TEXTUAL CRITICISM AND QUR’AN
MANUSCRIPTS
By Keith E. Small
Lexington Books. 244 pages. £21.95
ISBN 978 0 739 177 532
CHALLENGING ISLAMIC TRADITIONS:
Searching Questions about the Hadith from
a Christian Perspective
By Bernie Power
William Carey Library. 296 pages. £16.42
ISBN 978 0 878 084 890
Islamic missionaries often claim that the Qur’an has been miraculously preserved from alteration, and that its text is exactly the same throughout the world.
Small’s book, based on his PhD thesis, demonstrates that both claims are questionable and are mainly recent: ‘… early and medieval Islamic scholarship was quite free in its recognition of textual variation and missing portions of the Qur’an, and did not tend to make claims of perfect transmission. Also, study of ancient Qur’anic manuscripts confirms the flexibility described in the earlier ages of Islamic scholarship’ (p.7).
