بِسْمِ ٱللَّٰهِ ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
When discussing aspects of the history of the Qur’an, it is
important that a scholar incorporates not just the previous discussions on the
topic but also any new, relevant evidences that have come to light. This brief
article aims to bring additional new evidence to support the Tawqifi view of the arrangement of the surahs. But first, a brief overview follows.
As is well known, the words of the Qur’an are split into
Ayats (often translated as “verses”) various Surahs (often translated as
“chapters”). The various Surahs were revealed at different points of the life
of the Prophet (ﷺ) and the order of
revelation of the Surahs is different to the order of the Surahs found in
current Mushafs (which agrees to the order in the Mushafs of the Caliph Uthman
bin Affan (1)). Each Surah is, in a sense, standalone and doesn’t depend in
meaning upon a particular order of Surahs in the Qur’an, unlike what is common
in chapters in Western books. Thus, the Surah order doesn’t affect the
preservation of the Qur’an or its message, although you can find extra “
benefits” from the current arrangement according to the “coherence” school.
To summarise the above, there are two ways to look at the
orders/arrangement:
1) Order/arrangement of the descent of revelation;
2) Order/arrangement in which the Caliph Uthman compiled the Qur’an and which the Mushafs after him followed until now. The term “Uthmanic Mushafs” refers to the Mushafs compiled by the Caliph Uthman.
Before the Uthmanic Mushafs, some of the Sahaba had personal
Mushafs with a different order of Surahs and that can be due to them:
1) Basing the order/arrangement on the order/arrangement of the descent of revelation;
2) Basing the order on the order in which they learnt the Surahs;
3) Basing the order on their needs for teaching or learning
4) Not knowing the order dictated by the Prophet (ﷺ) after the Qur’an was finalised in the final presentation with the Archangel Jibril (as);
5) Not compiling all the Surahs but only some of them for their own personal needs of learning;
6) Some other reason.
There are three broad views of Muslim scholars in terms of
the order of the Surahs found in the Uthmanic Mushafs:
1) The order/arrangement of the Surahs was dictated (verbally or through practice) by the Prophet (ﷺ), especially after the Qur’an was finalised in the final presentation with the Archangel Jibril (as). This view is called “Tawqifi” here and is the dominant/majority view currently amongst the scholars;
2) The order of the Surahs was mostly dictated by the Prophet (ﷺ) but the order of some was based on the ijtihad of the Sahaba (companions of the Prophet (ﷺ)). This view is called “semi-ijtihadi” here;
3) The order of the Surahs was the ijtihad of the Sahaba (companions of the Prophet (ﷺ)). This view is called “ijtihadi” here.
Each group claims historical reports to support itself,
whilst the “coherence” school has claimed that the miraculous structure of the
Qur’an proves that the order is Tawqifi. There is no need to go through the
classical evidences of the various sides here as that is discussed by Dr Nur
al-Din al-‘Itr in his “Ulum ul-Qur’an”, Zarqani’s “Manahil al-‘Irfan” and
al-Suyuti in his “Itqan”.
The strongest evidence of the semi-ijtihadi and ijtihadi
groups is the narration about Surah al-Tawba/Bara’a and Uthman i.e. they argue
that the placement of that Surah was based on ijtihad during the Uthmanic
compilation project. However, this evidence is weak in isnad (see al-Itr’s
discussion) and is decisively refuted by the findings of the San’a lower-text.
This lower-text is from before the Uthmanic Mushafs and is a window into the
views of some people before the Uthmanic Mushafs.
The San’a lower-text has Surah al-Tawba/Bara’a in the same
order as found in the Uthmanic Mushafs and conclusively refutes the evidence of
the semi-ijtihadi and ijtihadi groups (2).
Furthermore, contrary to the orientalist false claim that
only one person (Khuzayma) knew the last two verses of Surah al-Tawba/Bara’a
and that it was added by the Caliph Uthman, the San’a lower-text contains those
verses (no Companion Mushaf missed them), hence disproving the orientalist
belief.
However, the strongest evidence to settle the debate on
Surah numbering and verse numbers is the clear logic of the below:
Allah Most High takes an oath by the “even” and the “odd” in
89:3. The words “even” and “odd” have been kept general in the Qur’an and can
refer to many things (see the tafsir al-Bahr al-Madid of Ibn ‘Ajiba for more).
In mathematics, the following can be seen in a logical manner:
1) List all the Surah/chapter numbers of the Qur'an.
2) Sum the 1st step. You get 6555.
3) List the number of Ayats/verses for each corresponding Surah/chapter.
4) Sum the 3rd step. You get 6236.
5) Add each Surah/chapter number with the corresponding number of Ayats/verses to get the term “SA”.
6) Put the even results of 5th step in one column and the odd in another. They are 57 each.
7) Sum each column of 6th. You get 6236 and 6555, which equals steps 2 and 4.
For the visual folk or for those unclear about how simple and
logical the calculations are, it is shown in the last 5 minutes of Ustadh
Marwan Ghannam’s video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ4sh-FQnaY
I think the above proof is sufficient for anyone trained as an auditor or accountant but there are various other Surah-order related mathematical patterns in the Qur’an. Another simple one is the following:
1) Surah an-Naml (27) starts with the Huruf Muqatta’at (sometimes translated as the “Disjointed letters”) as طس
2) If you count the number of ط appearing in the Surah, it is 27
3) If you count the number of س appearing in the Surah, it is 93
4) The above gives 27:93, in the same order and number as the Surah number and total number of Ayats in the Surah i.e. Surah an-Naml is position 27th in the whole Qur’an and has 93 Ayats. The chance that this is at random is 0.0025.
5) If the above wasn’t enough, then if you total 27+93, you get 120, which is the Abjad number of Naml. You can see it for yourself at https://www.abjadcalc.com/
6) Sticking to the letter ط from the Huruf Muqatta’at, it first occurs in them at 20:1 and is exactly mid-way between the total number of times ط occurs in the Qur’an (i.e. total is 1273 and there are 636 ط before it and 636 after it).
The chance of the above being due to chance is very very
very slim. I can provide other examples but I don’t think there is a
need. The above provide additional evidence for the Tawqifi view.
Allah Most High knows best.
Footnotes:
1) The Caliph Uthman was not the first compiler of the Qur’an. Qur’anic Mushafs existed before his time. I recommend Mustafa A’zami’s work “History of the Qur’anic Text” for more details.
2) Someone may counter that the order of some other surahs differs in the San’a lower text. However, that is not relevant because the San’a manuscript is not a complete Mushaf and wasn’t intending to follow the final order of the Prophet (ﷺ) but may have arranged it according to other criteria that I mentioned earlier. Thus, this manuscript cannot falsify the Tawqifi view but can only confirm it.
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