Spelling and Literacy

If the Quran was solely, or even predominately, an oral transmission during the prophet’s life, then we would expect to find much variability in spelling between the oldest Quran manuscripts. Additionally, if the Quran was revealed only to the prophet as an oral recitation, then this would imply that the text of the Quran was not part of divine revelation, and therefore scribes should have been allowed to apply their own discretion in the spelling in their writing of the Quran. Except upon analysis of the earliest Quran manuscripts, we find this is not the case.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the earliest Quran manuscripts is the spelling across the entire text from the thousands of manuscripts is obsessively consistent. This is particularly interesting since several letters in Arabic have very similar sounds despite having completely different orthography (rasm).

• أ vs. ع

• ت vs. ط

• ح vs. ه

• ذ vs. ظ

• د vs. ض

• س vs. ص

• ذ vs. ز

• ك vs. ق

• ز vs. ظ

If we are to believe that the Quran was solely or predominately oral and given to illiterate people, then we would expect that there would be a vast amount of spelling differences among the thousands of the earliest manuscripts that are in existence. Except, this is not the case. It is so rare that when something like this is discovered, it gets a mass amount of attention, like in the word “basatan” ( بَسْطَةً ) in 7:69, where in some manuscripts, it is written incorrectly with a saad ( ص ) rather than with a siin ( س ).

Another interesting occurrence is the name Abraham (Ibrahim), which occurs 69 times in the Quran. Throughout the Quran, this name is consistently spelled ( إِبْرَٰهِيمَ ), except for Sura 2, where the 15 occurrences of Abraham is spelled as ( إِبْرَٰهِـۧمَ ) without the ( ي ). It is worth noting that either spelling does not impact the pronunciation, yet this shows direct deliberation in the details of the Arabic spelling within the text.

The only variation that one will find in older manuscripts of the Quran is in regards to the three long vowels from the Arabic language ( ا ، و ، ي ), and even then, it is only in select instances where it does not have a grammatical impact.

The consistency in spelling in the Quran manuscripts shows the extreme care the earliest Muslims took to preserve the Quran and not deviate. The Dutch scholar in the historical linguistics of the Quran, Marjin van Putten, in a Twitter thread from 2020, summarizes how the earliest Quran manuscripts preserve the consistency of spelling of certain words even when these words could be spelled differently without impacting their meaning or pronunciation.

This meticulous consistency in spelling has perplexed individuals who ascribe to the notion that the Quran’s primary form was oral. Because if that were the case, one would expect to find many variations in spellings across manuscripts throughout history over vast regions. This again shows that the strict written form of the Quran was just as important, if not more so than the oral transmission.