An Arabic traveler who engraved his name on a block of red sandstone over 1,300 years ago may help solve a question about the Qur'an that has vexed historians for hundreds of years: Why was the text seemingly written without diacritical marks?
Diacritical marks, which include accent marks, tildes, umlauts and other notations, help to distinguish one letter from another and aid in pronunciation. When added or removed, they can completely change the meaning of a word or sentence.
Analysis of the recently found sandstone inscription, which predates the earliest known copies of the Qur'an, determined that it reads: "In the name of Allah/ I, Zuhayr, wrote (this) at the time 'Umar died/year four/And twenty." ... According to researcher Ali ibn Ibrahim Ghabban, who, with his wife, discovered the 644 A.D. inscription northwest of Saudi Arabia, "It is an immensely important find, since it is our earliest dated Arabic inscription."
Ghabban, a member of the Supreme Commission for Tourism, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, added that it also "shows evidence of a fully-fledged system of diacritical marks." ..."Whether the Qur'an was originally written in a script that contained diacritical marks is very important because Western Qur'an scholars generally say that it wasn't and therefore feel free to make some amendments to the Qur'anic text by changing the diacritical marks to give it a different meaning, which is, of course, very unpopular with modern Muslim scholars and Muslims in general, who mostly feel that the Qur'anic text they use is the original text revealed to Muhammad by God," he said. ... - msnbc
Thursday, November 20, 2008
1,300-year-old Islamic note may solve mystery
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Mr. Ghabban's thesis rests, of course, on some demonstration that the earliest Qurans with diacriticals were accurate. That is something yet to be demonstrated as variant Qurans of a very early period do exist.
Does the Qur’an have a section like Genesis which describes the beginnings of the Earth and mankind? Here is some info from a Christian perspective. It seems biased, but is still somewhat interesting.
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