Islam critiqued keeps sinking; al Hajjaj changes the Quran?

In answer to the video "Miraculous Preservation of the Quran: Burying the Myth"

There is not a single report saying that al-Hajjaj opposed Uthman's recension. Yet many traditions depict him as disparaging other authoritative compilations in circulations, such as the one of ibn Masud. Also, al-Hajjaj was merely the governor of one county -Iraq- of the huge Islamic land without the ability to do the Quran any harm. In Uthman's time itself, countless copies of his codexes were already disseminated far and wide. The phenomenon was even more amplified by the time of al-Hajjaj.

Supposing that he was still able to change the copies of his county how could he reach the 1000s of other ones in other districts, let alone reform and reset the people's memories to his "major alterations"? This is equivalent to saying that should suddenly the king of Saudi Arabia decide to forcefully change the Quran entirely in his own country today, then it would mean those changes could somehow affect the memories and written Qurans of billions worldwide. In his own lifetime, when al-Hajjaj dispatched one of his codices to Egypt, the local governor Abd al-Aziz ibn Marwan, rejected it, then had his own codex produced. Al-Hajjaj's authority in the matter was thus regional at most. He was not in a position to carry out an empire-wide standardization of scripture.

The bottom line is that even by the furthest stretch of the imagination, if one would accept the claim of corruption of the Quran as true, then how does that really impact the remaining oral and written tradition already disseminated far beyond al-Hajjaj's jurisdiction? It is worth reminding that there exists no parallel reports, contemporary or later, through another chain to substantiate the claim as regards al-Hajjaj. No contradiction is ever mentionned between the Codices of Iraq and the other Codices. The Abbassid dynasty that was built upon the ruins of the Umayyads, of whom al-Hajjaj was the most notable governor, did not waste a single occasion to show the Umayyad's negative aspects and effects on Islam in general. And yet we do not hear or read a word as regards this particular controversy, most significant in discrediting an enemy with whom they were at war. If anything, what the historical reports show is that al Hajjaj was very helpful in consolidating the Uthmanic text, not a new one or his own invented one.

That is why the Abbassid caliphs, that supplanted the Umayyads did not destroy al-Hajjaj's copies but instead would tacitly discredit it, by for example, putting it in a box on the side of the pillar adjacent to the minbar in the mosque (Ibn Zabala). Contrary to some critics' claims, al-Hajjaj was very careful in preserving the Uthmanic recension. He for instance immidiately summoned Yazid al-Farisi, the scribe of his predecessor Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad because of the introduction of 2 alef in 2 verses 23:87,89. Ibn Ziad had done it simply to agree with his Basran dialect. This shows how alteration or tampering with the Quran from al-Hajjaj, or anyone else for that matter, even if minimal, cannot have taken place without any reaction from the contemporary scholars.

The background of al-Hajjaj's compilation effort is this. His governorship came at a time of great political turmoil in Iraq between the shiite Kufans and the ruling Umayyads. Tension had already started in the time of his predecessor ibn Ziyad. The Kufans, partisans of Ali ibn abi Talib as the rightful successor of the prophet, symbolized their political rejection of the Umayyad by clinging to the recital of ibn Masud from the prophet. Ibn Ziyad, Al-Hajjaj's predecessor, would for example provoke the Kufans by reciting suras 113 and 114 in prayer, as it is known that ibn Masud had not included them in his compilation. Al-Hajjaj was even bolder in his provocations. He would mock and discredit ibn Masud as well as his recital

"How I wonder about Ibn Masud! He claimed to have read the [original] Quran of God. I swear by God that it is just a piece of rajaz poetry of the Bedouins".

Al-Hajjaj also reportedly said

"Ibn Masud is the chief of hypocrites. If I had lived in the same time as his, I would have soaked the ground with his blood ’”.

He would often threaten the Kufans should they not cease following the reading of ibn Masud (Asim ibn Bahdala). His hatred for his Kufan enemies, whose recital according to ibn Masud continuously symbolized the rejection of the Umayyad caliphate, was such that Al-Hajjaj swore that he would erase this reading from the mushaf

"even if it would be with a rib of a swine".

But because he could not do so, as he knew it would be tantamount to rejecting the Quran itself, what he did instead is conducting a major standardization project of the Quranic text. Only then, would he be able to exclude ibn Masud's reading in some instances from the skeletal text.

The initiative was supported by the central government in Damascus. Al-hajjaj selected memorizers, readers, gramarians and scribes from Basra only. Just as Uthman before him used as a blueprint AbuBakr's collection that was in Hafsa's hands, al-Hajjaj used the private mushaf of Uthman, which was then in the possession of the family of Uthman (Al-Baqillani). And, just like his predecessor, as the work of the project approached its end, al-Hajjaj destroyed the texts in circulation that differed from the Uthmanic recension. Of course he did not miss the occasion to destroy ibn Masud's copy so as to progressively make the people forget his reading. This however did not work as his reading, going back to the prophet, is still known today. It is none other than the reading of Aasim through ibn Masud from the prophet. The great reciter Aasim had preserved 2 readings from the prophet. Al-Hajjaj obviously knew he needed to do more to make the people forget the reading of ibn Masud. His standardized text did not allow the reading of ibn Masud, just as today for example one reading the Hafs text does not allow for other authentic readings, because its vowelization and dotting corresponds to strictly one reading. Al-Hajjaj then decreed that in the mosques of the major cities one was only allowed to recite from the new codices. Malik ibn Anas said

"The recitation of the Quran from the mushaf was not an old tradition among the people. The first to introduce it was al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf".

However, even on this point, he was unsuccessful. Especially in the anti-Umayyad city of Kufa where people would not give credit to their enemy by using his text.

In this atmosphere of hatred between the 2 camps, Shiites and Umayyads, al-Hajjaj could have never done the slightest alteration to the text itself and go unnoticed. The rejection of al-Hajjaj's compilation was never due to his changing or corruption of the text. None of his numerous enemies, let alone the other Muslims spread all over the territories on whom he had no jurisdiction, ever accused him of corruption. All that al-Hajjaj did to the Uthmanic text was adding sura titles, sura and paragraph divisions, dotting on certain similar looking consonants. In a tradition going back to Yahya ibn abi Kathir (d 129/747)

"The Quran was bare [of all diacritics] in the masahif. The points on the ya and ta were the first points to have been introduced. They said: ‘It does not go against the Quran. It will make the text of the Quran clearer ’”.

The introduction of diacritical points in the text was an innovation, although dotting was already practiced in pre-Islamic times. The first compilers of the Quran simply chose not to use dots so as to secure the text in a double preservation method. None would be able to correctly read it without being first introduced to the proper recital.

Al-Hajjaj further comissioned the assembly to count the verses, words and consonants. The differences in figures that came to us were due to whether the vowelized script was included in the counting or not. Different readings could also result in a different count, or whether the basmalla was included as part of the suras or not. All the numbers are very close, except in ibn Masud's count. Clearly in that case, a copyist error reported some 40.000 consonants and 500 word differences with the other counts. Had such a Quran been in circulation the Muslim word would have known it, even more so al-Hajjaj and his partisans who had every reason to discredit it.