Page:William Goldsack-The Qurān in Islām (1906).djvu/30

 Rh whilst two other words  and  have been added. Little wonder is it that ʿUsmān, shocked at the many discrepancies, which, as early as his time, appeared in the reading of the Qurān, should seek to reduce them all to one uniform text; it is as little a matter for surprise that the Khalif failed so ignominiously to effect his purpose. Many of these corruptions of the Qurānic text bear upon their face the evidence of the clumsy hand of the forger; and reveal, by their very nature, the reason for their existence. Thus in Sūra T. H. we read, "" "He (Aaron) said, O my mother’s son.” But in Sūra Arāf, verse 149, we find only “" “He said, my mother’s son.” A close examination of these passages shows that in the first the usual interjection of address which accompanies the vocative, viz., is properly present, but is absent from the second. Thus it becomes clear that, in order to preserve the elegance and beauty of the language of the Qurān, the usual interjection of address should be added to the second passage also. Now Baizāwi makes it clear that this has actually taken place, and that some good Muslims, in order to remove this reproach from the Qurān, have actually added the necessary word in their copies of the Qurān. Thus Baizāwi tells us that Ibn-Amar, Hamza, Kisai and Abū-Bakr read in this place "" "O, my mother’s son.” Hither our inference is correct, or else we must assume that the word '' ‘O’ is correctly found in the copies of the scholars mentioned, but has, like many other words, been lost from the current copy of the Qurān; in either case we have here a striking example of the uncertainty which surrounds the present text of that book.

Again in Sūra Jonas, verse 92, we have a striking example of ‘tabrif lafzi’ or corruption of the text of the Qurān. It is there written that the death of Pharoah in the Red Sea