Gerd R. Puin
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Gerd Rüdiger Puin (born 1940) is a German scholar and the world's foremost authority on Qur'anic paleography, the study and scholarly interpretation of ancient manuscripts. He is a specialist in Arabic calligraphy. He was a lecturer based at Saarland University, in Saarbrücken Germany.
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[edit] Sana'a Qur'an find
Gerd Puin was the head of a restoration project, commissioned by the Yemeni government, which spent a significant amount of time examining the ancient Qur'anic manuscripts discovered in Sana'a, Yemen, in 1972. According to writer Toby Lester, his examination revealed "unconventional verse orderings, minor textual variations, and rare styles of orthography and artistic embellishment."[1] The scriptures were written in the early Hijazi Arabic script, matching the pieces of the earliest Qur'ans known to exist. The papyrus on which some of the text appears shows clear signs of earlier use, being that previous, scraped-off writings are also visible on it, though this does not necessarily demonstrate modifications to the over-all text of the Qur'an.
More than 15,000 sheets of the Yemeni Qur'ans have painstakingly been cleaned, treated, sorted, and photographed and 35,000 microfilmed photos have been made of the manuscripts. Some of Puin's initial remarks on his findings are found in his essay titled the "Observations on Early Qur'an Manuscripts in San'a" which has been republished in the book What the Koran Really Says by Ibn Warraq.
[edit] Assessment of the Qur'an
In the 1999 Atlantic Monthly article referenced below, Gerd Puin is quoted as saying that:[1]
My idea is that the Koran is a kind of cocktail of texts that were not all understood even at the time of Muhammad. Many of them may even be a hundred years older than Islam itself. Even within the Islamic traditions there is a huge body of contradictory information, including a significant Christian substrate; one can derive a whole Islamic anti-history from them if one wants. The Qur’an claims for itself that it is ‘mubeen,’ or clear, but if you look at it, you will notice that every fifth sentence or so simply doesn’t make sense. Many Muslims will tell you otherwise, of course, but the fact is that a fifth of the Qur’anic text is just incomprehensible. This is what has caused the traditional anxiety regarding translation. If the Qur’an is not comprehensible, if it can’t even be understood in Arabic, then it’s not translatable into any language. That is why Muslims are afraid. Since the Qur’an claims repeatedly to be clear but is not—there is an obvious and serious contradiction. Something else must be going on.
However after the publication of the Atlantic Monthly, Puin wrote a letter[2] in which he said:
| “ | The important thing, thank God, is that these Yemeni Qur'anic fragments do not differ from those found in museums and libraries elsewhere, with the exception of details that do not touch the Qur'an itself, but are rather differences in the way words are spelled. This phenomenon is well-known, even in the Qur'an published in Cairo in which is written:
Ibrhim next to Ibrhm |
” |
In his book titled 'The History of The Qur’ānic Text from Revelation to Compilation: A Comparative Study with the Old and New Testaments'[3][4], professor Muhammed Mustafa al-Azami concludes from Puin's letter that
| “ | "This deflates the entire controversy, dusting away the webs of intrigue that were spun around Puin's discoveries and making them a topic unworthy of further speculation." | ” |
Aisha Geissinger, a notable writer on Islam, notes in her article titled 'Orientalists plot against the Qur'an under the guise of academic study and archive preservation'[5]
| “ | The fact is that the existence of minor differences in wording and in the ordering of the surahs in the earliest masahif (manuscripts) is no surprise to Muslims familiar with classical Islamic scholarship of the Qur'an. Such variations occurred for several reasons. One factor is the dialectical differences then existing in different regions of Arabia. Another is that some of the Sahaba kiram (Companions) recorded such masahif for their own personal use. As these persons had either memorised the Qur'an in its entirety or large portions of it, such masahif were written merely as an aid to memory. Therefore, notes in the margins such as the wording of du'as (supplications) occurred, and the order of surahs varied. Books written by classical Muslim scholars, such as al-Suyuti's Itqan, go into great detail about such issues. | ” |
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ a b Lester, Toby (1999) "What is the Koran?" Atlantic Monthly
- ^ al-Azami 2003, p3-13
- ^ al-Azami 2003, p3-13
- ^ The History of The Qur’ānic Text from Revelation to Compilation: A Comparative Study with the Old and New Testaments - al-Azami, Muhammad Mustafa 2003, Leicester, England: UK Islamic Academy 2003.
- ^ Orientalists plot against the Qur'an under the guise of academic study and archive preservation - By Aisha Geissinger
- Puin, Gerd R. -- "Observations on Early Qur'an Manuscripts in Sana'a," in The Qur'an as Text, ed. Stefan Wild, , E.J. Brill 1996, pp. 107-111. Reprinted in What the Koran Really Says, ed. Ibn Warraq, Prometheus Books, 2002.
