2019-01-21T23:32:00-08:00
I was in a historical discussion session with researchers in history, and we were in a discussion about ancient history, so I posed a question to everyone, a question that always occupied me: Why do we not find in the inscriptions of ancient Yemen inscriptions that talk about the customs of the ancients and their daily lives, so that we can imagine the past, so all the monuments Are you talking about religion, tribal battles, and inscriptions of kings’ victories? There were many answers to my question, including that Yemen did not reach a state of centralization and there were tribal wars to form a single political entity, and some of them were the nature of Yemen’s geography, which was concerned with urbanization.
The truth is, I was not convinced by those answers, because the situation is not limited to Yemen. When we look at the inscriptions of human civilizations in general and in the region in particular, we notice that most of them are devotional religious texts and the victories of kings with tribes, and most of the remaining monuments are ancient temples and we do not find traces. Huge palaces of kings, most of them temples, and this observation makes us ask a logical question: Where was man? Why was man hidden?!
I believe that the religious text was the beginning, and it was the strongest cognitive authority in man’s historical journey, and man’s movement and actions were subject to the laws and perceptions of the religious text.
By relying on this observation, we can understand the products of civilization and its works, and about ancient history, most of whose texts that have reached us are dominated by the religious perceptions of man. We believe that religion will help us understand the movement of ancient history, the establishment of the civilizations that arose, and the nature of the ancient texts of civilizations. And solving historical issues related to religion, and there is the Zionist Old Testament narrative about Palestine that was created by the colonial West, and there is the history of the beginnings of Islam and the explanation of the reasons for the spread of Islam in a short period of time and over a large geographical area in an amazing way that has baffled researchers, thinkers and historians, and you cannot find This has a convincing objective explanation.
Did the texts of the Qur’an and the Old Testament suddenly decline?
When we say that there is no religion that comes out of nowhere, and that there is no religion that appears suddenly without an ancient context, we are saying scientific and logical words, and many find it difficult to comprehend this thing. For example, some view religion as a sudden event that descends for people to embrace it, while Religion is a higher consciousness that has an ancient, continuous, continuous, and inseparable context. This is something that many non-religious people, liberals, and researchers in comparative religions do not understand, and who constantly repeat the phrase that one religion was stolen from another religion, and that the issue was copyright and patent.
Why can’t we exclude religious text in understanding history?
When talking about the scientific reading of history by referring to religious texts, we will come across two groups:
The first group is those who place the religious text as the primary reference in their analysis, thinking, and understanding of history, and the second group is those who reject the religious text and believe that relying on the religious text as one of the research tools loses the research’s scientific character and turns it into an imaginary journey far from the truth.
Our approach puts us in a place between the two previous cases, and we did not choose that place, but rather the standards of our approach put us there.
We are in that place not out of a religious belief, but because we cannot rule out the religious text after understanding it well and removing what has accumulated on it over time in order to finally obtain a picture close to the truth, relying on it as evidence that gives us flashes of light in understanding history, and this is Glimpses of its indirect results are that it may help the first team understand the second team, and may make the owners of the second team understand the first team more.
Why
As we said before, religion was the most powerful motive for man, and the religious text represented the highest awareness, like the space in which societies moved, and therefore the religious text is a memory of awareness and thought, and an ancient awareness that is inherited, but the advantage in the religious text is what makes us… We do not rule it out in understanding history, as it carries a very strong supremacist authority that obligates the believer to preserve, transmit, and inherit it. But the belief that the religious text deals with history is incorrect.
The religious text gives us a pure truth for ancient consciousness, and this truth helps us in the task of reading history.
But this result collides with a very logical question:
If there was a supreme authority that obligated man to preserve and inherit the religious text, then why did man in the region not preserve the first religious texts discovered in Iraq, Misr, Syria, and Yemen?
We will leave the answer to this important question for another article, but if we assume that we have found a logical answer to the previous question… this will lead us to another question:
To what level can we rely on religious text in reading history?!
When talking about religious text, we distinguish three types of texts in our approach:
1- The first type is the basic religious text such as the Qur’an, the Old Testament, and the New Testament.
2- The second type is the explanatory religious text, which is the text that interprets the first text and carries within it an intellectual, doctrinal memory in understanding the basic text. I call this the temporal awareness of the text, and this type is spoken by religious symbols of a second religious rank.
3- The third type is religious texts that come from the mouth of religious symbols without relying on the basic text.
The basic sacred religious text
When we talk about the basic religious text, we mean the most correct and sacred text, and when we say the most correct, we mean two aspects. The first aspect is the believers’ belief in it that it is the first correct text, and the second aspect is the correctness in the process of preserving it and passing it down generation after generation.
But where does the religious text get its authority?
The religious text cannot come from a vacuum, and there must be an ancient willingness to accept such a linguistic system for the sacred texts, and there must be an absolute, superficial authority within the cultural system that requires preserving the text and taking great care in transmitting and preserving it. This makes us assume that religious books Sacred ancient texts have been preserved.
But there is a strange, anomalous and illogical phenomenon in the region, which is the existence of two religious texts of the first type (i.e., two foundations), in two different languages and in two different styles…the Qur’an and the Old Testament.
Totally illogical, and totally unnatural…. There must be one basic text.
The truth is that we cannot separate the issue…but if we put the Qur’an and the Old Testament in one basket and compared them, we would place the texts of the Qur’an as more authentic than the Old Testament, and this ruling is not based on my belief, as by health we do not mean the validity of the doctrine, but rather The most accurate and careful, because there are objective reasons that make us believe that, and one of the most important reasons is that everyone agrees that the book of the Old Testament that is in our hands was compiled and compiled for the first time in the Greek language in the third century BC and it was called at that time the Septuagint translation, and from Greek it was transferred to and from Hebrew. To the rest of the world’s languages, then several books were added to it after that era in varying historical stages. When translating from Greek into Hebrew and Syriac, and from Hebrew and Syriac into other languages, it is natural for distortions to occur in the meanings and names of geography, and to this day the Old Testament is still subject to distortions from one edition to another. This must be taken into consideration.
As for the Qur’an, it was only written in one language from the beginning of its appearance and has continued to this day. On the one hand, and on the other hand, the Qur’an speaks about this important point that occurred with the book of the Old Testament and emphasizes it, and the Qur’an itself says that its text is It is correct, not distorted, and there is no crookedness in it. It is in the language that people understand and not in a foreign language, and because the Qur’an mentions it, we assume that the Qur’an has a different and radical treatment.
But one of the most important reasons that makes us put the texts of the Qur’an at the beginning
Since it is the basic religious text, there is a unique phenomenon among Muslims, which is the phenomenon of Muslims memorizing the entire Qur’an by heart, which does not exist among other religions. This phenomenon makes us believe that we are facing a culture that takes great care in preserving its Holy Book. This culture does not appear to us to be a new culture, but rather it appears to us to be a deeply rooted, established and very ancient culture, with religious values that preserve the sacred text literally because it is the highest sacred text.
These observations make us believe that the Qur’an is a very ancient text.
In a previous article, we talked about the seven readings of the Qur’an, and many Muslims find this topic difficult to understand, and some take advantage of this approach to question the Qur’an.
We talked about this topic for information only, because we do not believe in this written heritage, because the Muslim only received a complete Qur’an as it is today. This is an existing, fixed and well-established reality in a culture that deals with a sacred religious text, and what is present in the heritage is the words of humans trying to impose their authority on the authority of the religious text. Taking advantage of the current presence of two recitations of the Qur’an in circulation. To be the gateway to questioning the highest absolute religious authority that exists within a culture.
Therefore, when we dealt with this topic to clarify a topic that exists in the heritage only, for the sake of examining it.
But what about the two currently existing recitations of the Qur’an?
What currently exists…..two
The reading that is called the reading of Hafs on the authority of Asim and the reading that is called the reading of Warsh on the authority of Nafi’.
What is the meaning of readings?
Reading is a single infinitive language and its plural is qira’at, and he read the book as qira’ana (with dhammah) and he read something as qira’ana (with dhammah), also pluralizing it and dhammah, and from it the Qur’an is named because it collects the surahs and includes them, and the Almighty’s saying {Indeed, it is upon us to collect it and read it}, meaning its reading.
This is the very correct meaning of the word reading and the word Qur’an. Reading is the Qur’an, and the Qur’an is called Qur’an because it is the source of the verb to read.
We believe that the first source of the verb to read is Qur’an, but the word Qur’an was made denotative in the name of one book, which is the religious Bible, and another source of the verb to read was derived with the word read and applied to reading any other book other than the religious book, in order to distinguish between The word Qur’an and the word reading.
This belief will lead us to a logical question: If the Qur’an is reading, where will the reading take place? Was there a holy book and reading this book was called the Qur’an?
Yes, this is the brief meaning of the concept of readings, and because what currently exists is two readings, it is two readings of the book.
Why is there no single reading?
The truth is one reading
Is there a fundamental difference between the two current readings of the Qur’an?
no
In the past, there were few people who could read, because the Qur’an was read in an old script, older than the current script today. The Qur’an was transferred from a script in which there was not yet a letter (t) that resembled the letter (th or b), but rather from a script in which the letter (t) was drawn completely differently from the letter (b and th).
Why ?
Because the ancient writing system in the region was based on two rules
1- She did not write the vowel letters (a and y).
2- All ancient texts are written from right to left.
Those who write the original are the most knowledgeable and familiar with the correct way to read.
Today…we have only two readings, which are the original, which is the current reality, and all the other readings found in heritage books have no meaning at all. If we look at the differences in the two recitations currently in circulation (Hafs recitation and Warsh recitation), we will find that their total is small and does not exceed 30 places, and the nature of the differences is the vowel sounds (a and y) only.
Examples of the differences between the two readings
Malak = Malik (letter Alif)
Ihsan = well (letter Alif)
Why do we definitively assert that the Qur’an was copied from a Qur’an written in syllabic script?
If the Qur’an had been copied from a Qur’an written in a script similar to today’s, or in a script before punctuation, there would not have been a difference in the reading of the word (mulk).
The word (malek) is written differently from the word (malik), and no difference will occur in it as happened in these two readings. Therefore, in the first Qur’an from which readers read, the word (king) was written in the following manner:
( king )
This observation confirms to us conclusively that the Qur’an was not transmitted to us as the fictitious heritage books told us, about a person after the death of the Prophet inside a room collecting the Qur’an, arranging it, and taking it out to the people in a Qur’an. Rather, it came to us from an original copy written in a very old script, and it was not written in such a way. The current script today is never, never, not even in the script before punctuation, but in a completely different script, and there are no vowel letters in it… Because if it were like today’s script, the difference in readings would not always occur, specifically in the vowel letters (A and Y). .
The existence of a culture that takes extreme care when dealing with a religious text, even at the level of a single letter, indicates that we are facing a very well-established and ancient culture that sanctified writing, text, and letters in a deep and beyond the usual way, a culture that is very careful about the wording of the religious text without any increase or decrease. This keenness is evidence that there is a very ancient and distant time behind the text.
Therefore, we firmly believe that the current script in which we write is a modern and advanced stage in writing…a modern script and not ancient at all, and the first appearance of this script in history took place after the Qur’an was transferred from ancient Qur’ans written in an ancient script cut into Paper Qur’ans in a modern cursive script……that is, the Qur’an in its current form is what made us adopt this new script.
The most important point remains that Muslims do not pay attention to while they are reciting the Qur’an, and they do not pay attention to the fact that they are reciting the beginning of some surahs with broken letters. I believe that it would have been preferable for the first person to draw the calligraphy of the Qur’an to write the disjointed letters in the Qur’an in the form:
M = A L M
Hm = h m
Of course, it is important, so that the reader understands that he is reading the letters of the original book, and not missing words in the Qur’an because the sheep ate them, as some fools believe. Because the Qur’an was copied from ancient copies of the Qur’an in a script with broken letters, and not in the current script. This awareness is very important for a Muslim to understand the context of his sacred religious text.
The topic may seem very convincing and logical, but there are still those who need certainty.
So far, for me, there is absolute certainty, but there is no harm in providing other evidence.
Look at the artifact in the middle of the picture. This piece was found by a friend some time ago. It is an engraving of a woman with Musnad lines underneath it. This piece stayed with me for a period of time, and it was the main reason that changed my perceptions and view of the Holy Qur’an.
I will tell you the full story in an upcoming article
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