Why did the Qur’an first appear
without diacritical marks?
Diacritical signs help differentiate
many consonants in Arabic – much
more so than in Hebrew and Aramean, by comparison. When these marks are missing, the ambiguity can be great: for
instance, « t » may be read as « b », « y »,
« th /t » and even « n ». Yet,
experts have known for a long time that, contrary to commonly held opinions, almost
all the diacritics were already in use at the time of Muhammad. The vowels appeared later, but their absence never presented
a hindrance; at the most it could have caused some slight confusions here or
there, especially when the context doesn’t clearly say whether the verb is in
the active or passive voice. The inscription in Arabic recently discovered on a
rock in
Francois Deroche,
a professor of history and codicology of Arabic manuscripts and director of
research at the French National Library (BNF), applied the question of
diacritics in Arabic to the Koran (qur’an) [1]. People have long thought that diacritical signs were
invented posteriorly to the first versions of the Koran, and that they were
added to remedy the mounting misinterpretations in the oral transmission, because
a more rigorous writing system was needed. The reasons given by the Islamic
story of the « revelation » are 1) that the « prophet » Muhammad’s
declamations were allegedly noted on various surfaces, such as camels’ scapulas,
stones, etc. (strangely, never on paper or parchment); 2) that because of the
passing of time and the consequent memory loss, it was necessary to explain the
first writings that used no diacritic signs; 3) that besides, there were up to
seven possible interpretations; 4) and finally, the “compilation
of the Koran” (collecting, jam‘ al-Qur‘ân) and then
the successive “accomodations” of the Koranic text were such hazardous tasks that
‛Uthmân I and the Caliphs after him eliminated several times the Korans
that were not deemed “orthodox” enough.
This story
is highly improbable and is a fruit of distorted memories. Popular memory is
known to have been extremely reliable in oral cultures, so this explains
neither the lack nor the apparition of diacritics. The very unlikely props used
for the « Revelation » (camels’ scapulas, stones, etc.) offer a poor
explanation for the disparity of the Quranic surahs and above all for their origins.
Were they initially set on heteroclite leaflets? And if the reading is so
difficult, couldn’t it be due to the fact that the primitive leaflets were only
legible [2] to their author who had written them as personal
memory-aids, in order to prepare his preaching and not with the intention of
publishing them some day? The power of the Islamic story lies in burying all
these questions under an avalanche of false details. But soon or later, the capital
question emerges: how could Muhammad’s
« dictations» have been so poorly written down if they were considered
right from the beginning as inspired by God? And why was a text technically so
bad, copied word for word for up to three hundred years without any changes? For,
Deroche has remarked, many copyists persisted in leaving out all diacritic signs, or if they added
some, it was in a quite anarchical way:
“In fact, the comparison between different fragments,
even between different hands – when several copyists joined their efforts to
transcribe the Qur’an – underlines the strongly individual character of
[diacritical] punctuation; each copyist placed periods where he deemed right.” (p.23).
At any rate, the proto-Muslims were confronted
not to problems of memorization but to texts which, in one way or another, were
not familiar to them. Did they come from « God », by the channel of an
incredibly negligent scribing process [3], or from groups outside their own tribal circles? So if « God »
really spoke on that occasion, someone should advise Him to communicate in a
better Arabic in the future, and more clearly, since the text is riddled with obscure
passages [4]. Fortunately, to address this textual opacity, many
researchers have been able to make sense of several of theses passages by correcting, or improving, the diacritical
rendition: Christoph Luxenberg, and more recently Munther Younès, accomplished this by relying on existing Aramean formulas [5]. The results are unquestionable.
Translation: In the name of God, I, Zubayr, wrote [this] at the time of ‘Umar
who died in the year 24 (= 645)
www.dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/11/18/inscripion-trace-zoom.html
Let us now consider things under a
different angle. Let us suppose that the goal, from the time of ‛Uthman,
was to have a text to oppose to the Jews and the Christians, and that the only
material accessible to the Caliph were the memory-aids (plausibly without diacritics) left in Arabic by
the Judeo-Nazarene teachers (including Waraqa) and dating from the time of Muhammad,
or even before. The content of these memory-aids was not well-known. Besides,
the author of Surah 39 (verse 27) complains that the Arabs aren’t making any effort
to commit things to memory (he is referring here to the lectionary translated
into Arabic, and not to his own commentaries or preachings). If someone actually
read these memos, the absence of diacritical points would automatically have led
to divergent readings. But the first point of discord was evidently the choice
of one of these texts over another. Because time was an issue, a compilation
was quickly assembled – in fact, several competing compilations existed, as the
Islamic traditions report – by copying a quite arbitrary selection of
these memos whose content, more or less known, seemed to meet everyone’s
expectations: to constitute something to oppose to the book of the Jews and
Christians and to magnify God’s election of the Arab nation.
As one may suspect, the texts resulting
from these hasty « selections » only partially met ‘Uthman’s
standards, and after him the standards of the Caliphs of Damascus, since they
couldn’t withstand their Jewish and Christian critics (who were therefore
forbidden to read the Qur’an!), or even the critics coming from both the
opponents and close advisers of the Caliph. This is why multiple and successive
interventions were necessary on the part of the public authorities who imposed successive
new versions and periodically burned the obsolete « qur’ans ». Possession
of older, condemned versions was punishable by death. In their own way, the various
Islamic traditions evoke these successive eliminations.
— CONCLUSION —
‘Uthman gave its name of « Qur’an
» (from the lectionary-qur’an in use at the time of the Nazarene tutorship)
to the reference book that he was assembling. The editing efforts paired with
the growing sacralization of the text contributed to the conservation of the
defective transcription. Even more than the (uncertain) meaning of the text, it
was the meaning to give it that hampered the addition of diacritic signs,
which were nonetheless needed: what was at stake was to hide the source of the
original leaflets and to guarantee the justification and perpetuation of the
sacred and totalitarian power of the Caliphs. For all of these reasons, it was
in the copyists’ best interest to maintain the ambiguities.
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[1] DEROCHE François, Beauté et efficacité : l’écriture arabe au
service de la révélation [« r » with a lower case»] in KROPP Manfred ed., Results of contemporary research on
the Qur’ân. The question of a
historical-critical text of the Qur’ân, Orient-Institut
[2] According to Christoph Luxenberg (Relikte syro-aramäischer Buchstaben
in frühen Koran-Kodizes, in Der frühe Islam. Eine historisch-kritische
Rekonstruction anhand zeitgenössischher
Another example (p.394-395): without
diacritics (and vowels), the three consonnants 
may be read three
ways : as in Yuhannan (the first name John in Aramean and in Christian Arabic – without any diacritics,
the final letter y bears a resemblance to the final letter n ;
and the double consonnant [n] is itself a later diacritic sign); as in Yahya
(the name of John according to the Koranic text); and tahana, hardening, which makes no
sense in the context. The “Quranists” (those who “accomodated” the Koranic text) wished to prove that the Arab Christians and
their gospels were mistaken with the name “John”
(and its interpretation); therefore, they invented the vowels imposing the reading Yahya (that has a meaning in Arabic: “he is living”). This conclusion not only
is perfectly credible, it is also the only conceivable one.
In the first Korans,
the graphemes in use led to confusions between a final n and a final y ;
interestingly, Luxenberg pointed out that this final y – at least what
appears to be a final y – strongly looks like an Aramean n occuring
at the end of a word (for example in the BNF 328a conserved in Paris).
[3] Between God and the written transcription, the (late) Islamic dogma
postulates the action of a “Prophet” who dictated the text and who, at first,
received from the Angel Gabriel what he had to dictate.
[4] As far as the content, the difficulties are even more
numerous. For example, can “God” swear by something less than Himself, “by
[5] He established that verse 3 at beginning
of Surah 100 was an addition. Cf. YOUNES Munther, Charging Steeds
or Maidens Doing Good Deeds? A Re-Interpretation of Qur’ân 100 (al-‘âdiyât),
in Arabica 55, 2008, p.362-386.