Thread by @PhDniX

A beautiful classical example of assimilation of parallels in Q67:11 of Saray medina 1a.

The canonical text reads فاعترفوا بذنبهم fa-ʿtarafū bi-ḏambihim "So they acknowledge their sin", and that's what the manuscript currently reads, but clearly not what it always read! 🧵

First there is an unusually large gap between the ḏāl and the nūn, and you can see traces of removed text.

Moreover, the denticle of the nūn appears to have been added later (not quite as obvious, but obvious enough).

What the scribe obviously originally wrote is not بذنبهم ḏambihim in the singular, but rather بذنوبهم bi-ḏunūbihim "their sinS". That's not how any canonical readers recite it, nor have I found evidence for non-canonical readers of this kind. But it is an easy mistake to make.

The verb iʿtarafa "to acknowledge" occurs in only 1 other places in the Quran. In both cases it is followed by bi-ḏunūb in the plural, instead of the singular.
Q9:102 iʿtarafū bi-ḏunūbihim "they acknowledge their sins"
Q40:11 fa-ʿtarafnā bi-dūnūbinā "so we acknowledge our sins"

Clearly, the parallels with these other verses were running interference when the scribe was writing down this verse, and accidentally wrote ḏamb in the plural.

Such a form of scribal error is known as an "assimilation of parallels".

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