Thread by @PhDniX

While of course, the Quran is not talking about Soap, it would actually solve a vexing textual problem in Q5:69!

A short thread about the grammatical error of the Sabians. 🧵

https://twitter.com/PhDniX/status/1449043982122721282

The verse starts with ʾinna llaḏīna ʾāmanū wa-llaḏīna hādū wa-ṣ-ṣāb(iʾ)ūna wa-n-naṣārā "Indeed, those who have believed, and those who were Jews or Sabians or Christians". The sentence is introduced with ʾinna "indeed", which should be followed by a noun in the accusative.

Thus, we would not expect wa-ṣ-ṣābiʾūna, but rather wa-ṣ-ṣābiʾīna.

(The joke here is, had we read it not as a nominative plural but as the noun aṣ-ṣābūna "the soap", it would be in the accusative and grammatical unproblematic! But this is just silly of course).

And in fact, there is a nearly perfectly parallel verse elsewhere in the Quran, namely at Q2:62 (with slightly different word order in the order of believers), and a slightly different verse a Q22:17 that starts EXACTLY the same, but has the expect aṣ-ṣābiʾīna instead.

Considering that all things are equal between these different verses, and aṣ-ṣābiʾūna sure looks like a grammatical mistake. And indeed, the Islamic tradition records (most prominently) a hadith from Aisha, wife of the prophet saying it is a mistake.

From al-Farrāʾ's Luġāt al-Qurʾān:
Muḥammad narrated to me saying al-Farrāʾ narrated to us saying: ʾAbū Muʿāwiyah narrated to us saying o the authority of Hišām b. ʿUrwah on the authority of his father on the authority of ʿĀʾišah that she was asked about His words:

ʾinna hāḏāni la-sāḥirāni (Q20:63), ʾinna llaḏīna ʾāmanū wa-llaḏīna hāḏū wa-ṣ-ṣābiʾūna (Q5:69) and about His speech lākini r-rāsiḫūna fī l-ʿilmi minhum wa-l-muʾminūna yuʾminūna bimā ʾunzila ʾilayka wa-ma ʾunzila min qablika wa-l-muqīmīna ṣ-ṣalāta.

And she said: "O my cousin, these are mistakes by the scribe."

This tradition is fairly widespread, and quite early. Regardless of whether it should be considered a reliable tradition, clearly people were bothered enough by this apparent mistake to transmit this tradition.

In other words, suggesting that there was a mistake in the Quranic standard text, was something that was apparently considered less problematic, than suggesting this apparent grammatical mistake was actually spoken as such by the prophet.

In linguistics, we don't generally speak of 'mistakes'. It's clear that to some people's intuition of Arabic grammar, this reading was ungrammatical, while seemingly to others (such as the scribe who wrote down the verse with the nominative), it was apparently acceptable.

There is no absolute answer about grammaticality. To some people saying "I ain't" for "I'm not" is ungrammatical, and to others it is perfectly acceptable. What comes to be considered "correct" or "incorrect" is a game of power. Who's in power gets to decide what is correct.

It is not difficult to come up with a reasonable explanation why this noun can apparently appear both in the nominative and accusative in the exact same context. The noun is very far removed from ʾinna, and that could make the government of the accusative less strong.

Alternatively (although, al-Farrāʾ says he doesn't like it much), in a string of subjects interspersed with wa- "and", only the first one is required to have the accusative.

Such an exception to the agreement rule happens nowhere else in the canonical readings to my knowledge.

However, I did find a parallel in a non-Canonical reading attributed to the transmitter ʿAbd al-Wāriṯ on the authority of the canonical reader ʾAbū ʿAmr, who read Q33:56 ʾinna ḷḷāha wa-malāʾikatuhū "verily God and his angels ..." (instead of wa-malāʾikatahū).

Thus, such constructions to some were incorrect when applying the nominative (as was purportedly the case for Aisha, or whoever forged that hadith), whereas to others (like the scribe(s) of the Uthmanic text), both were acceptable, and could be used in the same environment.

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Short addendum (should've checked right away). While the vast majority of the manuscripts have the canonical reading for Q33:56, the ancient Tübingen Manuscript indeed has wa-malāʾikatuhū, both in the original red vocalisation, and the later modern vowels!

https://twitter.com/PhDniX/status/1450065098287063044