Textual History of the Qur'an: Difference between revisions

Muslims are commonly told that the differences between the Qira'at can be explained away as styles of pronunciation or dialect and spelling rules. Called uṣūl, these are rules that apply to the entire reading, causing vast numbers of tiny differences. Yet there is another category, called farsh, of individual differences that cannot be generalised in rules, which also includes changes in wording. In a few cases the variants added or omitted words, and others are completely different words or contradict each other in meaning. The Corpus Coranicum database<ref>[http://corpuscoranicum.de/lesarten/index/sure/1/vers/1 Corpus Coranicum - Variants tab]</ref>, the Encyclopedia of the Readings of the Quran database<ref>[https://erquran.org/ https://erquran.org] to see the variants in Arabic script and transliterated, including non-canonical variants</ref>, and the nquran website<ref>[http://nquran.com nquran.com] to see the variants in Arabic script</ref> can be used as neutral online sources for verifying the existence of such variations in the Qira'at. The Bridges translation of the Quran by Fadel Soliman can be selected on [https://quran.com quran.com] and highlights words with canonical variants, listing them in English with their readers as footnotes. An interesting example is given below, and more of them are listed in the tables in the next sections.