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3 Alternative accounts of the Qur ān’s formation

harald motzki

Friedrich Schwally’s revision of Theodor Nöldeke’s Geschichte des Qoräns,

parts one and two, published in 1909 and 1919 respectively, presented the
current status of Western scholarship on the Qur  ān’s formation at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century. W. Montgomery Watt’s revised edition of
Richard Bell’s Introduction to the Qur  ān, published in 1970, provided a new
stock-taking of the then widely accepted wisdom on the topic. A compari-
son of the two works, however, reveals little development in the intervening
half century as far as their main topics are concerned. Yet this interlude of
relative scholarly calm contrasts sharply with the turbulent decades that
followed. From the 1970s onwards several assertions about the origin and
formation of the Qur  ān have been the object of detailed revision and the
results of these studies more often than not have challenged the accepted
wisdom. The year 1970 can thus be considered a watershed in the scholarly
history of this research, and Watt’s book can serve as a suitable point of
reference for a sketch of the more recent developments. In the following,
some of these alternative accounts will be introduced taking the primary
issue which each of them tackles as a starting-point. The portrayal of each
account focuses on its premises, methods and results.

a u t h o r s h i p, f o r m at i o n a n d c a n o n i s at i o n
According to the prevailing consensus, the Qur  ān originated in the
first third of the seventh century CE in the towns of Mecca and Medina. Its
author (in Muslim eyes, its transmitter) was Muh.ammad who ‘published’
his revelations in segments which he later rearranged and edited, in large
measure himself. Yet he did not leave a complete and definitive recension.
The canonical text such as it has been known for centuries was not achieved
until twenty years after the Prophet’s death. The qur  ānic material which
had been preserved in written and oral forms was then carefully collected
at the behest of the third caliph,  Uthmān, who published it as the only

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60 Harald Motzki

officially authorised version of the Qur  ān. The stylistic uniformity of the
whole proves its genuineness. This historical account is based on evidence
found in the Qur  ān itself as interpreted in the light of the Muslim tradition,
i.e., the biography (sı̄ra) of the Prophet and traditions on the collection of
the Qur  ān after his death.1
All the elements of this account have been challenged by John Wans-
brough in his Quranic studies: Sources and methods of scriptural interpre-
tation (1977) and The sectarian milieu: Content and composition of Islamic
salvation history (1978). Wansbrough doubts the value of source analysis
that seeks to detect historical facts and to reconstruct ‘what really hap-
pened’. He begins from the premise that the Muslim sources about the ori-
gin of Islam, including Qur  ān, sı̄ra, the traditions from the Prophet (h.adı̄th),
qur  ānic exegesis (tafsı̄r) and historiography, are the product of literary activ-
ity, i.e., fictional literature, which reflects ‘salvation history’. The sources
need to be analysed, therefore, as literature, i.e., by using literary-critical
methods. Factual historical conclusions can be at best a by-product of such
literary analysis.2 The method of analysis that Wansbrough adopted, form
criticism, is drawn from biblical studies.
Wansbrough points to ‘the fragmentary character’ of the Qur  ān and
to the frequent occurrence of ‘variants’ in both the Qur  ān and other gen-
res of early literature, i.e., texts or narratives that are similar in content
but different in structure or wording. These phenomena do not support
the idea of a primitive text (Urtext), originating from or compiled by an
individual author or a text carefully edited by a committee, but are better
explained by assuming that the Qur  ān has been created by choosing texts
from a much larger pool of originally independent traditions. Wansbrough
labels these essential qur  ānic forms ‘pericopes’ or, because of their content,
‘prophetical logia’. The latter term does not mean, however, that they derive
from the historical Muh.ammad. The different logia can be reconstructed by
form-critical analysis which distinguishes between: (1) the forms through
which the themes of revelation are expressed (i.e., the prophetical logia);
(2) rhetorical conventions by which the logia are linked and in which they
are clothed; (3) variant traditions in which they have been preserved and
(4) exegetical glosses and linguistic or conceptual assimilation.3
The content of the prophetical logia is characterised by four main
themes: retribution, sign, exile and covenant. They display a ‘monotheist’
imagery known from the Bible and this suggests that the qur  ānic forms
of prophetical expression continue already established literary forms. The
fact that most texts which articulate the monotheist themes are introduced,
sometimes even concluded, by formulas and literary conventions indicates
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Alternative accounts of the Qur ān’s formation 61

for Wansbrough that these pericopes were originally independent tradi-

tions. The formulas function to make the texts suitable for a ‘Sitz im Leben’,
i.e., a special use such as prayer or preaching. The rhetorical conventions of
the Qur  ān are also derived from Jewish and Christian literature. This and
the polemical style of the texts suggest an origin in a sectarian milieu, i.e.,
in communities which distanced themselves from mainstream Judaism and
Christianity. Such a milieu can be better imagined in Mesopotamia than in
Mecca and Medina.
Analysis of qur  ānic narratives with a similar content (‘variant tradi-
tions’) also leads Wansbrough to the conclusion that they reflect different
stages of literary elaboration and that they were originally ‘independent,
possibly regional, traditions incorporated more or less intact’, or sometimes
slightly edited, into the canonical compilation of the Qur  ān. Variants of
the qur  ānic pericopes are also found in other literary genres, e.g., in the
sı̄ra. A comparison between qur  ānic and extra-qur  ānic variant traditions
shows their commonality and the more expansive narrative formulation of
the latter may even suggest an earlier date for them than for the qur  ānic
versions. Wansbrough argues, therefore, that the extra-qur  ānic narratives
used by Muslim exegetes to explain and illustrate the shorter qur ānic texts
cannot be taken to provide the historical background for the latter.
His form-critical analysis leads Wansbrough to the conclusion that
the traditional account of the Qur  ān’s formation, that which considers
Muh.ammad to be its main conduit and the canonical version to be the
result of a collection and redaction shortly after his death – an account based
essentially on Muslim traditions – cannot be true. For him, these reports
are fictions which, perhaps following the Jewish model, aimed at dating the
canon back to the early period of Islam. The hypothesis of a much longer
development, one lasting many generations, seems more likely. The corpus
of the prophetic logia that served as source for the compilation of the canon
probably developed through oral composition, whereas the emergence of
the canonical text itself was a mainly literary undertaking.4
Wansbrough dates the canonical version of the Qur  ān to no earlier
than the third/ninth century. He sees such a late date for the canonisation
of the Qur  ān corroborated by the development of the qur  ānic exegetical
literature. In the last part of his Quranic studies he dates the beginnings
of the juridical (‘halakhic’) exegesis, which refers to the Qur  ān as a source,
to about the same time as the canonisation of the Qur  ān. Joseph Schacht’s
findings concerning the development of Islamic jurisprudence and the role
of the Qur  ān therein are also thought to favour such a late date. That does
not mean, however, that there were not any texts labelled qur  ān before that
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62 Harald Motzki

date, but only that a canonical, and thus authoritative, collection of them
did not yet exist.5
If Wansbrough’s theory is accepted, there is no way to establish anything
of the revelation or the life of the historical Muh.ammad from Qur  ān, sı̄ra,
tafsı̄r or h.adı̄th. To look for historical facts in this sort of literature would
be a meaningless research exercise.

c o l l e c t i o n ,  u t h m ā n i c c o d e x a n d
companion codices
Most Western Islamicists reject Muslim traditions about a first collec-
tion of the Qur  ān made on behalf of the caliph Abū Bakr shortly after the
demise of the Prophet as unlikely because the details in these accounts are
unconvincing. They accept, however, the traditions about the official collec-
tion during the caliphate of  Uthmān, although these reports also contain
problematic details. The text achieved under  Uthmān is the Qur  ān as we
now have it as far as the consonantal text and its structure is concerned.
Variant readings of earlier collections made by other Companions and sup-
pressed by  Uthmān are transmitted that suggest that ‘there was no great
variation in the actual contents of the Qur  ān in the period immediately
after the Prophet’s death’, only the order of the sūras was not fixed and
there were slight variations in reading.6
As mentioned above, Wansbrough rejected this account without fur-
ther study of the relevant sources because it was incompatible with his
theory about the formation of the Qur  ān. An alternative account, based on
a detailed study of the traditions in question, has been given by John Bur-
ton in his book The collection of the Qur  ān (1977). Burton starts from the
premise, adopted from Ignaz Goldziher and Joseph Schacht, that traditions
(h.adı̄ths) do not pass on historical facts about the time and persons they pur-
port to report on, but reflect the opinions of later Muslim scholars who used
the traditions to substantiate their own views. His hypothesis is that Islamic
source theory (us.ūl al-fiqh) ‘has fashioned’ the traditions which recount the
history of the collection of the Qur  ān. In his study Burton argues that these
traditions derive from the discussions among the us.ūl scholars about the
authority of the two main sources of Islamic jurisprudence, the Qur  ān and
the sunna of the Prophet, as well as about the issue of abrogation (naskh) of
qur  ānic verses. All the traditions that report collections of the Qur  ān after
the death of Muh.ammad are, therefore, fictitious hypothetical constructs
that were invented to back their legal views. According to Burton, neither a
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Alternative accounts of the Qur ān’s formation 63

collection on Abū Bakr’s behalf nor an official edition made by order of the
caliph  Uthmān ever happened.
Why did the legal scholars invent different collections and claim that
the Qur  ān as it exists is the result of an incomplete redaction of the reve-
lations made during  Uthmān’s caliphate? Burton thinks that Muslim legal
scholars needed an incomplete qur  ānic text because there were established
legal practices which had no basis in the Qur  ān and which had been dis-
puted for that reason. To save these practices scholars claimed that they were
based on revelations which did not find their way into the Qur  ān as it was.
Such a view presupposed that the Prophet had left no definitive collection of
his revelations. To substantiate this supposition, the legal scholars invented
reports about the existence of different precanonical collections and then,
in order to explain that there was actually only one Qur  ān, they promoted
the idea of an incomplete official edition made on  Uthmān’s behalf. If
all the traditions about different qur  ānic collections and codices are spuri-
ous, the only historically reliable fact that remains is the Qur  ān as it was
and is. Yet when and by whom was that Qur  ān compiled? Burton assumes
that the Qur  ān as we now have it was that left by Muh.ammad himself.7 Yet
this last conclusion does not derive ineluctably from Burton’s investigation;
other scenarios can be imagined as well.

c o m p o s i t i o n o f s ū r a s a n d e m e r g e n c e
of a canon
The prevalent opinion in qur  ānic scholarship views the original units
of revelation to have been short passages. Several such passages were after-
wards ‘collected’ by Muh.ammad himself to form the longer sūras. After
his death those who compiled the canonical version added to the ‘embry-
onic sūras’ all the material circulating as qur  ānic revelations and not yet
included somewhere. The change of rhyme indicates where heterogeneous
passages have been secondarily assembled.8 The sūras are thus considered
to be textual units in which bits of revelation have been lumped together in
some way or other, rather than being unities in themselves.
This view has been challenged by Angelika Neuwirth in her Studien
zur Komposition der mekkanischen Suren (1981). Her premise is that the
individual sūra is the formal unit which Muh.ammad chose for his prophecy.
Therefore, the individual sūra must be the heuristic basis of a literary study
of the Qur  ān, not the Qur  ān as a whole as favoured by others, such as
Wansbrough.9 In her study, Neuwirth analyses the Meccan sūras with the
aim of detecting structures within them which the Prophet himself gave to
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64 Harald Motzki

them. Since the verse is an important structural element of the sūra, the
first step of an investigation which aims at analysing the composition of
sūras is an examination of the traditional systems of separating the verses.
Using the rhyme and structure of the verses as criteria, Neuwirth is able to
suggest several corrections of the Kūfan division of the verses displayed in
the Muslim standard edition.
The qur  ānic verses are marked by end rhymes so the rhyme may have
a function in the composition. Since the qur  ānic rhymes and their literary
function had not been studied properly before, Neuwirth, in a second step,
analyses and describes the different types of rhymes, their occurrence and
their development in the three layers of Meccan sūras that Nöldeke had
distinguished. She argues that in almost all these sūras change or modifica-
tion of rhyme functions to organise formally the development of ideas. This
function is particularly crucial in the sūras of the earliest Meccan period that
are characterised by short verses.
The length of the verses in the Qur  ān varies. They are short in the early
sūras and become longer and longer in the second and third Meccan period,
respectively. The structure of the verses and the relation between verse and
sentence can also be determined by rules of composition. Neuwirth there-
fore studies the verses and distinguishes different types of verses accord-
ing to their length. She shows that the use of certain types of verses has
consequences for the composition of larger groupings of verses and she
emphasises the important role of the ‘clausula phrase’ in sūras when the
structure of verses becomes more complex.
The next question is: are the verses grouped together in a systematic
manner to form larger units, each of them containing a particular content
or topic which distinguishes them from one another (termed Gesätze)?
Secondly, are these larger units of content only arbitrarily or loosely put
together to form a sūra or are they combined in a carefully considered way?
Here, too, her study detects different types of Gesätze and even different
types of sūras, each type displaying a similar structure.
Neuwirth’s study comes to the conclusion that the sūras, as well as
the numerous literary forms found in them, are, from the beginning, com-
posed of clearly proportioned elements. The composition becomes more
complex and less varied in the course of time but nevertheless reveals, in
most cases, an intentional design. Neuwirth concludes that it must have
been the Prophet himself who composed the bulk of the Meccan sūras in
the form which they have now, occasional cases of later revision notwith-
standing. Whether this can also be proven for the Medinan sūras remains
to be examined. The historical context (Sitz im Leben) of the Meccan sūras,
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Alternative accounts of the Qur ān’s formation 65

which can be characterised as texts intended for liturgical recitation, was

most probably the early forms of the Islamic worship service. The more
composite middle and late Meccan sūras with their ceremonial introduc-
tions suggest that they were used as ‘lessons’ in the liturgical services of the
growing Muslim community, comparable to the lessons and recitations of
the Jewish and Christian services.10
If this evaluation of the Meccan sūras is accepted, a comparison of
the structural changes which the sūras underwent in the course of time
(reflected in their rough classification into three periods) allows for theories
about the first stages of the qur  ānic canon’s emergence mirrored in the
Qur  ān itself. Neuwirth herself pursued this issue of the ‘canonical process’
in several later publications.11 In a study of Q 15 (Sūrat al-H.ijr), for instance,
she argues that the composition and content of this sūra indicates not only
that it is a coherent text but also one that presupposes a stock or corpus
of several sūras ‘published’ earlier, among them Q 1 (Sūrat al-Fātih.a) as
an earlier liturgical text. At the same time Q 15 reflects a crucial stage in
the emergence of the Islamic community: the introduction of a new form
of liturgical service, one which resembles the pattern of the Jewish and
Christian services, and emancipates the Islamic cult from the pre-Islamic
cultic ceremonies at the Ka  ba.12

p r e - i s l a m i c h i s t o ry
Until the third decade of the twentieth century the issue of Jewish
and Christian influences and sources contained in the Qur  ān was a promi-
nent research topic in Western scholarship but then it went out of fashion.
Watt mentions the issue only at the end of his Introduction in the chapter
on ‘The Qur  ān and occidental scholarship’ and remarks that ‘the study of
sources and influences, besides being a proper one, has a moderate degree
of interest’.13 He suggests that such a study does not contribute much to the
appreciation of the new scriptural synthesis created in the Qur  ān on the
basis of earlier ideas.
This view is questioned by Günther Lüling in his study Über den
Ur-Qur  ān: Ansätze zur Rekonstruktion vorislamischer christlicher Strophen-
lieder im Qur  ān (1974). His approach is motivated by theories about the
development of Jewish and Christian religious ideas, more precisely by the
idea that both religions have forgotten or abandoned their primitive dog-
mas. These dogmas can be rediscovered and reconstructed by re-reading
the sources without the distorting lens of the later orthodoxy of the two
religions. By manipulating and reinterpreting the sources, this orthodoxy
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66 Harald Motzki

has fostered a development detrimental to the religions and cultures in

question.14 Lüling assumes that the same dynamic has operated in Islam.
Another premise of his study is that pre-Islamic Arabia had been flooded
with Christian, particularly Judeo-Christian, ideas, that Christian communi-
ties existed all over the peninsula, even in Mecca, and that a large part of
pre-Islamic Arabic poetry has a Christian background.
Lüling analyses several sūras (or parts of them) traditionally consid-
ered to be early Meccan by asking whether there may be Christian sources
behind them that are hidden by the traditional reading and interpretation.
He looks for other possible meanings of words and verses, especially in
cases where the traditional meaning is opaque, by going back to the prim-
itive significations of words or their meaning in other Semitic languages
which may have influenced pre-Islamic Arabic. If this does not yield the
expected result, the bare consonantal text (rasm) of the Qur  ān, i.e., the script
without the dots which distinguish the Arabic letters of the same form,
is checked in order to discern whether another reading is possible, one
that gives the words or the grammatical construction of the verse the pre-
supposed archaic Judaeo-Christian understanding and fits into the literary
form of an assumed Christian text. Sometimes he even suggests that the
consonantal text be slightly changed or passages added or deleted. Such
emendations of the qur  ānic text are then justified by lexical, grammatical,
stylistic and religious-historical arguments.
The results of Lüling’s study are the following: The text of the Qur  ān
as it is transmitted through the ages contains a pre-Islamic Christian text
as a primitive layer. Parts or fragments of this Christian liturgical recitation
(qur  ān) are scattered throughout the entire Qur  ān. They can be recon-
structed and their original meaning recovered. The new reading of such pas-
sages provides a grammatically and lexically more convincing text than the
traditional reading. The texts belonging to the primitive Christian ‘qur  ān’
were written by Christian theologians at least a century before Muh.ammad.
They are poetic, i.e., have a rhyme, and are structured in strophes of three
lines. The language of the primitive Christian texts in the Qur  ān is an
elevated literary language which differs from the language of pre-Islamic
Arabic poetry and shows grammatical correspondences to early Christian
Arabic. According to Lüling the methods which the early Muslims used to
recast the primitive texts were largely the same as those he used to recover
them.
According to this theory, the Qur  ān as we now have it consists of two
types of texts: (1) passages with a double meaning because they were orig-
inally Christian texts which had been given a new Islamic meaning, and
(2) original Islamic passages which had been added to the Christian ones.
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Alternative accounts of the Qur ān’s formation 67

The content of both types of texts is shaped by the ideas of pre-Islamic Arab
paganism that were adopted by the Muslims. Since, however, the primitive
Christian texts were hostile to the pagan religious concepts, the Muslim
Qur  ān has an anti-Christian undertone. A formal characteristic of the Mus-
lim Qur  ān is its composition in rhyme-prose whereas the hidden Christian
texts in it were originally written in poetic strophes. Further, the language
of the Muslim Qur  ān is not homogeneous and can be classified into four
different types of language: (1) the highly literary language of the primitive
Christian qur  ān; (2) the chaotic ‘language’ which resulted from the Muslim
reinterpretation of the Christian hymns; (3) the language of the early edito-
rial glosses and comments added to the revised primitive Christian texts –
these additions were in a colloquial language and may reflect Muh.ammad’s
way of speaking – and (4) the language of the larger, Muslim-originated
passages that is literary, perhaps an early form of classical standard Ara-
bic. This language may have been produced by the educated scribes who
recorded the Qur  ān at Muh.ammad’s request.
The Muslim Qur  ān is then, according to Lüling, the result of several
stages of textual revision. The first stage was the refashioning of the content
and style of the primitive ‘Christian qur  ān’ to fit this document, probably an
archaic Christology, confessed by the so-called h.unafā  (sing. h.anı̄f ), into a
national pagan Arab framework. This revision was motivated by the wish to
create a monotheistic Arab orientation independent of the competing Chris-
tian factions of Mecca and their political patrons outside Arabia. This period
of revision may have already started two generations before Muh.ammad
and was continued by him. The second stage of revision of the Qur  ān as
it existed then started after the victory of the Muslims over the Meccan
Christian (!) mushrikūn (according to Lüling, these were people who made
Jesus a ‘partner’ of God). This revision was motivated by a desire to mitigate
the anti-Christian tenor of the first revision in order to win these Meccan
Christians for the Muslim cause and to hide the real origins of Islam as an
anti-Christian movement with pagan and national Arab inclinations. The
last stage consisted in a revision of the entire Qur  ān to align it as closely
as possible with the standard literary Arabic, the language of the poetry.
This editing may have already started during the life of the Prophet but was
perhaps finished only after his death.

l a n g u ag e a n d r e a d i n g
In the Qur  ān the language used is called ‘Arabic’ ( arabı̄ ).15 There was
a lively discussion at the beginning of the twentieth century as to pre-
cisely what that means. In what type of Arabic did Muh.ammad recite the
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68 Harald Motzki

Qur  ān? In 1906 Karl Vollers argued that it was originally in the Meccan
dialect and that later Muslim scholars redacted the text to make it accord, as
far as possible, with the artificial literary language of Arabic poetry. Promi-
nent Islamicists have rejected Voller’s theory and hold the view that the
language of the Qur  ān is not a dialect but essentially the literary language
of the Arab tribes with some Meccan dialectical peculiarities, reflected, for
instance, in the orthography of the Qur  ān. The consensus is thus that the
Qur  ān has been recited and written in ‘a Meccan variant of the literary
language’.16
That does not mean, however, that all words contained in the Qur  ān
are ‘pure Arabic’, i.e., derived from the reservoir of Arabic roots. Western
scholars have identified many loanwords from other languages, most of
them belonging to the Aramaic-Syriac group of Semitic languages. The list
published by Arthur Jeffery in 1938 contains about 322 loanwords17 that
amount to 0.4 per cent of the complete qur  ānic vocabulary (proper names
included). A large portion of these loanwords are already found in pre-
Islamic Arabic texts and can be considered part of the Arabic language
before the Qur  ān.18 That means that the loanwords found in the Qur ān
do not contradict the common assumption that its language is essentially a
literary Arabic close to that of the pre- and early Islamic poetry and to the
classical Arabic of prose texts written in the Islamic period.
The first codices of the Qur  ān were written in a scriptio defectiva,
i.e., without short vowels, even without some long vowels, and without
distinguishing between consonants of a similar shape. (The Arabic term for
this skeletal form of qur  ānic script is rasm.) This script was very difficult
to read and, therefore, theoretically a potential source of variant readings
and interpretations. In practice, however, substantial differences of reading
remained minimal because ‘knowledge of the Qur  ān among the Muslims
was based far more on memory than on writing’, the script being ‘little more
than an elaborate mnemonic device’.19 The correct reading of the Qur  ān
was transmitted from the Prophet’s time onwards by Qur  ān-reciters (qurrā  )
who knew the text by heart. On the basis of the oral reading tradition the
defective script of the early codices was gradually improved during the first
Islamic centuries and so the written qur  ānic text emerged as we know it
today.20
This view was challenged by Lüling as mentioned above. He not only
rejects the view that the Qur  ān is a text which derives almost completely
from one ‘author’ (Muh.ammad), but also disputes the idea that the language
of the Qur  ān is homogeneous. Only the original Muslim parts are close to
classical Arabic. In his attempt to retrace a primitive Christian liturgical
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Alternative accounts of the Qur ān’s formation 69

text in the Qur  ān he sometimes suggests that Arabic words have a meaning
closer to their Aramaic or Hebrew counterparts than the meaning current
in classical Arabic, assuming that the pre-Islamic Arabic koine (standard
language) was influenced by Aramaic, then the lingua franca of the near
east.21 Lüling is also convinced that the primitive qur  ān has been con-
sciously changed by Muh.ammad and later Muslims.
In a more radical form similar ideas about the original language of the
Qur  ān are expounded in a study by Christoph Luxenberg (a pseudonym)
entitled Die syro-aramäische Lesart des Koran (2000). Its premises are that
Syro-Aramaic was the most important literary and cultural language in the
region of the vicinity in which the Qur  ān originated. Since Arabic was not
yet a literary language, educated Arabs used Syro-Aramaic for literary pur-
poses. This suggests that literary Arabic itself was developed by Arabs edu-
cated in the Syro-Aramaic culture. These Arabs were mostly Christianised
and brought much of their religious and cultural language into Arabic.
These premises lead Luxenberg to the hypotheses that the Qur  ān, as one
of the earliest specimens of literary Arabic, must reflect this Syro-Aramaic
heritage and that in addition to words already identified as Syro-Aramaic
loanwords, many more lexical items and syntactical structures, generally
considered to be genuine Arabic by Muslim and Western scholars, may be
of Syro-Aramaic origin.
The study focuses on qur  ānic passages that Western scholars consider
obscure and on which early Muslim exegetes expressed variant interpreta-
tions. Luxenberg’s philological method involves several steps. The first is to
check al-T.abarı̄’s (d. 310/923) large commentary of the Qur  ān and the Lisān
al-Arab, the most substantial lexicon of classical Arabic, to see whether the
early exegetes preserved a meaning of the unclear words that better fits the
context than the meaning assumed by the most prominent Western trans-
lations. If this search does not yield a result, he next asks whether there is
a homonymous lexical root in Syro-Aramaic that has a meaning other than
that of the Arabic word and one clearly better suited to the context. If this
exercise proves futile, Luxenberg then returns to the undotted form (rasm)
of the word to determine whether another reading (dotting) of it produces
an Arabic or Aramaic word or root that makes more sense. If this step also
fails he tries to translate the alleged Arabic word into Aramaic in order
to deduce its meaning from the semantic of the Syro-Aramaic expression.
Should this step prove unproductive, he consults the material preserved
from Aramaic-Arabic lexica of the fourth/tenth century searching for mean-
ings of Arabic terms unknown in classical and modern Muslim sources
of Arabic but recorded by Christian lexicographers. A final step has him
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70 Harald Motzki

reading an Arabic word according to the Syro-Aramaic phonetic system, a

process that, as Luxenberg claims, sometimes produces a useful meaning.
Luxenberg doubts that there has existed a continuous tradition of read-
ing and commenting on the Qur  ān from the time of the Prophet onwards
because some Muslim traditions contradict that claim. The qur  ānic writing
of Aramaic names suggests that they were transliterated from Syro-Aramaic
and therefore not originally pronounced according to the traditional reading
based on the (later) phonetic rules of classical Arabic, but in the Aramaic
way (e.g., not Jibrı̄l and Mūsā, but Gabriēl and Mōshē). Luxenberg gives
examples of qur  ānic expressions which do not smoothly fit the context
when read according to the rules of the classical Arabic grammar, but are
perfectly translatable if read as Syro-Aramaic terms. He concludes from
these cases that grammatical forms of Arabic and Syro-Aramaic occur in
the Qur  ān side by side and, therefore, the Qur  ān cannot be understood
and explained only on the basis of the grammatical rules fixed for classical
Arabic.
Luxenberg discusses several examples of words which seem to suggest
that in the earliest written qur  ānic texts the undotted ‘tooth letters’ were
used not only to indicate the letters b, t, th, n, ı̄/y as in classical and modern
Arabic, but occasionally the long vowel ā which in standard Arabic orthog-
raphy is rendered by a long vertical stroke.22 He argues that several words
of the Qur  ān had been read and dotted wrongly because later readers and
copyists did not know this early function of the ‘tooth letter’ any more.
This and other obviously wrong cases of dotting prove for him that there
was no continuous reading tradition after the death of the Prophet. Later
Muslim scholars and copyists of the Qur  ān reconstructed its reading and
interpretation on the basis of written copies.
In his study Luxenberg reviews the translation and interpretation of sev-
eral qur  ānic verses and a few short sūras arguing that they have been mis-
understood because particular words have been interpreted from the view-
point of the classical Arabic lexicon and grammar. Reading them, in contrast,
as Syro-Aramaic words and taking into account that qur  ānic expressions
may also reflect the phenomena of Syro-Aramaic grammar, produces more
plausible meanings. In a few cases his reconstruction leads to a Christian
content.
The results of his analyses corroborate Luxenberg’s premises: the lan-
guage of the Qur  ān is a mixture of Aramaic and Arabic. This has conse-
quences for the understanding of the historical background. If the Qur  ān
was ‘published’ in the language of the Quraysh, as Muslim tradition states,
and if this language was neither an Arabic dialect nor the standard literary
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Alternative accounts of the Qur ān’s formation 71

language of Arabic poetry, but a mixed language of Syro-Aramaic and

Arabic that was understood by Muh.ammad’s Meccan compatriots, then,
Luxenberg presumes, Mecca must originally have been an Aramaic set-
tlement. The many cases of qur  ānic words and passages which remained
unclear to Muslim scholars and were misread by them suggest that the
knowledge of the Meccan language spoken at the time of Muh.ammad had
been lost by the period when the punctuation and exegesis of the qur  ānic
text began. According to Luxenberg, this must have been in the second half
of the second/eighth century because the Muslim reconstruction and inter-
pretation of the Qur  ān is based on the literary Arabic language standardised
at that time. He thus assumes a gap of one and a half centuries between
the first ‘publishing’ and recording of the Qur  ān and the final editing by
which it received its traditional form. During this period the Qur ān was
preserved only in written form and, so it appears, did not play a significant
role in Muslim cult and community. Luxenberg suggests that had the situ-
ation been otherwise, the tradition of reading the Qur  ān as it developed in
the time of the Prophet would not have been cut off.

concluding remark
The alternative accounts of the Qur  ān’s formation presented in this
chapter have been described without a concurrent evaluation of them. Each
is a sophisticated piece of scholarship that deserves to be carefully stud-
ied for the quality of its arguments and methods. The reader interested in
the scholarly echo which these alternative accounts provoked will find the
relevant literature in ‘Further reading’.

Notes
1. W. M. Watt, Bell’s Introduction to the Qur  ān (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 1970), chs. 2 and 3.
2. J. Wansbrough, The sectarian milieu: Content and composition of Islamic salva-
tion history (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. ix, 118–19, and his ‘Res
ipsa loquitur: History and mimesis’ (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences
and Humanities, 1987) (Albert Einstein Memorial Lectures); repr. in H. Berg
(ed.), Method and theory in the study of Islamic origins (Leiden/Boston: Brill,
2003), pp. 10–19.
3. J. Wansbrough, Quranic studies: Sources and methods of scriptural interpretation
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), ch. I.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., pp. 44, 170–202.
6. Watt, Bell’s Introduction, ch. 3.
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72 Harald Motzki

7. J. Burton, The collection of the Qur  ān (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1977), chs. 1, 6–10.
8. Watt, Bell’s Introduction, pp. 38–9, 90–7, 111, 113.
9. A. Neuwirth, Studien zur Komposition der mekkanischen Suren (Berlin/New
York: Walter de Gruyter, 1981), pp. 1–2.
10. Ibid., passim.
11. A. Neuwirth, ‘Vom Rezitationstext über die Liturgie zum Kanon: Zu Entstehung
und Wiederauflösung der Surenkomposition im Verlauf der Entwicklung des
islamischen Kultus’, in S. Wild (ed.), The Qur  ān as text (Leiden: Brill, 1996),
pp. 69–105, and her ‘Referentiality and textuality in sūrat al-h.ijr: Some observa-
tions on the qur  ānic “canonical process” and the emergence of a community’,
in I. J. Boullata (ed.), Literary structures of religious meaning in the Qur  ān (Rich-
mond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000), pp. 143–72. See also her ‘Qur  ān, crisis and
memory: The qur  ānic path towards canonization as reflected in the anthro-
pogonic accounts’, in A. Neuwirth and A. Pflitsch (eds.), Crisis and memory
in Islamic societies (Beirut: Orient-Institut der Deutschen Morgenländischen
Gesellschaft, 2001), pp. 113–52.
12. Neuwirth, ‘Referentiality and textuality’.
13. Watt, Bell’s Introduction, pp. 184–5.
14. G. Lüling, Über den Ur-Qur  ān: Ansätze zur Rekonstruktion vorislamischer
christlicher Strophenlieder im Qur  ān (Erlangen: H. Lüling, 1974), pp. 176–85,
401–12.
15. Q 12:2; 20:113; 39:28; 41:3; 42:7; 43:3; cf. 13:37; 16:103; 26:195; 41:44; 46:12.
16. Watt, Bell’s Introduction, pp. 83–4.
17. A. Jeffery, The foreign vocabulary of the Qur  ān (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1938).
18. Watt, Bell’s Introduction, pp. 84–5.
19. Ibid., pp. 47–8.
20. Ibid.
21. Lüling, Über den Ur-Qur  ān, pp. 30, 51–4, 91, 93, 113, 165, 192, 305, 382–4.
22. This observation is corroborated by the earliest fragments of qur  ānic
manuscripts; see G.-R. Puin, ‘Über die Bedeutung der ältesten Koranfragmente
aus Sanaa (Jemen) für die Orthographiegeschichte des Korans’, in H.-C. Graf von
Bothmer, K.-H. Ohlig and G.-R. Puin, ‘Neue Wege der Koranforschung’, Maga-
zin forschung (Universität des Saarlandes) 1 (1999), 37–40, on http://www.uni-
saarland.de/verwalt/kwt/f-magazin/1-99/Neue Wege.pdf, esp. 39–40.

Further reading
Adams, C. J., ‘Reflections on the work of John Wansbrough’, in H. Berg (ed.), Islamic
origins reconsidered: John Wansbrough and the study of early Islam, Special
issue of Method and theory in the study of religion 9 (1997), 75–90.
Berg, H., ‘The implications of, and opposition to, the methods and theories of John
Wansbrough’, in H. Berg (ed.), Islamic origins reconsidered: John Wansbrough
and the study of early Islam, Special issue of Method and theory in the study of
religion 9 (1997), 3–22.
de Blois, F., ‘Review of G. Luxenberg, Die syro-aramäische Lesart des Koran’, Journal
of Qur  anic Studies 5 (2003), 92–7.
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Alternative accounts of the Qur ān’s formation 73

Böwering, G., ‘Chronology and the Qur  ān’, in J. D. McAuliffe (ed.), Encyclopaedia of
the Qur  ān, 5 vols., Leiden: Brill, 2001–6, vol. II, pp. 316–35.
Brague, R., ‘Le Coran: Sortir du cercle?’ (Review of C. Luxenberg, Die syro-aramäische
Lesart des Koran and of A.-L. Prémare, Les fondations de l’islam), Critique: Revue
générale des publications françaises et étrangères 671 (2003), 232–51.
Burton, J., ‘Collection of the Qur  ān’, in J. D. McAuliffe (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the
Qur  ān, 5 vols., Leiden: Brill, 2001–6, vol. I, pp. 351–61.
The collection of the Qur  ān, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
van Ess, J., ‘Review of J. Wansbrough, Quranic studies’, Bibliotheca Orientalis 35
(1978), 353.
Gilliot, Cl., ‘Deux études sur le Coran’, Arabica 30 (1983), 16–37.
‘Langue et Coran: Une lecture syro-araméenne du Coran’, Arabica 50 (2003), 381–
93.
Gilliot, Cl. and P. Larcher, ‘Language and style of the Qur  ān’, in J. D. McAuliffe (ed.),
Encyclopaedia of the Qur  ān, 5 vols., Leiden: Brill, 2001–6, vol. III, pp. 109–35.
Günther, S., ‘Review of G. Lüling, Über den Ur-Qur  ān’, al-Qant.ara 16 (1995), 485–9.
Hopkins, S., ‘Review of C. Luxenberg, Die syro-aramäische Lesart des Koran’,
Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 28 (2003), 377–80.
Ibn Rawandi, ‘On pre-Islamic Christian strophic poetical texts in the Koran: A critical
look on the work of Günther Lüling’, in Ibn Warraq (pseud.) (ed. and trans.),
What the Koran really says: Language, text and commentary, Amherst, NY:
Prometheus Books, 2002, pp. 653–710.
Jeffery, A., The foreign vocabulary of the Qur  ān, Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1938.
Leemhuis, F., ‘Codices of the Qur  ān’, in J. D. McAuliffe (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the
Qur  ān, 5 vols., Leiden: Brill, 2001–6, vol. I, pp. 347–51.
Lüling, G., Die Wiederentdeckung des Propheten Muhammad: Eine Kritik am
‘christlichen’ Abendland, Erlangen: H. Lüling, 1981.
Über den Ur-Qur  ān: Ansätze zur Rekonstruktion vorislamischer christlicher Stro-
phenlieder im Qur  ān, Erlangen: H. Lüling, 1974; Eng. ed., A challenge to Islam
for reformation: The rediscovery and reliable reconstruction of a comprehensive
pre-Islamic Christian hymnal hidden in the Koran under earliest Islamic reinter-
pretations, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2003.
Luxenberg, G., Die syro-aramäische Lesart des Koran: Ein Betrag zur Entschlüsselung
der Koransprache, Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 2000; rev. ed. Berlin: Hans
Schiler, 2004.
Madigan, D. A., The Qur  ān’s self-image: Writing and authority in Islam’s scripture,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Motzki, H., ‘The collection of the Qur  ān: A reconsideration of western views in light
of recent methodological developments’, Der Islam 78 (2001), 1–34.
‘Mus.h.af’, in J. D. McAuliffe (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Qur  ān, 5 vols., Leiden: Brill,
2001–6, vol. III, pp. 463–6.
Neuwirth, A., ‘Einige Bemerkungen zum besonderen sprachlichen und literarischen
Charakter des Koran’, in W. Voigt (ed.), XIX Deutscher Orientalistentag vom 28.
September bis 4. Oktober 1975 in Freiburg im Breisgau. Vorträge, Wiesbaden: F.
Steiner, 1977, pp. 736–9; Eng. trans. ‘Some notes on the distinctive linguistic
and literary character of the Qur  ān’, in A. Rippin (ed.), The Qur  ān: Style and
contents, Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2001, pp. 253–7.
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74 Harald Motzki

‘Form and structure of the Qur  ān’, in J. D. McAuliffe (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the
Qur  ān, 5 vols., Leiden: Brill, 2001–6, vol. II, pp. 244–65.
‘Qur  ān and history – a disputed relationship: Some reflections on qur  ānic history
and history in the Qur  ān’, Journal of Qur  anic Studies 5 (2003), 1–18.
‘Qur  ān, crisis and memory: The qur  ānic path towards canonization as reflected
in the anthropogonic accounts’, in A. Neuwirth and A. Pflitsch (eds.), Crisis
and memory in Islamic societies, Beirut: Orient-Institut der Deutschen Mor-
genländischen Gesellschaft, 2001, pp. 113–52.
‘Referentiality and textuality in sūrat al-h.ijr: Some observations on the qur  ānic
“canonical process” and the emergence of a community’, in I. J. Boullata (ed.),
Literary structures of religious meaning in the Qur  ān, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon
Press, 2000, pp. 143–72.
‘Review of J. Burton, The collection of the Qur  ān’, Orientalistische Literaturzeitung
76 (1981), 372–80.
‘Review of J. Wansbrough, Quranic studies’, Die Welt des Islams 23/24 (1984),
539–42.
Studien zur Komposition der mekkanischen Suren, Berlin/New York: Walter de
Gruyter, 1981.
‘Vom Rezitationstext über die Liturgie zum Kanon: Zu Entstehung und Wieder-
auflösung der Surenkomposition im Verlauf der Entwicklung des islamischen
Kultus’, in S. Wild (ed.), The Qur  ān as text, Leiden: Brill, 1996, pp. 69–105;
Fr. trans. ‘Du text de récitation au canon en passant par la liturgie: A propos
de la génèse de la composition des sourates et de sa redissolution au cours du
développement du culte islamique’, Arabica 47 (2000), 194–229.
‘Zum Neueren Stand der Koranforschung’, in F. Steppat (ed.), XXI. Deutscher Ori-
entalistentag vom 24. bis 29. März 1980 in Berlin. Vorträge, Wiesbaden: Steiner,
1983, pp. 183–9.
Nöldeke, Th., Geschichte des Qorāns, rev. by F. Schwally, G. Bersträsser and O. Pretzel,
3 vols. in 2, Leipzig: T. Weicher, 1909–38.
Phenix, R. R./C. B. Horn, ‘Review of C. Luxenberg, Die syro-aramäische Lesart’,
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 6 (January 2003), on http://syrcom.cua.edu/
Hugoye.
Puin, G.-R., ‘Über die Bedeutung der ältesten Koranfragmente aus Sanaa (Jemen)
für die Orthographiegeschichte des Korans’, in H.-C. Graf von Bothmer,
K.-H. Ohlig and G.-R. Puin, ‘Neue Wege der Koranforschung’, Magazin
forschung (Universität des Saarlandes) 1 (1999), 37–40, on http://www.uni-
saarland.de/verwalt/kwt/f-magazin/1-99/Neue Wege.pdf.
Rippin, A., ‘Literary analysis of Qur  ān, tafsı̄r, and sı̄ra: The methodologies of John
Wansbrough’, in R. C. Martin (ed.), Approaches to Islam in religious studies,
Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985, pp. 151–63, 227–32.
‘Review of A. Neuwirth, Studien zur Komposition der mekkanischen Suren’, Bulletin
of the School of Oriental and African Studies 45 (1982), 149–50.
‘Foreign vocabulary’, in J. D. McAuliffe (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Qur  ān, 5 vols.,
Leiden: Brill, 2001–6, vol. II, pp. 226–37.
Robinson, N., Discovering the Qur  ān: A contemporary approach to a veiled text,
London: SCM Press, 1996.
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Rodinson, M., ‘[Fr.] Review of G. Lüling, Über den Ur-Qur  ān’, Der Islam 54 (1977),
321–5.
Wansbrough, J., Quranic studies: Sources and methods of scriptural interpretation,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
‘Res ipsa loquitur: History and mimesis’, Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sci-
ences and Humanities, 1987 (Albert Einstein Memorial Lectures); repr. in
H. Berg (ed.), Method and theory in the study of Islamic origins, Leiden/Boston:
Brill, 2003, pp. 3–19.
The sectarian milieu: Content and composition of Islamic salvation history, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1978.
Watt, W. M., Bell’s Introduction to the Qur  ān, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 1970.
Welch, A., ‘K.ur  ān’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., 11 vols., Leiden: Brill, 1979–
2002, vol. V, pp. 400–28.
Whelan, E., ‘Forgotten witness: Evidence for the early codification of the Qur  ān’,
Journal of the American Oriental Society 118 (1998), 1–14.
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