Two Mushafs on One Table: Rasm, Qira'at, and the Counting of Verses
At a Cairo preparatory institute's Qur'an club, a donated Maghribi mushaf printed in Fez in 1911 in the Warsh transmission sits beside the institute's Hafs mushaf. A visiting teacher opens both and lists three differences: in the Hafs copy the basmala of al-Fatiha carries the number 1, while in the Warsh copy it is unnumbered; the closing page of one volume prints 6,236 verses and the other 6,214; and one word is printed with a short alif in one copy and a long alif in the other. He tells the students that 'two books of Allah cannot disagree, so one of these has been tampered with.' A student then asks about a pamphlet claiming that a verse on stoning and a verse on breastfeeding were 'removed' from the mushaf. The club president must answer both points in one 45-minute session and must decide what to do with the donated copy.
1. Classify each of the three observed differences, name the discipline it belongs to, and state what it does and does not prove.
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Separate the sciences before comparing anything.
| Difference | Discipline | What it proves |
|---|---|---|
| Basmala numbered / unnumbered | ilm al-fawatih and verse counting (adad al-ayat) |
Only a convention about where a verse begins |
| 6,236 vs 6,214 | counting school (Kufan / Madani) | Totals follow from the same convention; no wording is touched |
| short vs long alif | rasm al-mushaf, and above it a transmitted reading |
Orthographic or recitational variation, not loss of text |
Reasoning. A difference counts as corruption only when it has no transmission chain and no support in the Uthmani skeleton. Here every item is transmitted in uninterrupted chains back to the Companions' copies, and the skeleton itself was written without dots and with omitted alifs precisely so that it could carry more than one sound. The teacher has collapsed three separate disciplines into one question. The test to give the students is: for any claimed 'variant', ask who transmitted it, in what chain, and whether the Uthmani skeleton permits it. If all three answers are positive, the difference is a feature of the tradition, not a defect in it.
2. A student asks about the pamphlet's claim that a stoning verse and a breastfeeding verse are missing. How should the president answer without either dismissing the reports or conceding a defect in the mushaf?
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Distinguish what is mass-transmitted from what is reported in single chains.
- The mushaf's text reaches us by
tawatur- so many chains at every level that error is inconceivable. It is fixed by the Prophet's final presentation of the Qur'an to Jibril, and no single report can alter it. - Reports that a particular wording was once revealed and then withdrawn belong to the chapter of
naskh al-tilawa(abrogation of recitation with the ruling retained or dropped). They are transmitted in single chains (ahad) and are discussed in works ofnaskhandusul, not in works ofrasm. - The stoning penalty is established by mass-transmitted practice and consensus, independently of any alleged verse. The breastfeeding report (from `A'isha, in Sahih Muslim) concerns a ruling and is debated by scholars on its own terms.
- The governing rule: an
ahadreport cannot overturn whattawaturhas fixed.
So the honest answer is: 'Some scholars discussed such reports; none of them bears on the text you are holding.' Conceding a 'missing verse' would misstate the discipline; ridiculing the question would push the student toward the pamphlet.
3. Some students propose removing the Warsh copy from the club 'to prevent confusion.' Evaluate that proposal and set out what the president should actually do.
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The proposal is the wrong remedy, for three reasons.
First, the qira'at are not rival texts; they are transmitted readings, each with a chain, and teaching them as such builds confidence rather than doubt. Second, removing the copy implies it was the defective one, which is exactly the claim the club is trying to refute. Third, the club's real problem is not the book but the absence of a category in the students' minds: they have no shelf labelled 'qira'at'.
Practical plan: (a) keep both copies and label each by transmission on the cover; (b) run one session on the difference between rasm, qira'a, and verse counting; (c) print a short note at the front of each copy naming its transmission and counting school; (d) invite a local specialist in qira'at once a term.
There is a legitimate judgement here about audience: with young beginners the teacher may postpone detail, but postponement is not deletion. The rule of thumb is that anything a student can photograph and post online is better explained in the room than removed from the shelf.