Rise of the History of the Qur’an in Modern Time: The Claims of the Western Scholars and Muslim Responses on the Preservation of the Qur’an

The preservation of the Qur’an is one of the debatable points among the western scholars. The interest in history of the text of the Qur’an in the west traces back to the 19th century a nd e arly 2 0th century. Western scholarship in modern time began to discuss the preservation of the Qur’an with Theodore Nöldeke’s work Geschichte des Qurans (1860). Later a Jewish Hungarian scholar Ignaz Goldziher’s Die Richtuungen der Islamischen Koranauslegung (1920) came to the scene after Nöldeke and became popular. Western scholars such as Arthur Jeffery expect the same from the Muslim side and claimed that there is no work in this feld apart from Abu Abdillah Zincani’s Tarikh al-Qur’an. Musa Jarullah Bigiyef’s work Tarikh al- Qur’an wa’l-Masahif (1905); Ahmet Cevdet Paşa’s (1822–1895) Khulasatü’l-Bayan f Ta’lif al-Qur’an (Istanbul 1303/1886), İsmail Fennî Ertuğrul, Kitab-ı İzale-i Şükûk, (İstanbul 1928) are among the early modern time responses to the western scholarship. Certainly earlier works in Ottoman and Arab world a re n ot a s well k nown a s recent works in Muslim world. Among the later works are: Muhammed Muhammed Abû Layla, al-Qur’an al-Karim min al-Manzuri’l-Istishraqi: Dirasa Naqdiyya Tahliliyya (Qairo 2002); Sasi Salim Haj Naqdü’l-khitabi’l-istishraqi: al-Zahira al- Istishraqiyya ve Atharuha f al-Dirasat al-Islâmiyya (Bayrut 2002); İbrahim Awad al-Mustashriqun wa’l-Qur’an: Dirasa li-Tarjamati Nafar min al-Mustashriqin al-Fransiyyin lil-Qur’an ve Arauhum fh (Kahire 2003). Muhammed Mustafa al-A’zami The History of the Qur’anic Text: from Revelation to Compilation: a Comparative Study with the Old and New Testaments (Leicester 2003). This paper is an analysis of the above mentioned works.