Muhammad, the Qur'an and Islam
In about the beginning of the 8th century AD, al-Hajjaj b. Yusuf, a
governor in Iraq, is said to have tried to make the text of the Qur'an more
uniform by more or less introducing the usage of diacritical marks and
vowel pointing. However, these improvements were neither i^41 mmediate
nor universal, since such additions to Qur'an codices can be shown to have
been gradual.^42
In the 9th century AD, Ibn Mujahid seems to have tried to further
standardize the text of the Qur'an by dictating that only the readings of
seven 2nd century AH scholars were (essentially) orthodox.^4344 The
punishment in- curred by those who continued to use the old readings of the
Qur'an, even in Ibn Mujahid's day, was severe.^45
Structurally, the usage of the "basmala" in the text of the Qur'an is thought
to date from Muhammad, and the mysterious letters precedin^46 g some suras
may also date from him. The present order of the suras in the Q^47 ur'an may
have been determined in `Uthman's day, but the sura titles^48 still do not
seem to have been standard even as late as the 10th century AD. The^49
division of the Qur'an into sets of five or ten verses may date from the early
8th century, and the division of the text into sevenths (for c^50 ontrol
purposes) seems to have been introduced by al-Hajjaj. Most^51 of the old
Qur'an codices found in museums today are in Kufic script, wh^52 ich is
thought to date from about 790 AD. The oldest scripts for the Q^53 ur'an are
said to be Ma'il or Mashq.^54
Later Islamic scholars worked on constructing chronological sura
orderings, they tried to research the etymologies of foreig^55 n vocabulary in
the Qur'an, and attempted to discover the meanings of strang^56 e words in
the text. Some traditions also list the number of verses, wor^5758 ds and^59
letters of the Qur'an.^60
In the 1930's a group of Western scholars was working towards publishing
the first critical edition of the text of the Qur'an. However^61 , after many
setbacks, the project was more or less discontinued.^62