So red it can't be ʾAbū Jaʿfar. (ʾAbū ʿAmr and Nāfiʿ left).
Black could still be anyone but Ibn ʿĀmir, ʾAbū Jaʿfar Nāfiʿ andʾAbū ʿAmr.
Q18:85
red: fa-ttabaʿa (majority), fa-ʾatbaʿa (ʿĀṣim, Ḥamzah, al-Kisāʾī, Ḫalaf and ibn ʿĀmir)
Black: might be fa-ʾatbaʿa, a bit unclear. If so the reading is Kufan.
Q18:86
Here the black text clearly follows ḥāmiyatin... but the red vocalisation appears to hamzah, which is only consistent with ḥamiʾatin, which does not help us narrow it down. That's the reading of Nāfiʿ, ibn Kaṯīr, ʾAbū ʿAmr, Yaʿqūb and Ḥafṣ.
Black is starting to look clearly Kufan. Red might still be Nāfiʿ or ʾAbū ʿAmr (I'm quite sure it's gonna be ʾAbū ʿAmr).
Q18:93
Red & Black: bayna s-saddayni: reading of Ibn Kaṯīr, ʾAbū ʿAmr, and Ḥafṣ. The rest reads s-suddayni.
Therefore:
Red = ʾAbū ʿAmr
Black = Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim
The fact the two vocalisations represent different readings is yet another argument they are not contemporary.
Anyone who can read the Persian: it would be cool if we could figure out which of the two readings the Persian commentary had in mind and whether it aligns with either the red or the black vocalisation!
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To what extent was knowledge and transmission of the reading traditions dependent on written works and/or notebooks rather than the semi-oral process of reciting the Quran to a teacher?
In the transmission of Ibn Bakkār from Ibn ʿĀmir the written transmission is very clear. 🧵
The reading of the canonical Syrian reader Ibn ʿĀmir is not particularly well-transmitted. The two canonical transmitters Ibn Ḏakwān and Hišām are several generations removed from Ibn ʿĀmir, and Ibn Ḏakwān never had any students who recited the Quran to him.
Al-Dānī preserves three other transmission paths besides the canonical paths, although all of them only through a single ʾisnād.
The one we are interested in here is Ibn Bakkār's transmission. The ʾisnād is cool, it's transmitted through the fanous exegete Ibn Ǧarīr al-Ṭabarī!
An interesting interplay of orality and written transmission of the Quran that I recently ran into going through the Taysīr, at Q37:123 al-Dānī has a curious statement about the recitation of وان الياس... let's dive in!
al-Dānī says: "Ibn Ḏakwān in my recitation to al-Fārisī from al-Naqqās (sic, Naqqāš) from al-ʾAḫfaš from him: wa-inna lyāsa with removal of the hamzah, and the rest read it with the hamzah (i.e. ʾilyāsa).
And this is what I recited for Ibn Ḏakwān i the path of the Syrians"
"But Ibn Ḏakwān said in his book: "[الياس] is without hamzah. And God knows best what he meant by that."
So... what did he mean by that? The interpretation of al-Dānī's teachers is that it is with ʾalif al-waṣl. But, at least by later wording, that's a weird way of saying it.
Seeing how al-Dānī works his way through competing reports for certain readings is really interesting. There is often a conflict between what he gets from books and oral tradition. Oral tradition does not always win out (though it often does).
Let's look at Q38:46 🧵
al-Dānī starts: "Nāfiʿ and the transmission of Hišām [from Ibn ʿĀmir] in my recitation [to my teachers] read "bi-ḫāliṣati ḏikrā d-dār" (Q38:46) without tanwīn as a construct phrase; the rest read "bi-ḫāliṣatin" with Tanwīn."
However, Muḥammad b. ʿAlī from Ibn Muǧāhid said that Nāfiʿ only removes the nūn.
This is a citation from ibn Muǧāhid's kitāb al-sabʿah, which al-Dānī receives through Muḥammad b. ʿAlī.
And indeed Ibn Muǧāhid does not mention Hišām ʿan Ibn ʿĀmir but only Nāfiʿ!
My current project is collecting a database of vocalised Quranic manuscripts, to study which reading traditions they reflect. A large number (likely the majority) do not represent any known reading traditions from the literary tradition. A thread on one such a reading type. 🧵
When a manuscript has an unknown non-canonical reading, it is typically unique to that manuscript: not a single manuscript is exactly alike. Nevertheless, we do find real 'patterns' among groups of manuscripts, that do things in similar ways that are distinct from known readings.
For example, a large number of manuscripts in the B.II style have an unusual pronominal system where the plural pronouns are long (humū, ʾantumū etc.) and the third person singular suffix -hū never harmonizes (bi-raḥmatihū, fīhu, ʿalayhu), *except* with the preposition bihī.
This article examines a famous passage in the Hadith that related the canonization of the Quran, where the Uthmanic committee has a disagreement on how to write the word for "Ark".
Insight into loan strategies elucidates the passage.
In the Quran today the Ark of the Covenant is spelled التابوت and pronounced al-tābūt. This is a loanword from the Aramaic tēḇōṯ-ā, likely via Gəʿəz tābōt.
However, reports (which go back to Ibn Šihāb al-Zuhrī (d. 124/741-2)) tell us there was a controversy on how to spell it.
The Medinan Zayd b. Ṯābit wanted to spell it with a final hāʾ: التابوه, while his Quraši colleagues insisted it should be spelled التابوت.
They take it up with ʿUṯmān who says: the Quran was revealed in the Quraysh dialect, so it should be written according to it.
Ibn al-Bawwāb's quran, following the Classical Arabic orthography (rather than the rasm), spells ʾalif maqṣūrah before suffixes with ʾalif rather than (the Uthmanic) yāʾ. However, sometimes it does not, e.g. in Q79 here: مرساها, تخشاها, ضحاها, BUT: ذكريها. What gives? 🧵
Turns out there is a beautiful perfectly regular distribution!
The Ibn al-Bawwāb Quran is written according to the transmission of al-Dūrī from the reading of ʾAbū ʿAmr.
ʾAbū ʿAmr treats such ʾalifāt maqṣūrah is a special way. He reads them as /ā/ most of the time...
But he reads with ʾimālah, i.e. /ē/ whenever a /r/ precedes.
When the word stands in rhyme position, the /ā/ of such words is pronounced bayna lafẓay, i.e. /ǟ/.
And this distribution explains the spelling in the screenshot above, and throughout this manuscript!