Rahmani Dan Tamanna Imadi
Rahmani Dan Tamanna Imadi
Rahmani Dan Tamanna Imadi
with ‘Umar and Zayd for such an important endeavor. A task as monumental
as the Qur’an’s collection must have required great effort.40 The nature of
the task was such that it required the services of many people who would
copy and tally the codex with the originals, especially because there were a
few Companions who claimed to have their own codices, such as Ibn Mas‘ud
and Ubayy b. Ka‘b.
Imadi also raised similar concerns. As he saw it, Abu Bakr should have
deputed other individuals, besides merely Zayd, for this task. According to
‘Imadi, the commonly accepted traditional narratives clearly show that it was
Zayd alone who was employed to collect the Qur’an. He rejected the whole
narrative of Abu Bakr’s initiative as being unusual (gharb) as it was
narrated by only one individual, Zayd. This single narrator, ‘Imadi argued,
casts doubt on the reliability of the story. Why didn’t other narrators like
Anas b. Malik report the incident? Anas was only one year younger than
Zayd, and furthermore reported a narrative which depicts the collection of
the Qur’an in the time of ‘Uthman;
Both Rahmani and ‘Imadi question the very purpose of ‘Uthman’s project to
unify the recitation of the Qur’an. As discussed above, the purpose of
Uthman’s recension was to resolve discrepancies in the reading of the
Qur’an and bring people together over a single recitation. However, the
traditional sources agree that the copies made lacked diacritics and vowel
signs. ‘Imadi argues that since ‘Uthman never sent any reciter with the
copies made, people could still recite the Qur’an differently. In the absence
of diacritics and vowel signs, there could not have been a single standard
reading.42 We will return to this point later. Drawing on Ibn Abi Dawud’s
Kitb al-maif, ‘Imadi refers to different codices in the possession of
several people among the Companions and Successors after the ‘Uthmanic
recension, which reflects ‘Uthman’s failure to achieve his purported goal.