Page 334 - History of The Quranic Text | Kalamullah.Com

314 THE HISTORY OF THE QUR'ANIC TEXT

6. Puin and the San'd'Fragments

In his contribution to The Qjtr'iin as Text, Dr. Gerd-R.Joseph Puin alludes
to the peculiarities found in the Yemeni hoardsr"
Defective writing of alij. These are more common in the San'a'
fragments than in others.
Variations in the position of ayah separators within certain verses.
The 'greatest' fmd is a fragment where the end of siira 26 is followed
by sura 37.
In authoring "What is the Koran?" for theJanuary 1999 issue of The
Atlantic Monthly, Toby Lester heavily relied on Dr. Puin's discoveries. One
of the main figures in the restoration of the Mushafs in San'a', Yemen,"
Dr. Puin found himself and the Yemeni fragments thrust into the spotlight
with the article's publication. Lester's words occasioned both sensational
joy and deep anger concerning Puin's work, depending on whether one
spoke with Orientalists or devout Muslims, so to counter the anger of the
Muslim street and wipe clean the distrust, Puin wrote a lengthy letter in
Arabic to al-Qa<;ll al-Akwa' of Yemen. The letter then appeared in the
Daily ath-Thawra newspaper, and I have reproduced it elsewhere.t" Praising
the San'a' Mushafs and how they fortified the Muslim position, he never-
theless wrote with enough subtlety and vagueness to cast a pall over the
whole history of the Qur'an. Following is a translation of part of the letter
that is related to this theme:

The remnants [of these old Mushafs] go back, scientifically assured,
to the first century after Hijra! Because of the existence of these manu-
scripts in San'a', ... [wehave] the only monumental proof of the com-
pletion of the Qur'an in the first century of Hijra and not, as so many
non-Muslim scholars assert, from the early third century of Hijra! Of
course Muslims may ask what is the point of such information from a
non-Muslim scholar,when Muslims are certain that the completeMushaf
has existedeversincethe third Caliph, 'Uthmiin b. 'AfIan. Theirs issimply
a belief held in good faith, since we do not have the original copy of
the Mushaf which was written under the supervision of 'Uthman, nor
any of the further copies which he dispatched to other territories ....

A summary of his main points runs thus:
1. The Sari'a' manuscripts are the only monumental proof of the

34 See G.R. Puin, "Observations on Early Qur'an Manuscripts in San'a'", in S.
Wild (ed.), The Qyr'an as Text, p. Ill.
35 Fora detaileddescription seeal-Qadial-Akwa', "The Mosqueof San'a': A Leading
IslamicMonument in Yemen",in Ma~iibif San'd', pp. 9-24 (Arabicsection).
36 The entire text appeared in the issuedated 24.11.1419 A.H. I have reproduced
part of it in Chapter 1 (Figure 1.1).