Title in Arabic or Hebrew
- القرآن
Introduction
- This sub-sub-series preserves documents, preparatory studies and notes by Kahle concerning the history of the qur’ānic text. These documents are composite, since Kahle dealt with the subject both in «The Cairo Geniza» (1st ed., London 1947) and in various articles. In the main, Kahle studied the issue of the language and the style of the Qur’ān and, more specifically, the early activity of the Qur’ān’s readers. In the chapter, “The Text of the Arabic Koran” of «The Cairo Geniza» (2nd ed., Eng. ed. 1959, pp. 141-149) he discussed in detail the content of two manuscripts he discovered, both belonging to the collection of Sir Alfred Chester Beatty, which preserve traditions in which people are exhorted to recite the Qur’ān respecting the case-endings (i.e. «iʻrāb»). The first manuscript (i.e. Ms Arab. 705), “dealing with the number of verses of the Koran”, contains an important quotation, «On the Reading of the Qur’ān», from al-Farrāʼ (d. 822), one of the greatest authorities on Arabic grammar and on readings of the Qur’ān. Kahle translated this quotation into English and edited the Arabic text in “Appendix IV” (pp. 345-346). The second manuscript (i.e. Ms J 152) is attributed to al-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad al-Mālikī and is entitled «Introduction to Knowledge of Koran Recitation» (in Arabic «al-Tamhīd fī maʻrifat al-taǧwīd»). In his article, “The Qur’an and the ‘Arabiya”, Kahle discussed the sixth chapter of al-Tamhīd, in which more that 120 exhortations to read the Qur’ān in the correct manner are to be found. Kahle translated the first 67 exhortations quoted by al-Mālikī. In a further article on the subject, “The Arabic Readers of the Koran”, he dealt fully with the question of the language used in the Qur’ān. The Archive also preserves various documents relating to this issue and the correspondence between Kahle and J. Fück, who in his «ʻArabīya. Untersuchungen zur Arabischen Sprach-und Stilgeschichte» (Berlin 1950, pp. 3-4) rejected Kahle’s hypothesis (see Kahle, «Geniza», 2nd ed., pp. 147-148).