THE QURANIC SCRIPT Writing, although not very widespread in pre-Islamic time, was well-known among the Arabs. The script used in the seventh century, i. e . during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), consisted of very basic symbols, which expressed only the consonantal structure of a word, and even that with much ambiguity. While today letters such as ba, ta, tha, ya, are easily distinguished by points, this was not so in the early days and all these letters used to be written simply as a straight line. From this very basic system of writing there developed over the ages, various types of script, such as Kufi, Maghribi, Naskh, etc., which spread all over the world. The later invention of printing with standardized types has contributed to formalizing the writing. However, as far as the actual script of the Quran is concerned, there were two important steps which brought about the forms in which we have the Quranic text as it is today. These were the introduction of: • Vowelling marks (tashkil). • Diacritical marks (ajam). Tashkil Tashkil is the name for the signs indicating the vowels in Arabic scripts. They were apparently unknown in pre-Islamic times. These signs help to determine the correct pronunciation of the word and to avoid mistakes. Example: Byt تيب Baitun ُتْيَب When more and more Muslims of non-Arab origin and also many ignorant Arabs studied the Quran, faulty pronunciation and wrong readings began to increase. It is related that at the time of Duali (d. 69/638) someone in Basra read the following ayah from the Quran in a faulty way, which changed the meaning completely: ان ﷲ برئ من المشرکین و رسولہُ (translation) That God and His apostle dissolve obligations with the pagans [Q9: 3]. ان ﷲ برئ من المشرکین و رسولہِ (translation) That God dissolves obligations with the pagans and the apostle. The mistake occurred through wrongly reading rasulihi in place of rasuluhu, which could not be distinguished from the written text, because there were no signs or accents indicating the correct pronunciation. Unless someone had memorized the correct version he could out of ignorance easily commit such a mistake. The signs or accents to prevent such problems were introduced not long before the ajam and then got the shape they have to this day. It has been suggested that the origin of fatha is alif, the origin of kasrah is ya (without dots as in early books), and the origin of damma is waw. Hamzah was previously written as 2 dots. Ajam The function of a`jam is to provide a letter with a diacritical point. The Arabic letters, as we know them today, are made up of lines and points. The latter are called ajam. The ancient Arabic script did not have them, but consisted of strokes only. The addition of diacritical points to the plain writing of strokes helped to distinguish the various letters which could be easily mixed up. Example: تيب and تيب without any of the dots (it can’t be done with the software) Without dots this word cannot be easily recognized. With ajam, the letters of this word can easily be distinguished. Although the ajam (diacritical points) were already known in pre-Islamic times, they were rarely used. The very early copies of the Quranic manuscripts (and Arabic writing in general) did not have these signs. They were apparently introduced into the Quranic script during the time of the fifth Umayyad Caliph, Abd al-Malik Ibn Marwan (66-86H/685-705) and the governorship of Al-Hajjaj in Iraq, when more and more Muslims began to read and study the Quran, some of whom did not know much of the Quran, and others were of non-Arab origin. It is said of the well-known tabii (Follower) Al-Duali that he was the first to introduce these points into the Quranic text.
Posted on: Sat, 19 Jul 2014 10:55:44 +0000
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