If the authenticity of the material is already established (say by C14 dating and script) then should one not proceed along a method dictated by Arabic syntax, morphology and orthography?
Not just the authenticity, but rather
dating.
Let's use
one of the articles Wadi Hanifa posted.
In terms of the literary identification of the earliest Arabic script, scholars
have had to make do with the slender description provided by the Baghdadi Shi’ite bookseller and bibliographer Abū l-Faraj Muḥammad bin Isḥāq Ibn al-Nadīm (
d. 380 AH /
990 CE). He said,
Thus saith Muḥammad ibn Ishaq [al-Nadīm]: The first of the Arabic scripts was the script of Makkah, the next of al-Madīnah, then of al-Baṣrah, and then of al-Kūfah. For the alifs of the scripts of Makkah and al-Madīnah there is a turning of the hand to the right and lengthening of the strokes, one form having a slight slant.[8]
Then the author gives another source:
However there is at least one additional description of the early Qur'anic manuscripts in the literary sources that when probed provides some solid chronological data. Abū Naṣr Yaḥya ibn Abī Kathīr al-Yamāmī (d. 132 AH / 749 CE) a traditionalist and narrator of ḥadīth from several of the Prophet's companions, provides a very important piece of chronological data specifically with regard to the earliest Qur'anic manuscripts.
This, in my opinion, is indeed very slender, and it also requires full analysis of these sources. This is where, in my opinion, the historical method should come in.
Furthermore, as this kind of literary evidence is not the only one used, which can also be seen from the article above, and we also have other methods, such as C-14, let's see what has been dated by this method and how much of it. It's
this article, again thanks to Wadi Hanifa.
One example:
The
E20 manuscript, housed in the St. Petersburg branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies
...
In the case of the E 20 manuscript from St. Petersburg, the 68.3% confidence level (1σ) yields the ranges,
781–791 CE, 825–843 CE, 859–903 CE and 915–977 CE. The 95.4 % confidence level (2σ) yields
775–995 CE.
A palaeographic analysis of this manuscript proposed a date around the final quarter of the 8th century CE.[17] This dating was also agreed by François Déroche.[18] However,
Alain George believes this to be an instance where the radio carbon dating does not closely match the features of the manuscript. Commenting on the script and decoration,
he suggests a date nearer the turn of the 1st century AH (late 7th, early 8th century CE).[19]
We could go on and interpret other parts of this article, but judging by this one, we can say
a) C-14 gives us pretty imprecise data
b) Even with this C-14 people disagree based on paleography. The difference is not to be ignored, late 7th vs late 8th century is a period in which a lot could happen, and we know that a lot did happen historically (or at least we think we know based on what sources tell us)
Incidentally, the issue of variant readings of the Quran is a bit of a red herring as far as the topic of this thread is concerned given that these too were written in fuSHa anyway.
It's an issue of variant readings about as much as the difference between "pack" and "back"
(I "just" invert the p to get the "variant reading" of b, just as someone "just" put a dot that turned r to z in Arabic script) or "hot" and "not" in English is issue of variant readings.
It is however important for readers not well acquainted with Islam to point out that Muslims, when discussing authenticity of Qur'an, place much emphasis on oral transmission. Let me
quote:
The
Islamic prophet Muhammad lived in the 7th century CE, in Arabia in a time when many people were not literate. The Arabs preserved their histories, genealogies, and poetry by memory alone. When Muhammad proclaimed the verses later collected as the Qur'an, his followers naturally preserved the words by memorizing them. Early accounts say that the literate Muslims also wrote down such verses as they heard them. However, the Arabic writing of the time was a
scripta defectiva, an incomplete script, that did not include vowel markings or other diacritics needed to distinguish between words. Hence if there was any question as to the pronunciation of a verse, the memorized verses were a better source than the written ones.
However, since we do have these "variant readings", or let rather be honest, variant versions, that means that that whole system discussed in the paragraph quoted above
failed. What does that practically mean for our discussion? It severely weakens the oral transmission argument.
To simplify:
a) It could mean that the entirety of Qur'an available today indeed dates from the early seventh century, and is thus representative of early seventh century Arabic, and the "variant readings" are simply later tiny deviations, perhaps done by scribes and then picked up by those that memorized the Qur'an.
b) It could also mean, however, that someone meddled with the Qur'an after the prophet's death, and the final version, and thus the language in it, is a product of the age in which Islam had already expanded to Persia, Levant, Egypt etc. That all happened in the first 100 years AH. No, I'm sorry, according to
this the caliphate already included all of this in the time of caliph Umar (634-644 CE), so it means that all happened in the first 23 years AH.
A Muslim could traditionally respond to the point b) by saying - ah, no Denis, but you know, early Muslims placed much more emphasis on oral transmission than actually writing the Qur'an down (as is argued in the paragraph I posted above). And as any hafiz, up to the modern age, in order to become a hafiz, must prove he has memorized the entire Qur'an in front of a committee of other hafiz's (huffadh)
(at least it is like this in Bosnia) we actually have an unbroken chain of transmission largely or even entirely independent of written Qur'an manuscripts.
Well, guess what - variant "readings" that look more like scribal errors (a dot or two more or less, above or below, here or there) learned once and then repeated for 1400+ years, pretty much either erase completely or very severely weaken this oral transmission argument and dating the Qur'an precisely comes back to rest on - paleography, C-14 etc, some of which I've started this post by discussing.
So we come back to -
dating. If the Qur'an is the prime example of a full-fledged Classical Arabic (though judged by the dictionaries it need not be, but let's say it is), then it is quite important for the discussion of Classical Arabic if we can indeed date it to early 7th century (the prophet died in 632 CE), or only to late 7th century (by 644 CE Muslims hold Persia, Levant and Egypt, and have plenty of time by 680s or 690s to expand and enrich their language and culture in contact with the nations they conquered), or even into the 8th century.
Now this
is important to what Aydintashar is saying.
