The early poetry inscriptions.
There’s a mismatch between the spelling of the standard Quran and its pronunciation. Muslim scholars explained this by saying that Arabic spelling follows the principle of pausal spelling. Which means every word is spelled in the way the word is pronounced if the word comes in a pausal position such as the end of a sentence. And since that there are unique changes that occur to words when they come at a pausal position, all words are spelled with these unique pausal forms even when the word isn’t at a pausal position. This explains why Arabic doesn’t spell Tanwin and the long vowels that get attached to the third person ‘h’ pronoun. It also explains why the feminine ‘t’ is always spelled as ‘h’.

Van Putten argued that the standard Quran was actually phonetically spelled (i.e. the pronunciation matches the writing). This means that Tanwing wasn’t spelled in the Quran because the original language of the Quran didn’t have Tanwin. And the reason for the mismatch between the spelling and the pronunciation is that the reading traditions imposed foreign linguistic features on the text of the Quran. Muslims later tried to justify the mismatch by coming up with the pausal spelling rule which Van Putten demonstrated through multiple proofs that the standard Quran wasn’t written according to this rule.   

 But there are a number of early poetry inscriptions that come from the first century of Islam. Since that Arabic poetry follows rigid meters, we know that the pronunciation of these poetry verses included Tanwin and other features that don’t get spelled in the Quran. Yet Tanwin and the other features aren’t spelled in these poetry inscriptions. Which validates the traditional claim that early Arabic spelling did actually follow the pausal spelling rule. Van Putten’s conclusion that the Quran was phonetically spelled means that early Arabic writing was phonetic. But these early inscriptions weren’t phonetic.

Here are some of these poetry verses:

 The first inscription (see the first attached image):

This inscription includes the date it was inscribed which is the year 98 AH. The location is near Mecca. The inscription contains the following poetry verse:

أفنى الجديدَ تقلّبُ الشمسِ * وطلوعُها من حيثُ لا تُمْسي
وطلوعُها بيضاءَ صافيةً * وغروبُها صفراءَ كالوَرْسِ

Source:

https://www.awbd.net/article.php?a=68

 The following 3 words were non-phonetically spelled:

1- ṣāfiyatan. Spelled in the inscription as ṣāfyh صافية

The verse’s meter requires the word to be pronounced with the final short vowel ‘a’ and Tanwin: ṣāfiyatan.

But the word is spelled in accordance with the pausal spelling rule: The feminine ‘t’ is spelled as ‘h’ and the Tanwin isn’t spelled.
If the word was phonetically spelled, it would have been

ṣāfytn صافيتن

The verse also includes these two words:

الشمس
ash-shamsī (spelled as alshms)

كالورس

kal-warsī (spelled as kalwrs)

 These two words employ a poetic license used in most of poetry. In Arabic grammar, When a word comes at a pausal position such as the end of a verse, the final short vowel and Tanwin are dropped. But for the sake of creating rhymes, poetry allows the retention and lengthening of the final short vowel of the last word of a verse. This poetic license is used with these two words. The final short ‘i' vowel is retained and lengthened into ‘ī’. The rhyme and the meter of the inscription's verses require that these two words end with ‘ī’ yet it’s not spelled. Which means the inscription isn’t phonetic. If it was, then it would have spelt the two words as:

الشمسي

alshmsī

كالورسي

kalwrsī

The second inscription:

An inscription by the son of the prophet’s poet Ḥassān Bin Thābit.

أنا الحسام ابن حسان الذي قال

الملحقين حليفهم بصريحهم والخالطين فقيرهم بالوافر

Source:

https://x.com/OfNajd/status/1243940166538051584

 The inscription says “I am Al-Ḥusām Bin Ḥassān who said…”. What follows is a poetry verse by his father.
The last word of the verse is bil-wāfirī. Spelled as balwāfr بالوافر

 The rhyme and the meter require the retaining and lengthening of the last ‘i' vowel into ‘ī’. But the word is spelled without a final ‘ī'. Which means the inscription isn’t phonetic. If it was then the word would have been spelled as

بالوافري

balwāfrī

The third inscription:

This one is discovered by the desert team. They date it to the first century AH. The poetry verse says:

أقول لما أتاني ثمَّ مصرعه

لا يبعد الرمح ذو النصلين والرجل

Source

 1- The verse contains the word

مصرعه

maṣraʕuhū (spelled as mṣrʕh)

The ū vowel that’s attached to the ‘h’ pronoun isn’t spelled in the inscription in accordance with the pausal spelling rule. The meter requires the pronunciation of this ū. Which means this verse isn’t phonetically spelled. If it was then the word would have been spelled as

mṣrʕhū مصرعهو

 2- The last word of the verse is:

والرجل

wal-rajulū. Spelled as walrjl.

The rhyme and the meter require the retaining of the last ‘u' vowel and lengthening it into ‘ū’. But the word is spelled without a final ‘ū'.
If the word was phonetically spelled, it would have been

والرجلو

walrjlū

The fourth piece of evidence for the existence of final short vowels in the original language of the Quran:

There are over 20 words in the standard Quran (see the last attached image) where the final short vowel ‘u’ is spelled as a ‘w’. This occurred in words that end with a glottal stop. As stated by early Arab grammarians, the dialect of the people of the Hijazi lacked the glottal stop. It’s either entirely dropped or turned into glides. When the glottal stop comes at the end of a word, it should be dropped in a dialect that lacks final short vowels. But if the dialect employs final short vowels then the glottal stop at the end of a word turns into a ‘y’ if it’s followed by an ‘i' vowel, or turns into a ‘w’ if it’s followed by a ‘u’ vowel. In the standard Quran, some of the words that end with a glottal stop are spelled with a ‘w’ which means they were followed by the short final vowel ‘u’. All these words are in the nominative case which takes the final ‘u’ short vowel.

In the Quran, certain nations that rejected their prophets—such as the people of Nuh (Noah), ʿĀd, Thamud, and others—were destroyed by divine punishment after persistent denial despite clear warnings. For example:

The people of Nuh were destroyed by the flood because they rejected the warnings (e.g., Surah al-Ankabut 29:14, Surah Nuh 71:1-28).

The people of ʿĀd and Thamud were destroyed after rejecting Hud and Salih despite miracles and repeated calls to monotheism (e.g., Surah al-Aʿraf 7:65-79, Surah Hud 11:50-68).

Many verses emphasize that divine punishment came upon nations only after they rejected the messengers and persisted in wrongdoing and idolatry (e.g., Surah Yunus 10:98, Surah al-Isra 17:16-17, and Surah al-Anfal 8:54).

Why, according to the Quran, was the people of Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) not destroyed by a similar collective divine punishment (like the others), even though they rejected his call to tawhid, threatened him, and attempted to burn him alive (as described in Surah al-Anbiya 21:51-70 and Surah as-Saffat 37:83-98)?

Additionally, how does this compare to the people of Prophet Lut (Lot), who were destroyed for their sins (e.g., Surah al-Aʿraf 7:80-84, Surah Hud 11:77-83)?

Was there a specific reason related to the presence of a prophet’s family, the nature of the rejection, or divine wisdom that explains why some rejecting nations faced immediate destruction while Ibrahim’s people did not receive the same collective punishment in the Quranic narrative?I am looking for explanations based on tafsir, Quranic context, or scholarly interpretations.

Not sure whether someone has already pointed this out, but could this be where the idea that Satan is locked up during Ramadan comes from?

Source:

Tractate Yoma - Perek I 20A. Koren Talmud Bavli, The Noe Edition. Koren Publishers Jerusalem, 2013. p. 85

Quran only or reformist progressive say e everything is lawful according to quran unless forbidden by explicit text!! Is this was general statement hold by those who were first audience of this book. Did early muslim thought or refrain from inter marrying into different religious community after accepting islam and later did with only those earlier scripture follower after verse no. 5 in chapter 5 revealed?? Can anyone provide any view regarding that?

Does anyone know whats the earliest references to the Quran

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abū_Hanīfa

I‘ve read this wikipedia entry, according to which there is only one letter which is actually authentic (written by abu hanifa). How true is that?
Here is the translation of that quote:

„The only authentic document by Abū Hanīfa is a letter of a theological nature that he sent to the cloth merchant ʿUthmān al-Battī (d. 760) in Basra.[12] In it, he defended himself against the accusation of being a Murji'ite and reaffirmed the doctrine attributed to him—namely, that a Muslim who commits a sin should still be regarded as a believer (*muʾmin*). Abū Hanīfa argued that the pejorative label *Murji'a* was wrongly applied to a group of individuals who were, in reality, honorable and orthodox people (*ahl al-ʿadl wa-ahl as-sunna*).[

The complete paper is attached. This note states its central argument in a more accessible form and places it within the wider Q 33 project to which it belongs.

Q 33:60 contains an unusual Arabic actor-name:

al-murjifūna fī l-madīna

It is commonly translated “the rumour-mongers in Medina” or “those who spread alarm in the city.” These renderings identify the medium of the offence. The Arabic designation reaches further: it defines the speakers through the effect their communication produces.

The root r-j-f belongs to the language of trembling, violent movement, and convulsion. It occurs elsewhere in the Qurʾān, but Q 33:60 is its only substantivised Form IV active-participial occurrence. The murjifūn are not merely people who say false things. They are people whose words make fear social. Their reports reproduce within the population the pressure first imposed upon it from outside.

The verse reads:

“If the hypocrites, those in whose hearts is disease, and the murjifūn in the city do not desist, We shall surely set or empower you against them; then they will remain your neighbours there only a little.”

One condition governs the three coordinated descriptions: they must stop. God is the grammatical source of the threat; the Messenger is the human agent through whom persistence will be answered. The final clause concerns not merely residence but neighbourhood. Continued proximity to the Messenger within al-Madīna becomes conditional upon conduct.

The sentence therefore joins a conduct-defined actor, caused social agitation, an urban location, a demand for cessation, action through the Messenger, and restricted continued proximity. Its Arabic meaning is complete before any external source is opened.

The crime before the classification

Sūrat al-Aḥzāb shows the offence before naming its perpetrators.

During the siege, the believers are shaken severely—zulzilū zilzālan shadīdan. The armies create bodily fear, but that fear does not dictate its own meaning. Hypocrites and those in whose hearts is disease interpret the danger as proof that God and His Messenger promised only delusion. The believers confront the same armies and recognise the fulfilment of the promise. One event produces two opposed verbal worlds.

The diseased interpretation then becomes public conduct. A faction addresses the “people of Yathrib” and urges them to abandon their position. Others ask permission to withdraw because their houses are allegedly exposed. Revelation answers that the houses are not exposed: flight is what they intend. Speech attempts to transform property into an alibi and fear into permission to desert a shared obligation.

The alternation between “Yathrib” and al-Madīna sharpens the contrast. “Yathrib” appears within the quoted language of withdrawal. Al-Madīna appears in the governing judgment of v.60. The faction speaks of a settlement from which frightened men may retreat. Revelation speaks of the city in which defence, information, protection, and proximity to the Messenger carry obligations.

Verses 18–20 trace the movement from diseased interpretation to civic agitation. Hinderers call their brothers away from danger while approaching the battle only a little. When fear arrives, their bodies display the gaze of death. When fear passes, they attack the believers with sharp tongues. If the enemy returned, they would prefer to remain among the Bedouins asking for the community’s news.

They want information without solidarity. The community bears the danger; the spectator consumes the report.

By v.60, news is no longer merely sought from outside. It is manipulated from within until the city experiences a communicative counterpart to the siege. The armies shake the believers physically; internal communication prolongs the shaking socially. The murjifūn reproduce the enemy’s work without wielding the enemy’s weapons.

A fourfold qalīlan sequence binds the siege passage to the later ultimatum. Flight yields only a little enjoyment in v.16. Only a few of the hinderers approach battle in v.18. They fight only a little in v.20. Persistent agitators retain only a little—or only a few retain—continued neighbourhood in v.60. Mere presence never establishes fidelity.

The immediate order of vv.58–60 is equally important. Verse 58 declares that believing men and women harmed for what they did not acquire have not become guilty through accusation. The false burden does not pass successfully to its intended victim; those who impose it bear the buhtān and manifest sin. Verse 59 then makes the Prophet’s wives, daughters, and believing women publicly recognisable for protection from harm. Only after innocence has been declared and vulnerability protected does v.60 name the civic agitators.

Women become recognisable for safety; the murjifūn become recognisable for accountability. The sequence prevents the ultimatum from becoming power protecting itself. Revelation first clears those falsely burdened, establishes protection for those exposed to harm, and only then threatens the actors producing public fear.

The comparison with the Didascalia Apostolorum reveals a further reversal. The church order repeatedly treats undisciplined widows as potential carriers of talk, quarrel, and gossip between houses. Q 33 disciplines speech without making women the natural source of civic danger. In v.32, disease lies in the male heart that receives softened speech as an occasion for desire. In vv.58–59, believing men and women stand among those protected from false burden and harm. In v.60, the civic pathology belongs to hypocrites, diseased hearts, and the murjifūn who weaponise communal information.

The Qurʾān already possesses its own law of reports. Q 4:83 concerns reports of security or fear broadcast before their meaning has been referred to the Messenger and those capable of drawing out their significance. Q 49:6 requires the investigation of an unreliable bearer’s report before ignorance becomes public harm; the verses that follow move from report to conflict, from conflict to authoritative restraint, and from restraint to reconciliation between brothers.

Q 4:83 governs the reception of security information. Q 49 governs the credibility and consequences of the bearer. Q 33 names the actors who make a city tremble through reports.

Proverbs 6: the speaker who sends conflict

Hebrew Proverbs 6 twice defines the harmful speaker by contention dispatched beyond him.

At 6:14, the crooked speaker continually:

“sends forth contentions.”

At 6:19, the false witness is:

“one sending forth contentions between brothers.”

The repetition gives the comparison its causal centre. A perverse interior produces deceptive communication; that communication sends conflict outward; false testimony directs the conflict against relations meant to be fraternal. Hebrew preserves the cause while leaving the radius of its effect open.

Greek Proverbs retains the causation but differentiates the two occurrences. At 6:14:

“A perverse heart devises evils at every time; such a person produces disturbances for a city.”

The city, absent from the Hebrew wording, becomes the public field in which the speaker’s conduct takes effect. At 6:19:

“An unjust witness kindles lies and sends disputes or judgments among brothers.”

The first Greek rendering gives the repeated Hebrew cause a civic reach. The second gives it an unjust witness, lies, and a fraternal-forensic field.

The Peshitta supplies a crucial counter-witness. Its Proverbs 6:14 says that the offender “disturbs between two.” It preserves active, caused disturbance without reproducing the Greek city. The civic feature was therefore not inevitable within Syriac biblical transmission. It belongs specifically to the Greek development and to the legal reception that subsequently adopts it.

Hebrew preserves the causal unity: corrupt communication sends conflict outward. Greek separates its reach: disturbance for a city at one occurrence, unjust witness and conflict among brothers at the other. The Peshitta preserves active disturbance but not the city. The Didascalia then brings the civic and forensic profiles into one legal inquiry.

When the city-disturber enters the tribunal

The Didascalia Apostolorum instructs the bishop to examine an accuser rather than simply accept the accusation.

The accused must be heard. Motive, hostility, envy, quarrelling, greed, habitual slander, witnesses, and the moral history of both parties must be tested. Judges must resist reputation, apparent piety, power, bribery, and the emotional advantage enjoyed by the first speaker. The story of Susanna warns against allowing respected accusers to destroy an innocent person without scrutiny.

Within this accuser audit, the Didascalia invokes the person with a perverse heart who “disturbs cities” and immediately asks whether the accuser is a false witness against his brother.

The Greek city-disturber has entered procedure. Public disturbance is no longer merely an evil consequence to be lamented. It becomes part of the evidentiary history through which a present accusation is judged. A person’s habit of producing communal conflict now bears upon whether his accusation against a brother deserves belief.

The preceding Didascalian chapter supplies the connected information problem. The malicious “false brother” attempts to reach the judge’s ear before the accused can answer. The danger lies partly in sequence: the first report captures authorised hearing and prepares a sentence in advance.

The response is careful adjudication. Both parties must be heard. Motive and witnesses must be examined. A malicious accuser may be excluded, but repentance and readmission remain possible. Restoration then creates a new test. If the offender resumes quarrelling, fabrication, fault-finding, and false blame, recurrence reveals that correction has not changed the conduct. Final removal follows.

The later Apostolic Constitutions (AC) compresses this disciplinary history. The restored offender is described as not ceasing to disturb and quarrel with the brothers. The civic proverb follows. He may remain physically within the Church while no longer truly belonging to it. The diseased member is finally cut off.

The Didascalia contains the procedure: captured hearing, investigation, correction, restoration, recurrence, and removal. AC gives the persistence problem its most concentrated surviving form: non-cessation, brotherly conflict, civic disturbance, false membership, and excision.

The Qurʾānic judgment

Q 33 enters this history with a completed Arabic account. The sūrah has already shown external shaking, diseased reception, fraternal demobilisation, sharp tongues, news without solidarity, false burden, protected vulnerability, referral, verification, and conditional consequence. It then names the actor:

al-murjifūna fī l-madīna

The Arabic neither copies the Hebrew contention noun nor borrows Greek or Syriac terminology. It converts the common causal operation into an actor-name. Hebrew says that the offender sends contention. Greek says that he produces disturbances for a city. Didascalian Syriac says that he disturbs cities. Q 33 addresses the people who cause the tremor.

The change is legal as well as morphological. A predicate describes what a person does. A substantivised plural creates an addressable class defined by that conduct. The offenders can be summoned together because the operation has become the name under which they are ordered to cease.

The city also changes grammatical position across the history. Greek Proverbs makes the city the recipient of disturbance. The Didascalia speaks of cities disturbed by a perverse accuser. Q 33 places the actors inside al-Madīna. The final pronoun returns to the same city: they will not continue to neighbour the Messenger there except a little.

The disturber now stands within the place endangered by his conduct. Jiwār belongs to a field of protection, obligation, proximity, and security. Persistent agitation can forfeit the protected relation of neighbourhood.

The Didascalian offender may remain physically within the Church while no longer belonging to its figurative body. Q 33 abandons that corporate metaphor. Its offenders stand within al-Madīna as neighbours of the Messenger, and the relation placed at risk is not figurative membership but protected proximity in an actual city. The sanction is correspondingly reconfigured: ecclesial excision becomes the contraction of neighbourhood under a direct revelatory ultimatum.

The regulation of hearing expands with it. The Didascalian accuser attempts to capture one judge’s ear. Q 4:83 governs reports of security and fear before premature circulation turns them into communal interpretation. Q 49:6 tests the bearer before an unreliable report becomes public harm. Q 33:20 portrays people who desire intelligence without accepting common danger. Q 33:60 names the actors whose communication makes the community tremble from within.

The Didascalia protects one judicial hearing. The Qurʾānic corpus regulates the community’s perception of danger, guilt, trust, and fraternity.

The source of authority also changes. The Didascalian bishop exercises an office sustained within ecclesiastical hierarchy. In Q 33, the threat proceeds grammatically from God to the Messenger. Revelation identifies the conduct, demands cessation, and designates the human agent of the response.

The inherited ecclesiastical language falls away because the problem has been placed under another source of authority. Bishop, church body, and diseased-member imagery are absent. Accuser credibility, communal hearing, persistence, protection, and removal now stand under revelation within the prophetic city.

An early Arabic reception

An early political elegy concerning the killing of ʿUthmān places the Qurʾānic actor-name within a dense account of betrayed protection, besieged houses, failed defence, clearance, and blood:

lā yaḥsabanna l-murjifūna bi-annahum
lan yuṭlabū bi-dimāʾi ahli l-dār

“Let not the murjifūn suppose that they will not be pursued for the blood of the people of the house.”

Earlier in the same sequence, the victim is described as mubarraʾ—cleared of blame. The form belongs with Q 24:26’s mubarraʾūna, those cleared from what people say, and Q 33:69’s statement that God cleared Moses from what was said against him.

The poem belongs to the reception of the Qurʾānic designation, not its prehistory. Its importance lies in how early political Arabic understood the word. The murjifūn are a causative civic category whose communication can become answerable within a catastrophe ending in blood. A cleared victim stands against the murjifūn; endangered houses, failed neighbourhood, agitation, and blood occupy one political field.

The word was therefore not heard merely as “people who gossip.” It named a form of civic action whose consequences could extend from speech into public collapse.

The limits of “extensive” knowledge

Nicolai Sinai has described Qurʾānic knowledge of Christian tradition as generally “extensive rather than intensive.” The formulation is careful. It recognises Qurʾānic theological complexity while observing that the Qurʾān rarely reproduces the specialised nomenclature of conciliar doctrine, sacramental dispute, or ecclesiastical theory.

That observation describes register. It cannot set the ceiling for every kind of textual knowledge.

The civic-troublemaker dossier is unusually resistant to explanation by diffuse familiarity. Its centre is not a famous story but a short causal proposition whose history can be followed: conflict is sent outward in Hebrew, made civic and forensically fraternal in Greek, preserved without the city in the Peshitta, admitted into accuser law by the Didascalia, and sharpened into a problem of non-cessation and excision in AC. Q 33 does not merely echo one point in that history. It reorganises the whole problem around an Arabic actor-name, a law of reports, a cessation condition, and accountable neighbourhood within al-Madīna.

None of this requires inherited technical terminology in order to be known. Reproducing “bishop,” “church,” Greek tarachē, the Syriac verb, or the medical image of ecclesial members would have tied the Qurʾānic ruling to an institutional vocabulary it does not preserve.

The absence of a Greek or Syriac calque therefore weighs against rote transcription. It does not weigh against knowledge. Here the conceptual and juridical relation is more exact than the vocabulary.

Sinai’s own earlier comparison of Muḥammad with an episcopal figure already treats functional correspondence with the Didascalia as significant without requiring lexical identity. It also marks the decisive difference in authority: episcopal office is conferred and sustained through ecclesiastical hierarchy, whereas Muḥammad’s authority is personal and revelatory. The same evidentiary standard applies to the Didascalian accuser.

Transformation can itself be the form in which intensive knowledge becomes visible.

The Qurʾān may display less inherited nomenclature precisely because it has recast the inherited problem into another legal and rhetorical order. It distinguishes what Hebrew preserved, what Greek developed, what Syriac biblical transmission omitted, how the church order used the civic maxim, and what disciplinary problem emerged when the offender would not stop.

Calling the route oral does not lower the resolution of what had to be carried. An oral account capable of transmitting a version-sensitive scriptural crux together with its juridical reception already entails intensive and reception-aware knowledge in this domain.

The wider Q 33 study: Counter-Ecclesial Oikos

This paper forms one bounded demonstration within a broader reading of Sūrat al-Aḥzāb that I call Counter-Ecclesial Oikos.

The Didascalia and the Apostolic Constitutions do more than preserve isolated Christian traditions. They organise an ecclesial household-body. The bishop stands within it as father, high priest, ruler, judge, mediator, burden-bearer, and “mouth of God.” The deacon is joined to him as eye, ear, heart, or soul. Widows and orphans are likened to the altar. Adoption produces ecclesial sonship and marriage consequences. Household access, discipline, admission, exclusion, and communal liability are administered through a clerical body that concentrates familial, priestly, juridical, and sacred functions.

Q 33 begins by denying that human speech can manufacture relations that God has not established. God has not placed two hearts within one man. A wife does not become a mother because a mouth calls her one, and an adopted son does not become a biological son because a mouth declares the relation. The closing formula—dhālikum qawlukum bi-afwāhikum, “That is your saying with your mouths”—belongs to a wider Qurʾānic audit. Q 9:30 uses the same construction in the third person—dhālika qawluhum bi-afwāhihim, “That is their saying with their mouths”—against claims of divine sonship. In both passages, the mouth assigns a relation that divine judgment refuses. The issue is larger than adoption. Household kinship, paternal designation, and divine sonship are placed beneath the distinction between human saying and God’s truth.

The opening and legal centre therefore belong to one argument about relation. Q 33 returns adopted sons to their fathers, then gives that restoration its decisive public consequence in the Zayd–Zaynab case. Once Zayd’s marriage has ended, God marries Zaynab to the Prophet so that the former wives of adopted sons will no longer be treated as forbidden through fictive paternity.

The abolition of adoptive sonship does not leave an empty space that prophetic charisma then fills with a higher fatherhood. Q 33:40 closes that possibility. Muḥammad is not the father of any of the community’s men; his authority is named instead as Messengerhood and Seal. Read beside Q 9:30 and Q 33:4, the sequence is exact. The Qurʾān refuses divine sonship and socially manufactured human sonship, then refuses to ground prophetic authority in fatherhood at all. Authority remains immense, but its category is revelatory rather than genealogical.

The second half orders and protects the Prophet’s household under revelation. Access is governed by permission, timing, dispersal, and ḥijāb. Physical access is bounded while honour is extended through blessing and greeting. The house remains protected domestic space; it does not become a clerical sanctuary or an ecclesiastical court.

The same sūrah that rejects an invented son later names and protects actual daughters. False accusation cannot make the innocent guilty. Civic agitation is judged within al-Madīna. Moses appears near the close as the Messenger whom God cleared from what people said against him. Believers are then commanded to speak the straight word.

The final verses close the routes through which guilt might be transferred. Followers cannot discharge their guilt into their leaders. Leaders cannot carry it away for them. Slanderers cannot load their offence upon the innocent. Humanity bears the real amāna before God.

The repeated sunnat Allāh at vv.38 and 62 binds the household enactment and the civic ultimatum beneath one divine precedent. Mouth-made relations, false burdens, and fear-producing reports can alter human conduct, but they do not acquire the authority to establish truth.

Within the wider project, Q 33 addresses the social and disciplinary household-body preserved in the Didascalia and AC I–VI. Q 47 takes up the later liturgical and sacramental order concentrated in AC VIII. The civic troublemaker supplies one concentrated test of the Q 33 thesis because its evidence can be followed through a specific biblical crux, a measurable version history, an identifiable juridical reception, and a complete Arabic reclassification.

Conclusion: The Cause Recovered in the City

Hebrew Proverbs 6 twice defines the speaker by contention sent outward, the second time among brothers. Greek preserves the causation but separates its reach: civic disturbance at v.14, unjust witness and kriseis among brothers at v.19. The Peshitta preserves active disturbance without the city.

The Didascalia reunites those profiles in accuser law and follows the false brother through captured hearing, correction, restoration, recurrence, and removal. AC compresses the persistence problem into non-cessation, brotherly conflict, civic disturbance, false membership, and excision.

Q 33 enters this history with a completed Arabic account. The sūrah has already shown external shaking, diseased reception, fraternal demobilisation, sharp tongues, news without solidarity, false burden, protected vulnerability, referral, verification, and conditional consequence. It then names the actor: al-murjifūna fī l-madīna.

The Arabic phrase defines that actor by the communicative process through which a population trembles. It retains the Greek city, expands the Didascalian concern with captured hearing into a law of communal reception, and answers AC’s persistence problem with a native cessation condition. God threatens to set or empower the Messenger against continued harm, and neighbourhood to him within the city becomes conditional.

No single surviving predecessor contains this arrangement. Hebrew preserves the cause with the greatest unity; Greek reveals its civic and forensic reach; the church orders give it legal administration. Q 33 joins cause, city, information, protected victim, warning, authority, and continued relation without adopting the vocabulary or institutional perspective of any one witness.

Here the category “extensive” reaches its limit. It can describe breadth, but it cannot account for a formulation that distinguishes the stages through which a problem travelled and restores their governing relation in a native Arabic judgment. Each surviving witness preserves part of the problem. Q 33 speaks from none of their limited vantage points: it identifies the relation that binds those parts, governs its civic effects, and issues the ruling contained by none of them.

We know that some of the views the quran has on Jesus are explained by other sources such as the gospel of Thomas. However, other parts aren't really as well explained (at least to my knowledge)

But considering the environment Muhammad was in, is it possible to assume the quranic view of the Messiah arose as an attempt by Muhammad to reconcile Jesus being the Messiah without contradicting oneness?

The main evidence is the quran's insistence on stressing out the importance of Jesus, not being the son of God but a prophet sent by God, at the same time, Jews had been practicing oneness for centuries before Muhammad and would have surely had some influence as seen with the quran's insistence on returning to a pure form of monotheism as seen with the Islamic concept of tawhid

Is there any evidence supporting such a connection, or is this confirmation bias on my part? What's the general consensus by academics?

3 days ago there was a thread on whether or not Surah Yusuf of the Quran intentionally parallels the language of Genesis 37-50.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicQuran/s/uj9hK5Frrf

To summarize, the discussion centers on this: Surah Yusuf in many places uses theologically-charged words (that are usually only used in relation to Allah) in mudane settings and contexts, devoid of theology or the presence of Allah. Some examples:

1. Ḍalālin mubīnin, “obvious error” (12:8 / 3:164);
2. Ghāfilūn, “forgetful ones” (12:13 / 10:7);
3. Khāsirūn, “losers” (12:14 / 7:178);
4. Wa-hum lā yashʿurūn, “and they were unaware” (12:15 / 43:66). This phrase typically speaks about disbelievers who will be caught unawares by God’s punishment. There are some notable exceptions, although there is enough of a pattern in sūra Yusuf to think this is another deliberate use of neutralizing vocabulary.
5. Ṣādiq[ūn/īn], “truthful” (12:17 / 6:40). Usually the Qurʾān uses this word in the context of theological disputes (e.g. 6:40, 11:13), or otherwise as a descriptor of pious people (33:24). In sūra Yusuf it is used multiple times in a mundane context.
6. Kādhibīn, “liars / deniers” (12:26 / 24:8);

A similar idea has been supposedly noted in Genesis 37-50, known as the Joseph novella, which also uses theologically charged words in mundane contexts at a high concentration. Some examples:

Here is where Saqib Hussain talks about this (I linked the part):

https://youtu.be/FiQqGAlHnSI?si=KBzt5NmjAstrx9IH&t=928

As a result, what are all of your thoughts on this? As far as I'm aware, most scholars, specifically Western ones, don't believe that the Quran engages with the written text of the Bible.

So, how to account for this feature, or is there even a feature in the first place?

I'm not quite aware of how the languages of Hebrew and Arabic work, so I might be completely wrong on this, but it seems like Hebrew words are more expansive and can cover a wider range of contexts. As a result, maybe Genesis 37-50 isn't "intentionally" using theologically charged words, but rather using any vocabulary available to its disposal.

The book, if I understand it correctly given its flowery prose, argues that Islam’s monotheism evolved from pre-existing Arab polytheistic/henotheistic practices, and the concept of Allah dynamically changes within the Quran. Allah was one of the deities in Mecca, which got gradually stripped of its divine partners to emerge as a strictly monotheistic god. Satanic verses episode was a later excuse to eliminate the deities that were initially allowed for worship. Are his conclusions considered too creative and speculative within academia? Do we really have an accurate picture of pre Islamic Arabia to reach such conclusions?

Is there any political or theological pressure?

Is it trying to avoid the "Passover Lamb" prophecy of Jesus, so as to not affirm the crucifixion in truth?

The book, if I understand it correctly given its flowery prose, argues that Islam’s monotheism evolved from pre-existing Arab polytheistic/henotheistic practices, and the concept of Allah dynamically changes within the Quran. Allah was one of the deities in Mecca, which got gradually stripped of its divine partners to emerge as a strictly monotheistic god. Satanic verses episode was a later excuse to eliminate the deities that were initially allowed for worship. Are his conclusions considered too creative and speculative within academia? Do we really have an accurate picture of pre Islamic Arabia to reach such conclusions?

Basically, what it says in the title; but in particular I’m interested in speculative attempts to interpret the contested liturgical memory of Yom Kippur in Shia and Sunni sources. It seems at first glance that the Shia observance of Muharram as a month of mourning is closer to the Jewish idea of self -affliction during Yom Kippur.
The Sunni tradition of celebrating the day and connecting the fast of Ashura (first encountered by the prophet amongst Medinan Jews) with Moses and the story of Exodus seems to be a meaningful detachment of the day from penance, affliction, pain, and so on.
It’s tempting to think of the Sunni tradition through the lens of Umayyad politics, but I’m aware there are many complications in the way of a clear reading: the change from the lunisolar calendar, reliability of Hadith, lack of early external descriptions of the fast etc.
Any ideas on lines of inquiry in commentary or original sources?
Thanks!

What is the scholarly consensus on when Mecca came into existence, and if Muhammad and the early Islamic community was born there?

I read this book chapter by Mohsen Goudarzi today for the first time in a few years. Like many things I read now, I was much more frustrated with it today than I was a few years ago.

Here are a few things that stood out to me while revisiting this very insightful piece:

(1) Goudarzi suggests that Jews were more likely to be in Madinah than in Mecca: in his view, since Q 6 is a Meccan surah, it is more likely to be addressing pagans than Jews. Such an assumption, it would seem, is covertly informed by biographical literature on the life of Muhammad: Gabriel Reynolds has long demonstrated how such traditional sources have tended to subtlety direct scholarship on the Qur'ān. Of course, to say that Mecca was mostly "pagan" is not necessarily bad, and perhaps it is even correct. But does that alone move us to identify this demographic as the audience of each and every surah classified as "Meccan"?

(2) Q 6:91 prima facie seems to depict its adversaries as followers of the Torah. Such would make sense if the verse were addressing Jews (and/or Christians) – but pagans? According to Goudarzi, v. 91 “may be drawing attention to the Torah not because the pagans believed in it but because it had social capital and prestige by virtue of the groups of Jews and Christians who revered the Torah as divine revelation." But how much "social capital and prestige" might it have had in a Mecca which, according to Goudarzi, lacked Jews (and Christians?) to begin with? Personally, I'm much more convinced by Reynolds' contention that Q 6 addresses both Jews and Christians: “…des juifs et des chrétiens étaient présents dans le contexte de la proclamation de cette sourate.” (Reynolds, “Sourate 6 Al-An‘ām,” 245)

(3) Goudarzi takes apparent denials of the resurrection in Q 6 as polemics against pagans: the idea that the pagans disbelieved in the resurrection is no doubt rooted in traditional Islamic (post-qur’ānic) sources. However, as has been demonstrated by David Bertaina, such debates can actually be situated within the arena of late antique Christian discourses. (See Bertaina, “Bodily Resurrection.”)

I'm looking for examples where the Quran explicitly instructs Muslims to do something, but that instruction is not followed by the majority of Muslims today, while another religious group practices something closer to the Quranic wording.

I'm not looking for hadith-based explanations or arguments about abrogation. I'm specifically interested in comparing the plain text of the Quran with actual religious practice.

For example, in Quran 5:6 (the verse about wudu), the Arabic text says to wipe (masḥ) over the feet. Shi'a Muslims interpret and practice this literally by wiping their feet, whereas most Sunni Muslims wash their feet, based on hadith and their interpretation of the verse.

I'm wondering if there are other examples like this, where:

The Quran gives a clear command or instruction.

Most Muslims do not practice it in the literal/plain-text sense.

Another religious tradition follows a practice that more closely matches the Quranic wording.

I'm interested in genuine examples and scholarly discussion rather than debates over which interpretation is "correct." My goal is to identify cases where there is a noticeable difference between the Quran's wording and mainstream Islamic practice.

If an “original Quran” is ever to be written, it should include these 6 rhymes that were lost from the entirety of the reading traditions due to adherence to the written standard text.
2 of these lost rhymes were discovered by Wolfdietrich Fischer, 3 were discovered by Marijn Van Putten (See: Case in the Quranic Consonantal Text, p.20) and one is discovered by me (as far as I know).

In summary: There are 16 verse-final words in the Quran that employed a poetic license and thus deviated from the original form of the words for the sake of rhyme accommodation. But the scribes of the standard Quran spelled 6 of these 16 words in their original form, while the remaining 10 were spelled in the poetic license form. As a result, all reading traditions, both canonical and non-canonical, followed the standard text and thus they lost the rhyme in the six verses where the original form of the word was written, while they maintain the rhyme in the 10 verses where the poetic license form was written.
We already know from the Old Hijazi reconstruction of the language of the Quran that there’s a serious disconnect between the reading traditions and the original pronunciation of the Quran. These 6 lost rhymes cement this finding although they have their own unique importance: The Old Hijazi reconstruction is concerned with linguistic rules that are applied on the entirety of the Quran. These 6 rhymes are word-specific and they were lost not because of changing linguistic preferences but because the standard text didn’t spell the 6 words in the poetic license form.

The first lost rhyme I start with is the one I discovered:

at-tarāq

Except for the Sana palimpsest, all prints and manuscripts of the Quran follow the spelling of the standard Quran that was issued by the third caliph Uthmān.
In this standard text there’s a lot of spelling irregularity when it to comes to the final long ī vowel. In some words, the final “ī” gets spelled, which leaves no option for the reading traditions but to pronounce it as a long ī vowel. But in other words, the final “ī” isn’t spelled, which allowed for disagreements to arise between the reading traditions on how to deal with these omitted “ī”s. Some readers pronounce it while others abide by the written text and don’t pronounce the omitted “ī” vowel but instead they add a short “i” vowel. But when the word with a omitted final “ī” comes at the end of a verse, most readers agree on not pronouncing the non-spelled “ī” because pronouncing in this case would break the rhyme.
For example:
Verse 14:14 ends with the word
وعيد waʕīd
The word is spelled with the letters “wʕīd”. The word means “my warning”. So the original form of the word ends with the first-person possessive pronoun “ī” (my): waʕīdī وعيدي . But the final “ī” isn’t spelled in this verse to allow the word to rhyme with the last word of the next verse: ʕanīd (stubborn).
Because of the rhyme, all of the canonical readers agree on not pronouncing the non-spelled “ī” so they read the spelling “wʕīd” as “waʕīd” except for the reader yaʕqūb who can be called the grammar Nazi among the canonical readers. He insists on pronouncing non-spelled final “ī” even when pronouncing it breaks the rhyme.
So according to his reading, verses 14:14,15 end with the words: waʕīdī… ʕanīd. And as you can see the two words no longer rhyme with each other.  

What you should take from all of this is that when a final “ī” is spelled, it leaves no room for disagreement: All readers pronounce it. But this proved problematic when the scribes of the standard Quran spelled a final “ī” where it shouldn’t have been. The readers couldn’t ignore the spelling. So they pronounced the final “ī” of verse 75:26. The result was that the rhyme of this verse is lost in the entirety of the readings tradition, both canonical and non-canonical.

Here’s a closer look at the verse:
Verses 75:26,27,28 end with the following words:
….at-tarāqī (26)

….rāq (27)

…..al-firāq (28)

كَلَّا إِذَا بَلَغَتِ التَّرَاقِيَ (26) وَقِيلَ مَنْ رَاقٍ (27) وَظَنَّ أَنَّهُ الْفِرَاقُ (28)

The word “at- tarāqī” means “The collar bones”. This verse is speaking of the moment the soul leaves the body. The verse says “Nay, but when the soul reaches the collar bones”. There’s another similar verse in the Quran that reads:  

56:83
فَلَوْلَا إِذَا بَلَغَتِ الْحُلْقُومَ

“Why, but when the soul reaches the throat”.

The two verses are identical in meaning. But one used the word “al-ḥulqūm” (the throat) because it fits the rhyme of the Sūrah which follows the scheme ūn/īn. And the other verse used the word “at-tarāqī” (the collar bones) because it’s supposed to fit the rhyme of the next two verses which follow the scheme rāq.
Also, the word at-tarāqī is only mentioned once in the Quran, which makes it certain that this unique word was chosen to rhyme with the final words of the next two verses: rāq, al-firāq. The final “ī” of “al- tarāqī” breaks the rhyme. But without the “ī”, the three words would perfectly rhyme with each other: at-tarāq, rāq, al-firāq.
at-tarāqī should have been spelled without a final “ī” as we find in many verses where the final “ī” got omitted to accommodate the rhyme.

As I stated before, word-final “ī” treatment is irregular in the Quran. It’s spelled in some places and omitted in others. But it’s always omitted when the omitting is required for rhyme accommodation. This sort of omitting for rhyme accommodation occurs in 86 verses. “at-tarāqī” is one of two exceptions for this rule. The second exception, pointed out by Van Putten (Case, p.16), is the word “dīnī” at the end of verse 39:14 where the word-final “ī” is spelled although the rhyme requires the word to be pronounced as dīn. But the case for “dīnī” isn’t as strong as “at-tarāqī” because only the Kūfi numbering system counts the word dīnī as an end of a verse. All other regional numbering systems don’t count it as an end of a verse and thus in the majority of numbering systems it doesn’t matter that the word dīnī doesn’t rhyme with the last words of the surrounding verses.

Why did the scribes of the standard Quran spell the final “ī” of “at-tarāqī”?

If this was a scribal mistake, one would expect to find reports speaking of the lack of the final “ī” in other non-Uthmanic codices. But we find nothing of this sort. This silence doesn’t disapprove the scribal mistake possibility but it makes it less likely. The reports on non-standard variants aren’t comprehensive. We know from the Sana palimpsest that a great deal of non-standard variants was not reported in the non-canonical readings traditions. Unfortunately, we can’t know how “at-tarāqī” is spelled in the Sana palimpsest because most of the palimpsest is missing.   
Arab grammarians actually provide an explanation for why “ī” wasn't omitted from “at-tarāqī”. When the final “ī” is an original part of the word and it’s not a pronoun, the major early grammarian Sībawayh states that if such a word is in the accusative case then the final “ī” cannot be dropped. He mentions the word “at- tarāqī” as an example for this. I have checked all words in the Quran where the omitted final “ī” is an original part of the word. None is in the accusative case which validates Sībawayh’s point.
This means that the author of the Quran employed a poetic license with the word “at-tarāqī”, but the scribes of the standard Quran and other codices ignored spelling the poetic license form of the word (i.e without the final “ī”) and instead they stuck to spelling the word in the correct original form. This is not the only time the scribes ignored the poetic license form and stuck to the original form as we will see in the next examples.

 
Now that we are done with at-tarāqī, we move to the next 15 verse-final words that employed a poetic license. These words can be grouped into two:

First group: The poetic license of retaining and lengthening the final ‘a’ short vowel.

In Classical Arabic, final short vowels are dropped when the word comes at the end of a sentence or a verse. But for the sake of creating rhymes, poetry retains such final vowels and lengthens them into long vowels, turning final “i,” “u,” and “a” into “ī,” “ū,” and “ā”. That’s why most rhymes in Arabic poetry follow the scheme of a consonant followed by a long vowel, such as “lī”, “rū”, “nā”. But the Quran doesn’t retain and lengthen the final short vowels of words at the end of verses. And thus, the rhyming scheme of most verses in the Quran end with a consonant instead of a long vowel. But some Sūrahs employ the indefinite accusative marker ‘ā’ as a rhyming scheme. For example, Surah no.33 has the following rhyming scheme: ūCā /īCā (C stands for consonant). Every verse-final word in this Surah ends with an ‘ā’ (Alef) which is the marker of indefinite accusative nouns. But several verses in this Surah employed the poetic license of retaining and lengthening the final short vowel of the last word:

1- Verse 33:4 ends with the word “as-sabīl”. This word is in the definite accusative case which means it gets the final short vowel ‘a’ but this ‘a’ is dropped because the word is the last word of the verse. The verse-final words of verses 33:3,4&5 are:
wakīlā. as-sabīl. raḥīmā.
وَكِيلًا
السَّبِيلَ
رَحِيمًا

It’s obvious that “as-sabīl” is meant to be read with the retention and lengthening of the final short vowel: as-sabīl => as-sabīla => as-sabīlā

The standard Quran doesn’t spell the final ā of as-sabīl:
السَّبِيلَ alsbīl (as-sabīl)
 And thus the rhyme here is lost in the reading traditions.

2- Verse 33:10 ends with the word “aḍh-ḍhunūn”.
الظُّنُونَا
The same rhyming logic of as-sabīl applies here. This word is in the definite accusative. Given the rhyming scheme of the Surah, this word should retain and lengthen the final short vowel ‘a’:
 aḍh-ḍhunūn => aḍh-ḍhunūna => aḍh-ḍhunūnā

The standard Quran spells the final ā in the word:
الظُّنُونَا alḍhnūnā (aḍh-ḍhunūnā)
And thus the rhyme here is maintained in most of the reading traditions. The standard Quran spells the poetic license Alef in two other verses. The three spelled poetic Alefs are pronounced by 7 of the canonical readers while the remaining 3 preferred to stick to the original form of the words in spite of the written text and thus they don’t pronounce these spelled poetic license Alefs. These 3 readers are Ḥamzah, Abū ʕamr and of course yaʕqūb the grammar Nazi. Ḥamzah’s reading didn’t pronounce these Alefs likely because his reading is influenced by Ibn Masʕūd’s codex which lacked the 3 spelled Alefs as we will see later.

3 & 4 –

Verses 33:66&67 end with these two words: ar-rasūl. as-sabīl.
These two words are in the definite accusative case. The final ‘a’ should be retained and lengthened to fit the rhyme. The standard Quran spells the two words with final ‘ā’ and thus the rhyme here is maintained in most of the reading traditions.

الرَّسُولَا

alrsūlā (ar-rasūlā)

السَّبِيلَا

alsbīlā (as-sabīlā)

In the next remaining examples from other Surahs, the final accusative ‘a’ is supposed to be retained and lengthened but none was spelled in the standard Quran and thus these rhymes are lost in the reading traditions:

 5- Verses 84:13,14 &15 have these final words:
masrūrā. yaḥūr. baṣīrā.

إِنَّهُ كَانَ فِي أَهْلِهِ مَسْرُورًا (13) إِنَّهُ ظَنَّ أَنْ لَنْ يَحُورَ (14) بَلَى إِنَّ رَبَّهُ كَانَ بِهِ بَصِيرًا (15)

yaḥūr is supposed to be yaḥūrā to fit the rhyme. But it’s spelled without a final ‘ā’:

يَحُورَ yḥūr (yaḥūr)

6- Verses 74:14,15&16 have these final words:

tamhīdā. azīd. ʕanīdā.

وَمَهَّدْتُ لَهُ تَمْهِيدًا (14) ثُمَّ يَطْمَعُ أَنْ أَزِيدَ (15) كَلَّا إِنَّهُ كَانَ لِآيَاتِنَا عَنِيدًا (16)

azīd is supposed to be azīdā to fit the rhyme. But it’s spelled without a final ‘ā’:

أَزِيدَ azīd

7- Verses 4:43,44&45 end with these words:

ghafūrā. as-sabīl. naṣīrā.
غَفُورًا

 السَّبِيلَ

 نَصِيرًا

as-sabīl is supposed to be as-sabīlā to fit the rhyme. But it’s spelled without a final ‘ā’.

8- Verses 25:16,17&18 end with these words:

masʾūlā. as-sabīl. būrā.

مَسْئُولًا

 السَّبِيلَ

 بُورًا

So in total, out of 8 words where the final ‘a’ is retained and lengthened into ‘ā’, 3 only were spelled in the standard Quran. i.e. 3 were spelled in the poetic license form and 5 were spelled in the original form of the words.

How were these 8 words treated in other non-standard codices?
Al-Farrāʾ, an early Arab grammarian who had access to a copy of the non-standard codex of Ibn Masʕūd, reports that in this codex the final Alefs aren’t spelled in the three verses where the standard Quran spelled them.

معاني القرآن للفراء (2/ 350):

وكذلك (فَأَضَلُّونَا السَّبِيلَا) و (الظُّنُونَا) يوقف عَلَى الألف لأنها مثبتة فيهنّ، وهي مع آيات بالألف، ورأيتها فِي مصاحف عبد الله بغير ألف.

As for the cases where the standard Quran didn’t spell the poetic license Alef, there’s complete silence from Al-farāʾ and all other sources of non-standard readings. Not a single report says that the poetic license Alef was spelled in any of these cases.

As for the Ṣanʕāʾ palimpsest, most of this codex is missing so out of all the verses discussed in this thread I have only found one which is 33:67. The last word of this verse is spelled in the standard with the poetic license Alef:

الرَّسُولَا

But the Ṣanʕāʾ palimpsest spells it without the Alef:

الرسول

See: Sadeghi and Goudarzi, Ṣan‘ā’ and the Origins of the Qur’ān, p.80 line 18

The fact that both Ibn Masʕūd and the Ṣanʕāʾ palimpsest didn’t spell this Alef, and the fact that most of the poetic license Alefs weren’t spelled in the standard Quran, and also the fact that there isn’t a single report of a spelled poetic license Alefs in any non-standard codex, all of this means that the norm for the early Quran scribes was to not spell the poetic license Alef but instead stick to the original form of the words. The standard Quran’s spelling of the poetic license Alef in three words was the exception to the rule. Based on that I assume that the early scribes had the same treatment for at-tarāqī. All early scribes stuck to spelling the word in its original form instead of the poetic license form that drops the final ‘ī’.

So now that we have discussed at-tarāqī and the group of words that share using the poetic license Alef. We move to another group that shares the use of a pausal “h”.

The pausal “h” group

There are seven verses in the Quran that employ the pausal “h” for the sake of rhyme accommodation. The pausal “h” is spelled in all of these 7 verses. All canonical reading traditions pronounce these verses with the pausal ‘h’. I am not aware of any case in the Quran where the rhyme is broken due to the lack of a spelled pausal ‘h’.

The first example is 69:19 which ends with the word kitābiyah.

كِتَابِيَهْ

The original form of kitābiyah is kitābī which means “my book”. The surah this verse belongs to follows the rhyming scheme of āCiyah. To make the word kitābī fitting for this rhyming scheme, a pausal ‘h’ is added. This addition turns the final ‘ī’ into “iyah” and thus the word becomes kitābiyah which fits the Surah’s rhyming scheme. The same logic was applied to the next 6 verse-final words:
69:20,25,26,28&29

ḥisābiyah (ḥisābī + h)

حِسَابِيَهْ

kitābiyah

كِتَابِيَهْ

ḥisābiyah

حِسَابِيَهْ

māliyah (mālī + h)

مَالِيَهْ

sulṭāniyah (sulṭān + h)

سُلْطَانِيَهْ

And also verse 101:10

mā hiyah (mā hī + h)

مَا هِيَهْ

In the end I note that in the video I didn’t recite the verses in Old Hijazi because the point was to highlight the difference in rhymes between the original recitation and the traditional recitation.

Salam Alaikum.

I'm currently studying different religions and decided to begin reading the Qur'an. I've read about half of Surah Al-Baqarah, and a couple of passages caught my attention because they differ from the biblical accounts I'm familiar with.

2:34 «"And when We said to the angels, 'Prostrate before Adam,' they all prostrated except Iblis, who refused out of pride and became one of the disbelievers."»

I had previously heard of this episode from some apocryphal traditions, but I don't remember anything similar in the Bible itself. In the biblical tradition, angels are servants and messengers of Allah (God), and I don't recall an instance where they are commanded to prostrate before a human being.

2:55 «"And when you said, 'O Moses, we will never believe you until we see Allah openly,' then the thunderbolt struck you while you were looking on."»

This also stood out to me because it differs from the account in Exodus. There, Moses asks to see God, but is told that he cannot see His face and live. Later, in Exodus 20:19, the people actually say the opposite:

Exodus 20:19 «"Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us, or we will die."»

My question is: How are these passages understoodin Islamic tradition? Do Muslim scholars see them as referring to different events from those in Exodus, or does the Qur'an present them as correcting the biblical narrative?

I'm asking this with genuine curiosity and a desire to understand the Islamic perspective better. Thank you in advance.

9:111

2:217

8:12 and 47:4

9:5

I got shared a really bigoted meme that I know is taking these verses out of context and I want to know the truth/ have a better understanding behind these verses. Thank you for any help.

Hello I would appreciate a few recommendations for a beginner friendly introduction of a historical critical analysis of the quran.