Posted by Illuminati on 7/11/2009, 4:59 pm, in reply to "Uthman's Fires 1"
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The story of Uthman and his fires, offers further evidence that if the story about how Zaid collected the Koran is accurate, it was not considered the authoritative text in his lifetime. Otherwise, there would not have been alternative versions of the teachings of Mohammad for Uthman to destroy. Undoubtedly, each of those alternative readings were also supported by their own Qurra'.
Here is how Bukhari described Uthman's recension of the Koran.
Volume 6, Book 61, Number 510:
Narrated Anas bin Malik:
Hudhaifa bin Al-Yaman came to Uthman at the time when the people of Sham and the people of Iraq were Waging war to conquer Arminya and Adharbijan. Hudhaifa was afraid of their (the people of Sham and Iraq) differences in the recitation of the Qur'an, so he said to 'Uthman, "O chief of the Believers! Save this nation before they differ about the Book (Quran) as Jews and the Christians did before." So 'Uthman sent a message to Hafsa saying, "Send us the manuscripts of the Qur'an so that we may compile the Qur'anic materials in perfect copies and return the manuscripts to you." Hafsa sent it to 'Uthman. 'Uthman then ordered Zaid bin Thabit, 'Abdullah bin AzZubair, Said bin Al-As and 'AbdurRahman bin Harith bin Hisham to rewrite the manuscripts in perfect copies. 'Uthman said to the three Quraishi men, "In case you disagree with Zaid bin Thabit on any point in the Qur'an, then write it in the dialect of Quraish, the Qur'an was revealed in their tongue." They did so, and when they had written many copies, 'Uthman returned the original manuscripts to Hafsa. 'Uthman sent to every Muslim province one copy of what they had copied, and ordered that all the other Qur'anic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt. Said bin Thabit added, "A Verse from Surat Ahzab was missed by me when we copied the Qur'an and I used to hear Allah's Apostle reciting it. So we searched for it and found it with Khuzaima bin Thabit Al-Ansari. (That Verse was): 'Among the Believers are men who have been true in their covenant with Allah.' (33.23)
From this passage it is apparent that by Uthman’s califate, there were alternative readings of the Koran similar to the alternative readings found in the Bible. Unlike the Christians and Jews who preserved the entire corpus of authentic works, Uthman chose to standardize the Koran and to burn those alternative readings copies which differ from his recension. Because the older versions of the Koran were destroyed, we will never know the extent of those differences.
Fortunately, some fragments of the destroyed Koran have survived. Although we will never know the full extent of what was destrohyed, we know that those differences were substantial, more than just dialectical variations. The researcher who has studied these manuscripts extensively is Puin, a German. He doubts that all the material which Uthman included in the Koran was original with Mohammad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sana'a_manuscripts
Gerd Puin's opinions are compatible with those of another great scholar who did yoeman's work to make sense of Muslim holy writings. Leon Caetani had serious doubts about the authenticity of much of Islamic tradition. Here is how the Wikipedia expresses Caetani's views.
Caetani made extensive analysis of sources related to the origins of the Qur'an and Islamic thought between 1904-1926 during which he collected and arranged chronologically and sequentially all known existing primary sources and materials related to the origins of Islam. Caetani presented his critical analysis and conclusions regarding the overall inconsistencies, contradictions and variances in the Islamic sources in his monumental work in ten volumes Annali dell'Islam.[2] It is still regarded today as a milestone in Islamic studies.
Caetani concluded that most of the early traditions of Islams could dismissed as fabrications by later generations of authors. [3][4]. He also suggested that the Arab conquests during the formative era of Islam were driven not by religion but by material want and covetousness.[5][6]
Caetani was not a Moslem and he did not believe in the literal truth of the Qur'an. Instead his views about its origins were as follows. As long as Muhammad was alive, he could answer any doctrinal questions that arose, so there was little attention paid to written documents. The reign of his successor Abu Bakr was characterized by increasing confusion as multiple written and oral versions of Muhammad's teachings coexisted. To his great credit, Uthman understood the danger of this situation; he had an official version of the Qur'an developed and ordered the destruction of all unapproved versions. To summarize, Caetani thought that the Qur'an as it exists today did not come word for word from the pen of the Prophet, but was the result of a standardization and clean up effort ("Uthman's recension") undertaken many years after his death.
One of Leone Caetani's studies, Uthman and the Recension of the Koran, is included as a chapter in The Origins of The Koran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book edited by Ibn Warraq.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leone_Caetani
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