The fol­low­ing is a video lec­ture made by Hamza Yusof on July 14th, 1997 and in coöper­a­tion with Alham­bra Pro­duc­tions. The top­ic of the his­to­ry of the Qur’an and its com­pi­la­tion, and forms as part of a ​“Foun­da­tions of Islam” series of lec­tures. Hamza Yusof gave a good his­tor­i­cal back­ground of the Qur’an, its his­to­ry and how it was Revealed in stages to the Prophet Muham­mad (P), its com­pi­la­tion after the pass­ing of the Prophet (P) as well as demon­strat­ing the tex­tu­al integri­ty of the Qur’an, as opposed to the tex­tu­al frailty of the Judeo-Chris­t­ian text which stands on shaky ground. Also of inter­est is the Ques­tion & Answer ses­sion towards the end of this lec­ture which we hope our read­ers will find beneficial.

In Qur’aanic sci­ences, it refers to the var­i­ous ways and man­ners of recit­ing the Qur’aan that are in exis­tence today. As Imaam az-Zarkashee stat­ed, the Qur’aan is the rev­e­la­tion that was giv­en to Muham­mad (PBUH), and the qira’aat are the vari­a­tions in the words and pro­nun­ci­a­tions of this rev­e­la­tion. Thus the qira’aat are the ver­bal­i­sa­tion of the Qur’aan, and the Qur’aan is pre­served in the qira’aat. Each qiraa’a has its own pecu­liar rules of recita­tion (tajweed) and vari­a­tions in words and let­ters, and is names after the reciter (Qaa­ree) who was famous for that par­tic­u­lar qiraa’a.

This chap­ter dis­cuss­es the def­i­n­i­tion of ahruf, the num­ber of accept­ed ahruf as well as the exis­tence of the ahruf today and its wisdom.

This excerpt crit­i­cis­es the work of the Ori­en­tal­ist Arthur Jef­fery men­tioned as well as dis­cuss­es the var­i­ous mis­un­der­stand­ings of the tech­ni­cal terms held by Jeffery.