Manufacturing the Quran Moving on to a later age, the earliest tangible appearance of the complete Quran in its present form dates from the 10th century, when the text as it now stands was compiled from seven different versions of the quranic text to form an amalgamated, mutually acceptable text made easier to understand by the addition of vowel and diacritical marks to the Arabic script (where they had previously been lacking37, and hence made the texts harder to read). Many Muslim apologists claim, however, that Mohammed had already compiled a complete quranic manuscript before his death in 632 AD, and that following manuscripts (as was seen above) agreed with this first text perfectly. The claim is made that there were no conflicting manuscripts produced. These assertions are contradicted both by evidence from scholarly study and by variant Muslim assertions, mentioned above and articulated more fully below, which claim that Mohammeds followers compiled the quranic teachings after his death. One thing only is certain and is openly recognized by tradition, namely, that there was not in existence any collection of revelations in final form, because, as long as he was alive, new revelations were being added to the earlier ones. 38 Scholars understand that at Mohammeds death, there was no singular codex for the Quran 39. Indeed, as has been noted above, there probably was not even a codex of the Quran until at or after the middle part of the 8th century (the leaves mentioned earlier are single pages, not comprising a whole collection of writings). Given the late appearance of complete quranic texts, this appears to bear witness to the truth. However, as was seen above, many Muslim scholars make the claim that the Quran has existed exactly as it was handed down to Mohammed, even to this day.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 04:20:58 +0000
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