1.
Quran
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The Quran is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims believe to be a revelation from God. It is widely regarded as the finest work in classical Arabic literature, the Quran is divided into chapters, which are then divided into verses. The word Quran occurs some 70 times in the text of the Quran, although different names, according to the traditional narrative, several companions of Muhammad served as scribes and were responsible for writing down the revelations. Shortly after Muhammads death, the Quran was compiled by his companions who wrote down and these codices had differences that motivated the Caliph Uthman to establish a standard version now known as Uthmans codex, which is generally considered the archetype of the Quran known today. There are, however, variant readings, with minor differences in meaning. The Quran assumes familiarity with major narratives recounted in the Biblical scriptures and it summarizes some, dwells at length on others and, in some cases, presents alternative accounts and interpretations of events. The Quran describes itself as a book of guidance and it sometimes offers detailed accounts of specific historical events, and it often emphasizes the moral significance of an event over its narrative sequence. The Quran is used along with the hadith to interpret sharia law, during prayers, the Quran is recited only in Arabic. Someone who has memorized the entire Quran is called a hafiz, some Muslims read Quranic ayah with elocution, which is often called tajwid. During the month of Ramadan, Muslims typically complete the recitation of the whole Quran during tarawih prayers, in order to extrapolate the meaning of a particular Quranic verse, most Muslims rely on the tafsir. The word qurʼān appears about 70 times in the Quran itself and it is a verbal noun of the Arabic verb qaraʼa, meaning he read or he recited. The Syriac equivalent is qeryānā, which refers to reading or lesson. While some Western scholars consider the word to be derived from the Syriac, regardless, it had become an Arabic term by Muhammads lifetime. An important meaning of the word is the act of reciting, as reflected in an early Quranic passage, It is for Us to collect it, in other verses, the word refers to an individual passage recited. Its liturgical context is seen in a number of passages, for example, So when al-qurʼān is recited, listen to it, the word may also assume the meaning of a codified scripture when mentioned with other scriptures such as the Torah and Gospel. The term also has closely related synonyms that are employed throughout the Quran, each synonym possesses its own distinct meaning, but its use may converge with that of qurʼān in certain contexts. Such terms include kitāb, āyah, and sūrah, the latter two terms also denote units of revelation. In the large majority of contexts, usually with an article, the word is referred to as the revelation
2.
Moses
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Moses is a prophet in Abrahamic religions. Also called Moshe Rabbenu in Hebrew, he is the most important prophet in Judaism and he is also an important prophet in Christianity, Islam, the Baháí Faith as well as a number of other Abrahamic religions. Moses Hebrew mother, Jochebed, secretly hid him when the Pharaoh ordered all newborn Hebrew boys to be killed in order to reduce the population of the Israelites. Through the Pharaohs daughter, the child was adopted as a foundling from the Nile river and grew up with the Egyptian royal family. After killing an Egyptian slavemaster, Moses fled across the Red Sea to Midian, God sent Moses back to Egypt to demand the release of the Israelites from slavery. Moses said that he could not speak with assurance or eloquence, so God allowed Aaron, his brother, to become his spokesperson. After the Ten Plagues, Moses led the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt and across the Red Sea, after which they based themselves at Mount Sinai, after 40 years of wandering in the desert, Moses died within sight of the Promised Land on Mount Nebo. According to archaeologist William G. Rabbinical Judaism calculated a lifespan of Moses corresponding to 1391–1271 BCE, Jerome gives 1592 BCE, the Biblical account of Moses birth provides him with a folk etymology to explain the ostensible meaning of his name. He is said to have received it from the Pharaohs daughter and she named him Moses, saying, I drew him out of the water. This explanation links it to a verb mashah, meaning to draw out, the princess made a grammatical mistake which is prophetic of his future role in legend, as someone who will draw the people of Israel out of Egypt through the waters of the Red Sea. Abraham Yahuda, based on the spelling given in the Tanakh, argues that it combines water or seed and pond, expanse of water, the Hebrew etymology in the Biblical story may reflect an attempt to cancel out traces of Moses Egyptian origins. The Egyptian character of his name was recognized as such by ancient Jewish writers like Philo of Alexandria and Josephus. Philo linked Mōēsēs to the Egyptian word for water, while Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, claimed that the element, -esês. Hizkuni suggested she either converted or took a tip from Jochebed, the Israelites had settled in the Land of Goshen in the time of Joseph and Jacob, but a new pharaoh arose who oppressed the children of Israel. At this time Moses was born to his father Amram, son of Kehath the Levite, who entered Egypt with Jacobs household, his mother was Jochebed, Moses had one older sister, Miriam, and one older brother, Aaron. One day after Moses had reached adulthood he killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew, Moses, in order to escape the Pharaohs death penalty, fled to Midian. There, on Mount Horeb, God revealed to Moses his name YHWH and commanded him to return to Egypt and bring his people out of bondage. Moses returned to carry out Gods command, but God caused the Pharaoh to refuse, from Egypt, Moses led the Israelites to biblical Mount Sinai, where he was given the Ten Commandments from God, written on stone tablets
3.
Wikisource
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Wikisource is an online digital library of free content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole and the name for each instance of that project, the projects aims are to host all forms of free text, in many languages, and translations. Originally conceived as an archive to store useful or important historical texts, the project officially began in November 24,2003 under the name Project Sourceberg. The name Wikisource was adopted later that year and it received its own domain name seven months later, the project has come under criticism for lack of reliability but it is also cited by organisations such as the National Archives and Records Administration. The project holds works that are either in the domain or freely licensed, professionally published works or historical source documents, not vanity products. Verification was initially made offline, or by trusting the reliability of digital libraries. Now works are supported by online scans via the ProofreadPage extension, some individual Wikisources, each representing a specific language, now only allow works backed up with scans. While the bulk of its collection are texts, Wikisource as a whole hosts other media, some Wikisources allow user-generated annotations, subject to the specific policies of the Wikisource in question. Wikisources early history included several changes of name and location, the original concept for Wikisource was as storage for useful or important historical texts. These texts were intended to support Wikipedia articles, by providing evidence and original source texts. The collection was focused on important historical and cultural material. The project was originally called Project Sourceberg during its planning stages, in 2001, there was a dispute on Wikipedia regarding the addition of primary source material, leading to edit wars over their inclusion or deletion. Project Sourceberg was suggested as a solution to this, perhaps Project Sourceberg can mainly work as an interface for easily linking from Wikipedia to a Project Gutenberg file, and as an interface for people to easily submit new work to PG. Wed want to complement Project Gutenberg--how, exactly, and Jimmy Wales adding like Larry, Im interested that we think it over to see what we can add to Project Gutenberg. It seems unlikely that primary sources should in general be editable by anyone -- I mean, Shakespeare is Shakespeare, unlike our commentary on his work, the project began its activity at ps. wikipedia. org. The contributors understood the PS subdomain to mean either primary sources or Project Sourceberg, however, this resulted in Project Sourceberg occupying the subdomain of the Pashto Wikipedia. A vote on the name changed it to Wikisource on December 6,2003. Despite the change in name, the project did not move to its permanent URL until July 23,2004, since Wikisource was initially called Project Sourceberg, its first logo was a picture of an iceberg
4.
Quran translations
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Translations of the Quran are interpretations of the scripture of Islam in languages other than Arabic. Quran was originally written in the Arabic language and has translated into most major African, Asian and European languages. Translation of the Quran has always been a problematic and difficult issue in Islamic theology, according to modern Islamic theology, the Quran is a revelation very specifically in Arabic, and so it should only be recited in Quranic Arabic. Translations into other languages are necessarily the work of humans and so, according to Muslims, since these translations necessarily subtly change the meaning, they are often called interpretations or translation of the meanings. For instance, Pickthall called his translation The Meaning of the Glorious Koran rather than simply The Koran, the task of translation is not an easy one, some native Arab-speakers will confirm that some Quranic passages are difficult to understand even in the original Arabic. A part of this is the difficulty of any translation, in Arabic, as in other languages. There is always an element of human judgement involved in understanding and translating a text and this factor is made more complex by the fact that the usage of words has changed a great deal between classical and modern Arabic. As a result, even Quranic verses which seem perfectly clear to native speakers accustomed to modern vocabulary, the original meaning of a Quranic passage will also be dependent on the historical circumstances of the prophet Muhammads life and early community in which it originated. Investigating that context usually requires a knowledge of hadith and sirah. This introduces an element of uncertainty which cannot be eliminated by any linguistic rules of translation. The first translation of the Quran was performed by Salman the Persian, according to Islamic tradition contained in the hadith, Emperor Negus of Abyssinia and Byzantine Emperor Heraclius received letters from Muhammad containing verses from the Quran. However, during Muhammads lifetime, no passage from the Quran was ever translated into these languages nor any other, the second known translation was into Greek and was used by Nicetas Byzantius, a scholar from Constantinople, in his Refutation of Quran written between 855 and 870. However, we know nothing about who and for what purpose had made this translation and it is however very probable that it was a complete translation. The first fully attested complete translations of the Quran were done between the 10th and 12th centuries in Persian language, the Samanid king, Mansur I, ordered a group of scholars from Khorasan to translate the Tafsir al-Tabari, originally in Arabic, into Persian. Later in the 11th century, one of the students of Abu Mansur Abdullah al-Ansari wrote a complete tafsir of the Quran in Persian, in the 12th century, Abu Hafs Omar al-Nasafi translated the Quran into Persian. The manuscripts of all three books have survived and have published several times. In 1936, translations in 102 languages were known, robertus Ketenensis produced the first Latin translation of the Quran in 1143. His version was entitled Lex Mahumet pseudoprophete, the translation was made at the behest of Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, and currently exists in the Bibliothèque de lArsenal in Paris
5.
Sana'a manuscript
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The Sanaa palimpsest, dubbed Ṣanʿā’1, is one of the oldest Quranic manuscripts in existence. It was identified in 1981, amongst a cache preserving numerous Quranic and non-Quranic fragments, discovered in Yemen in 1972, the manuscript is written on parchment, and comprises two layers of text. The upper text largely conforms to the standard Uthmanic Quran, whereas the text contains many variants to the standard text. A partial reconstruction of the text was published in 2012. A radiocarbon analysis has dated the parchment to before 671 AD with a 99% accuracy, in 1972, construction workers renovating a wall in the attic of the Great Mosque of Sanaa in Yemen came across large quantities of old manuscripts and parchments, many of which were deteriorated. Not realizing their significance, the gathered up the documents, packed them away into some twenty potato sacks. Qadhi Ismail al-Akwa, then the president of the Yemeni Antiquities Authority, the preserved fragments comprise Quranic and non-Quranic material. Restoration of the began in 1980 under the supervision of the Yemeni Department for Antiquities. It was funded by the Cultural Section of the German Foreign Ministry, the find includes 12,000 Quranic parchment fragments. All of them, except 1500–2000 fragments, were assigned to 926 distinct Quranic manuscripts as of 1997, none is complete and many contain only a few folios apiece. Albrecht Noth was the director of the project, work on the ground began in 1981 and continued through the end of 1989, when the project terminated with the end of funding. Gerd R. Puin was the director beginning with 1981. His involvement came to an end in 1985, when Hans-Caspar Graf von Bothmer took over as the local director, Bothmer left Ṣanā in the following year, but continued to run the project from Germany, traveling to the site almost every year. Beginning in 1982, Ursula Dreibholz served as the conservator for this project and she completed the restoration of the manuscripts. She also designed the permanent storage, collated many parchment fragments to identify distinct Quranic manuscripts, the manuscripts are located in the House of Manuscripts, the Dār al-Makhṭūṭāt, in Ṣanā, Yemen. After 1989, Bothmer would visit the collection periodically, in the winter of 1996–7, he microfilmed all of the parchment fragments that have been assigned to distinct Quranic manuscripts. Of the remaining 1500–2000 fragments, he microfilmed a group of 280, the microfilms are available in Ṣanā in the House of Manuscripts. The Sanaa palimpsest is one of the most important manuscripts of the collection in the world and this palimpsest has two layers of text, both of which are Quranic and written in the Hijazi script
6.
Birmingham Quran manuscript
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The parchment on which two leaves of an early Quranic manuscript coveted by the University of Birmingham are written, were radiocarbon dated in 2015 between 568 and 645. The manuscript is part of the Mingana Collection of Middle Eastern manuscripts, the manuscript is written in ink on parchment, using a Arabic Hijazi script and is still clearly legible. The leaves preserve parts of Surahs 19 to 20 and it was on display at the Birmingham University, Bramall Music Building, from 2-25 October 2015 and subsequently at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery until 5 August 2016. The Birmingham leaves, now catalogued as Mingana 1572a, are folio size, the two surviving leaves were separated in the original codex by a number of missing folios containing the intervening verses of surahs 18 and 19. There are no marks to indicate short vowels, but consonants are occasionally differentiated with oblique dashes. The text is out in the format that was to become standard for complete Quran manuscripts, with chapter divisions indicated by a decorated line. Although the Quran text witnessed in the two Birmingham leaves largely conforms to the standard text their orthography differs, especially in respect of the writing of the letter alif. Equally, the application of intermittent dashes to differentiate consonants varies from the counterpart pointing in the text at four places. Subsequent ultraviolet testing of the leaves has confirmed no underwriting, and they dated the parchment to between AD568 and 645, within a 95. 4% confidence interval, with a sample reference OxA-29418. The results will be published in datelist number 36 of the journal Archaeometry, the proposed radiocarbon date for the manuscript is significant, as the prophet Muhammad lived from c. 570 to 632. And it seems to open the possibility that the Uthmanic redaction took place earlier than had been thought – or even, conceivably. In any case, this – along with the beauty of the content. This means that the parts of the Qur’an that are written on this parchment can, with a degree of confidence, be dated to less than two decades after Muhammad’s death. In that study, the Paris Quran, BnF Arabe 328, is compared with Qurans in Istanbul, and concluded as having been written around the end of the seventh century and the beginning of the eighth century. Lumbard of Brandeis University has written in the Huffington Post in support of the proposed by the Birmingham scholars. Whereas, on the hand, counterpart accounts of Quranic origins within classical Islamic traditions stand up well in the light of ongoing scientific discoveries
7.
Arabic
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Arabic is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. Arabic is also the language of 1.7 billion Muslims. It is one of six languages of the United Nations. The modern written language is derived from the language of the Quran and it is widely taught in schools and universities, and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, government, and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, which is the language of 26 states. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the standards of Quranic Arabic. Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranic era, Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics. As a result, many European languages have borrowed many words from it. Many words of Arabic origin are found in ancient languages like Latin. Balkan languages, including Greek, have acquired a significant number of Arabic words through contact with Ottoman Turkish. Arabic has also borrowed words from languages including Greek and Persian in medieval times. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages, the Ancient South Arabian languages, the Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include, The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation into a past tense, the conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation into a present tense. The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms, the development of an internal passive. These features are evidence of descent from a hypothetical ancestor. In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside of the Ancient South Arabian family were spoken and it is also believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages were also spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hijaz, Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages, in Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested
8.
I'jaz
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In Islam, ijaz or inimitability of the Quran is the doctrine which holds that the Quran has a miraculous quality, both in content and in form, that no human speech can match. According to this doctrine the Quran is a miracle and its inimitability is the proof granted to Muhammad in authentication of his prophetic status. The concept of miraculousness of the Quran was understood as soon as it was revealed by Muhammed to the Arabs beginning on 22 December 609 CE, when Muhammad was 40 years of age. According to Sophia Vasalou, a scholar in theology, the reports about the Arabs bewildered reception of the Quran is crucial in the argument. The Arabs, upon hearing it, were lost for words in trying to classify it, is it poetry, is it magic. is it soothsaying. They could not find a form to which the Quran corresponded Vasalou adds. The concept of inimitability originates in the Quran, in five different verses, opponents are challenged to produce something like the Quran. Say, Bring you then ten chapters like unto it, and call whomsoever you can, other than God, or do they say he has fabricated it. Say bring then a chapter like unto it, and call upon whom you can besides God, or do they say he has fabricated it. Let them then produce a recital like unto it if they speak the truth, and if you are in doubt concerning that which We have sent down to our servant, then produce a chapter of the like. In the verses cited, Muhammads opponents are invited to try to produce a text like the Quran, or even ten chapters and it is understood among Muslims that that challenge has not been met. The literary quality of the Quran has been acknowledged by Muslim and some non-Muslim scholars. And there is evidence that Muslims accepted Islam on the basis of evaluating the Quran as a text that all human production. They did not question this, what they rejected was Qurans ideas, especially monotheism, numerous scholars devoted time to finding out why the Quran was inimitable. The majority of opinions was around eloquence of the Quran both in wording and meaning as its speech does not form to poetry nor prose commonly expressed in all languages, nonliguistic approaches focus on the inner meanings of the Quran. He thinks that it is the combination of language, ideas, Al Jurjani argued that the inimitability of the Quran is a linguistic phenomenon and proposed that the Quran has a degree of excellence unachievable by human beings. Al Jurjani believed that Qurans eloquence must be a special quality in the manner of its stylistic arrangement. He studied the Quran with literary proofs and examined the various literary features and he rejected the idea that the words and meaning of a literary work can be separated
9.
Samarkand Kufic Quran
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The Samarkand Kufic Quran is an 8th or 9th century manuscript Quran written in the territory of modern Iraq in the Kufic script. Today it is kept in the Hast Imam library, in Tashkent, in local Uzbek tradition, it is said to have belonged to the third caliph, Uthman ibn Affan. Based on orthographic and palaeographic studies, the manuscript probably dates the 8th or 9th century, radio-carbon dating showed a 95. 4% probability of a date between 765 and 855. The copy of the Quran is traditionally considered to be one of a commissioned by the third caliph Uthman, however. In 651,19 years after the death of the Islamic Prophet, Muhammad, Uthman commissioned a committee to produce a standard copy of the text of the Quran. Five of these authoritative Qurans were sent to the major Muslim cities of the era, and Uthman kept one for his own use in Medina, although the Samarkand Quran is most likely not one of those copies. The only other surviving copy was thought to be the one held in Topkapı Palace in Turkey, but studies have shown that the Topkapı manuscript is not from the 7th century. Uthman was succeeded by Ali, who took the uthmanic Quran to Kufa, the subsequent history of the Quran is known only from legends. According to one of them, when Tamerlane destroyed the area, he took the Quran to his capital, Samarkand, as a treasure. According to another, the Quran was brought from the caliph of Rum to Samarkand by Khoja Ahrar and it attracted the attention of Orientalists and eventually a facsimile edition was published in Saint-Petersburg in 1905. The 50 copies soon became rarities, the first thorough description and dating of the manuscript was undertaken by the Russian Orientalist Shebunin in 1891. After the October Revolution, Vladimir Lenin, in an act of goodwill to the Muslims of Russia, gave the Quran to the people of Ufa, Bashkortostan. After repeated appeals by the people of the Turkestan ASSR, the Quran was returned to Central Asia, to Tashkent, in 1924, where it has since remained. The parchment manuscript now is held in the library of the Telyashayakh Mosque, in the old Hast-Imam area of Tashkent, Uzbekistan, close to the grave of Kaffal Shashi, a folio containing a page from the Al-Anbiya is held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The manuscript is incomplete, it begins in the middle of verse 7 of the second sura, the manuscript has between eight and twelve lines to the page and, showing its antiquity, the text is devoid of vocalisation. Topkapi manuscript Sanaa palimpsest Codex Parisino-petropolitanus W. Ouspensky, S. Pissaref, St. Pétersbourg, Institut Archéologique de St. Pétersbourg. Публичной Библиотеки // Записки Восточного отделения Императорского Русского археологического общества, memory of the World Register - Nomination Form Uzbekistan - Holy Koran Mushaf of Othman
10.
Surah
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A Surah is the term for a chapter of the Quran. There are 114 Surahs in the Quran, each divided into verses, the chapters or suras are of unequal length, the shortest chapter has only three ayat while the longest contains 286 verses. Of the 114 chapters in the Quran,87 are classified as Meccan, except for sura At-Tawba, all chapters or suras commence with In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. This formula is known as the Bismillah and denotes the boundaries between chapters, the chapters are arranged roughly in order of descending size, therefore the arrangement of the Quran is neither chronological nor thematic. Suras are recited during the portions of Muslim prayers. Sura Al-Fatiha, the first chapter of the Quran, is recited in every unit of prayer, the word sura was used at the time of Muhammad as a term with the meaning of a chapter or a portion of the Quran. Its plural form suwar is also mentioned in the Quran, Or do they say, say, Then bring ten suwar like it and call upon whomever you can besides God, if you are truthful. Nöldeke following Buxtorf suggested that the sura has similar root with the Hebrew word שורה meaning a row. Some took it as connected with the Arabic word Sur meaning a wall, jeffery believes that it has a common origin with a Syrian word that means writing. Chapters in the Quran are not arranged in the order of revelation. For this reason, no attempt was made to edit the numerous revelations, organize them into thematic units, a number of medieval Islamic writers attempted to compile a chronologically ordered list of the chapters, with differing results. One version is given in a 15th-century work by Abd al-Kafi, another list is mentioned by Abu Salih, while a significantly different version of Abu Salihs is preserved in the book Kitab Mabani. Yet another, from the 10th century, is given by Ibn Nadim, a number of verses are associated with particular events which helps date them. Muhammads first revelation was chapter 96, verses 16,41 and 47,13 refer to migration of Muslims which took place in the year 622. Verses 8, 1-7 and 3, 120-175 refer to battles of Badr, Muhammads last pilgrimage is mentioned in 5,3 which occurred in 632, a few months before he died. This method is of limited usefulness because the Quran narrates the life of Muhammad or the history of the Muslim community only incidentally. In fact, very few chapters contain clear references to events which took place in Muhammads life, theodor Nöldekes chronology is based on the assumption that the style of the Quran changes in one direction without reversals. Tripartite chapters open with a warning, followed by one or more narratives about unbelievers
