Historical Evolution of the Qur’ānic Text – from ‘Uṯmān to ibn Muǧāhid and Beyond
Historical Evolution of the Qur’ānic Text – from ‘Uṯmān to ibn Muǧāhid and Beyond

Summary/Abstract: The paper is an attempt to sum up efforts being made in the field of Quranic Studies to come up with a critical edition of the text of the Quran – the holy book of Islam – basing on oldest, extant Quranic manuscripts and secondary literature, and this in order to enable text criticism based on source texts. The quest for authographic / interpretative text-forms of the Qur’anic revelations is an attempt to reach back as far as possible into the earliest history of Islam. The reconstruction of a critical text of the Qur’an, i.e. a (single or multiple) original version(s) of the text from which all subsequent manuscript versions and readings stem, is an ongoing quest for scholars of Quranic studies, in the Western and Eastern hemisphere. And that is because merely the process of studying the manuscripts delivers us unique insight into Quranic history – historical insight, dogmatic insight and literary insight.

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