Thread by @PhDniX

In the '90s J.A. Bellamy published 2 articles with "Some Proposed Emendations to the Text of the Koran". He suggests how some verses may have received the wrong reading due to spelling mistakes in the Quran.
Most of his suggestions stem from his illiteracy in early Arabic script.

Part 1 starts off convincing: quran.com/21/98 has حصب in the meaning of 'firewood', a meaning it doesn't usually have. It may indeed be a miswriting of حطب. Medial ص and ط are very similar in Hijazi script. Compare similar phraseology in quran.com/72/15/

Further confirmation for this is in fact found in the tradition. ʾUbayy is said to have actually read ḥaṭab in this position. If only this level of quality was maintained throughout the article. But hold on tight, we're going to get cooky real quick.

2. Then he goes off the deep end. He suggests ʾummah "while, time" as in quran.com/11/8/ is actually ʾamad "time". While the meaning ʾummah in this verse is certainly weird, the idea that hāʾ could be miswritten or misread as dāl is ludicrous. This is worse than Luxenberg

I cannot even begin to reconstruct how Bellamy got to the idea that hāʾ and dāl can be mistaken for each other, and not just once but twice (also in quran.com/12/45/). Does he think the Quran was written in Nastaleeq or Ruqʿah? He really seems to think that as we'll see.

3. ʾabban "fodder" quran.com/80/30 he suggests rereading as lubban. "The copyist's pen as it turned to the left after the lām, for a split second ceased to flow, thus breaking the connecting with the following bāʾ"

This is so ludicrous that I can't even...

Apparently Bellamy assumes that the scribe wrote from left to right ??? and had the bāʾ already in place when he attempted and failed to write the lām?

Early Hijazi and Kufic the lām followed by bāʾ is not a single stroke like later writing. This is immensely ignorant.

And this is granting him that the lām looks like an ʾalif with an extra left tail. This might be true in modern script, but early Hijazi and Kufi generally have a very distinct tail on the right of the alif. I have trouble understanding how Bellamy was unaware of this.

4. al-sijill (quran.com/21/104) was apparently a misreading of al-musajjil due to, I kid you not "a leaky pen". Does he think the Quran was written with fountain pens or balpoints? Also wouldn't that cause al-sijill to be read as al-musajjil rather than vice versa?

And this is granting his claim that "in older hands [...] is often no more than a thickening of the connecting line between the lām and the letter following." Which I won't actually grant him. This is what المسجـ looks like in early Qurans.

So you know...

5. A moment of sanity. Bellamy proposed to reread ḥiṭṭah "forgiveness" quran.com/2/58 as ḫiṭʾah "committing a sin". In Quranic orthography this actually does not require any change of the rasm. Both would be written حطه

So at least in a formal level it is possible.

6. ṣurhunna ʾilayka "incline them (the birds) toward you" quran.com/2/260/ he suggests to read as ǧazzi(ʾ)-hinna (wa-)lbuk "Cut them to pieces and mix them up". From صرهں الىڪ to حرهں والىڪ. Leaving aside the random wāw showing up, the ṣād verus jīm is surprising:

"ṣād to jīm is no problem since the two letters resemble each other closely enough for such a misreading to occur." Once again Bellamy seems to assume the Quran was written in Ruqʿah?? The Jīm and ḥāʾ look nothing alike in early Quranic writing.

7. sabʿan min al-maṯānī quran.com/15/87/ is suggested by Bellamy to actually be al-matāliyy 'recitations'. It requires the misreading the lām as a nūn because it was too short. This is ignorant of script grammar. The second denticle is always lower than the first.

Interestingly, as I was looking for examples of this, I ran into Saray Medina 1a which actually looks like it has a completely different word! المسى. Anyone know what that reading might represent?

8. The same 'accidental short lām'/'long nūn' shows up here. Bellamy proposed to reread tamannā 'desires' and ʾumniyatihī 'his desire' quran.com/22/52/ as yumlī 'dictates' and ʾimlāʾi-hī 'his dictation'. At least not a formal impossibility.

9. ʾillā ʾamāniyya 'except desires' quran.com/2/78/ . Once again Bellamy exploits the lām/nūn mixup: ʾillā ʾamāliyya 'except dictations', presumably the plural of ʾimlāʾ dictation? Again not formally impossible. (although lām/nūn are seldom ambiguous in this position).

10. ṣibġat aḷḷāh quran.com/2/138/. Suggested to read the first word as ṣanīʿah "This emendation can be effected without altering the rasm at all if we assume that the original ṣād did not have the little nub on the left -- this is often omitted in MSS -- ...

and the next copyist took the nūn to be the nub."

It is simply not true that the 'nub' of the ṣād can be omitted in "manuscripts".

He backpedals a bit, and suggests maybe just a denticle was lost, "a minor change which is easily acceptable". I disagree.

11. aṣḥāb al-ʾaʿrāf 'the people of the heights' (quran.com/7/46/) is suggested by Bellamy to be either al-ʾaǧrāf or al-ʾaḥruf. Works if the ʿayn would look like the jīm/ḥāʾ in initial position. They can be somewhat similar in Kufic D, but are pretty distinct in Hijazi

So unless Bellamy wants to maintain the Quran was written in a Kufic D/Ruqʿah hybrid in the 7th century where only Hijazi was in regular use, this suggestion is absolutely reaching to the point of being dishonest.

12. Finally, Bellamy suggest that the "Mysterious Letters" ḥāʾ mīm of the ḥawāmīm Surahs (doi-org.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl:2443/10.1163/ej.978…) actually write, wait for it, bāʾ sīn mīm. Here once again he assumes that the Quran is written in a Kufi D/Ruqʿah Hybrid:

"The sīn of the basmalah is often flattened out to such an extent that it appears to be omitted altogether". Or perhaps he is thinking of the ornate Naskh basmalahs. Neither of course occurs in early Quranic manuscripts, so this is just total insanity.

Needless to say bāʾ sīn mīm also look NOTHING like ḥāʾ mīm in early script. And even granting such a misreading could happen, imagine that it happened no less than SEVEN TIMES! For each of the Sūrahs that "said" بسم.

O and ḥāʾ mīm // ʿayn sīn qāf? (quran.com/42/), that's just بسم TWICE. I feel truly bad for the hypothetical scribe who managed to write a final mīm as a qāf, he must be suffering from some terrible deformity of his hand.

I repeat, Luxenberg isn't even this terrible.

So is there anything of value to be recovered from this article? NOPE

I was going to do both articles in one thread, but I had forgotten how incredible terrible these articles are, and I'm going to need a day or two to recover.

This is what I get from not proofreading my rants. "in older hands [...] the mīm is often no more than a thickening of the connecting line between the lām and the letter following."