IntroductionxiAs will be shown in the pages that follow, there is rather solid evidence
which shows that the Qur'an has not been preserved to our generation
without modifications or loss. At the same time, some of the "hadith" (in
the broadest sense of "Islamic traditions," whether they come from the Sira
or later canonical collections) can be shown to have been at least
"improvements" of later Islamic theologians. Nevertheless, as one of the
tenets of source research implies, some parts of the Qur'an appear to have
been modified because there was earlier something there to modify, some
parts of the Qur'an have apparently been lost because there must have been
something there originally, and some hadith were improved because there
was previously something there to improve.
A bibliography of the references which were used in this work is provided
at the close of this book. Frequently in the notes an editor or translator of a
reference is shown in the position of the author simply as a means of briefly
identifying the work cited; the abbreviation "f" is also used for "ff" in the
interest of saving space. The author apologizes for the (at times) abrupt
style of he book, but the transfer of information was deemed to be more
important than having a "flowing" literary style which would have
significantly lengthened the text. The collections of^19 Sira traditions which
have been used are given in Appendix A, and the sura orderings of Nöldeke
have been employed, with some alterations. The identificat^20 ion of Qur'an
passages follows the Cairo system of verse division, and references to the
canonical hadith of Bukhari, Muslim and Abu Dawud are from the editions
listed in the bibliography.
The author would like to thank IBRI for their willingness to publish and
distribute the present work, and gratefully acknowledges the resource
assistance of Dr. Robert C. Newman, Peter Reinecke and Eugen Pietras.
Notes:
[1] Watt in Introduction, p. vi; cf. Watt, Muhammad, p. 46.
[2] Watt, Introduction, pp. 184 f.