Which Koran?: Variants, Manuscripts, Linguistics [Hardcover]

Ibn Warraq (Author, Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 24, 2009

Few Muslims realize that there are several Korans in circulation in the Islamic world, with textual variations whose significance, extent, and meaning have never been properly examined. Ibn Warraq has here assembled important scholarly articles that address the history, linguistics, and religious implications of these not-trifling variants in Islam’s sacred book. In a lengthy introduction, Warraq notes that historical and linguistic evidence suggests that there was considerable confusion regarding what should be included in the Koran in the early years of Muslim history. Although the caliph Uthman canonized a specific text some fifteen years after the death of Muhammad, variant readings of certain passages have persisted to the present. This can be seen in discrepancies between the two main printed versions of the Koran available today (the Warsh transmission found in West and Northwest Africa and the Hafs transmission, stemming from Kufa, and widely available through the standard Egyptian edition of 1924). This, coupled with the fact that Muslim secondary literature (the Hadiths) discusses missing Koranic verses and even Muhammad’s sometimes faulty memory, strongly indicate that the Koran cannot be considered an inerrant revelation. Warraq organizes the articles in this volume into subsections dealing with the language of the Koran; pre-Islamic poetry and its possible influence on the writing of the Koran; influences from Jewish and Christian sources and from Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls); problems of obscure vocabulary and orthography; variant readings in different Koranic manuscripts; and questions surrounding the biography of the prophet Muhammad. As a visual aid, Warraq has compiled a unique and valuable chart of thirty-two Koranic variants found in Korans available in the Islamic world, along with remarks on their significance. In-depth yet accessible to nonspecialists interested in Islam, Which Koran? raises important questions about Islam’s holy book.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ibn Warraq is the highly acclaimed author of Why I Am Not a Muslim, Leaving Islam, What the Koran Really Says, The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, and The Origins of the Koran.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 631 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books (November 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591024293
• ISBN-13: 978-1591024293
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #903,676 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hard-Hitting, January 2, 2008

By 

A. Peter - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Which Koran?: Variants, Manuscripts, Linguistics (Hardcover)

A great book that reveals many myths about the quran, especially details as to its varying manuscripts and readings. Takes apart claims that the quran today is the unadulterated version from the time of muhammed himself. The famous Tokapi version is also discussed here along with others, known and not so well known.

1 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Redundant, and barely useful where it's not, November 5, 2011

By 

David Reid Ross "zimriel" (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Which Koran?: Variants, Manuscripts, Linguistics (Hardcover)

The book is here, at last, three years after its Amazon bookmark here. I have bought it, and I have read it. I wish to disclose here, and you can check my review of Puin/Ohlig for evidence, that I am a skeptic of Islam. I am not early-Crone and Wansbrough extreme in my critique of its origins, but extreme enough.

This book is a collection of others' essays, grouped into four sections. Here are the sections in it:
-Part 1 is the introduction wherein Ibn Warraq repeats what he's said in all his other books.
-Part 2 concerns Qur'anic linguistics. It starts with a translation of a Noeldeke article. The upshot of it all is that the Qur'an is not written according to classical Arabic rules.
-Part 3 - manuscripts - consists almost entirely of articles by Jeffery and Mingana.
-Part 4 is about textual variants remembered in Islamic tradition, mostly Shi'ite.

There is nothing new in Part 1; and every.single.article. in Part 3 (except Ibn Warraq's own) may be found online, in sites with URLs containing catchphrases like "answering-islam" [excepting the Syriac photos in Mingana's article on BarSalibi's Qur'an]. In 1998, Ibn Warraq could get away with this - they weren't all online then and the Internet was just slower. It is now 2011. There's no excuse.

For Part 2, I admit to not having a lot of Semitic-linguistics knowledge. I am grateful to have more Noeldeke in English; and Pierre Larcher's article on "the concept of peace" is interesting. Michael Schub's articles on modern translations - especially "Mauve Athena" - contain useful philological knowledge, as a byproduct of critiquing those translations.

Part 4 has Arthur Jeffery looking into the Qur'anic variants assigned to Zayd b. 'Ali and to Ibn Miqsam. They turn out to be post-Umayyad, and minimal, corrections of the texts then available and not transmissions of any truly variant text. There are two good articles at the end about Shi'ite tradition and its (evolving) attitude toward the Qur'an text: first, grafting Shi'a readings right inline with the text, until finally (in our own day) asserting loudly that they accept the Qur'an in its present form exactly.

I count 20 articles here. Those worth paying for, number about five. Those interested in qira'at, and those interested in modern controversy, will get more out of this... but not much more. I view the inclusion of Part 3, especially, as a ripoff; and also I'm tempted to ding this book to punish Prometheus Books, for posting it here for so long without a real publication. [EDIT: but I've decided not to.] As a whole this book marks a decline in the output of Ibn Warraq and I cannot recommend it.

3 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Ibn Warraq keeps trying, but fails miserably, February 25, 2009

By 

Munawar Ali "Munawar - blog.munawarali.com" (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Which Koran?: Variants, Manuscripts, Linguistics (Hardcover)

I was glad to see that Ibn Warraq realizes that his words lack any serious weight in the intellectual community and brought in other scholars to do his work for him in this text. But in the end, it's just a rehash of the same arguments that have made their rounds several times, and have been proven incorrect time and again.

Nothing here except nice binding.