Gerd Rüdiger Puin is a
GermanGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
scholar and an authority on
Qur'anThe Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
ic historical
orthographyThe orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
, the study and scholarly interpretation of ancient manuscripts. He is also specialist in Arabic paleography. He was a lecturer of Arabic at
Saarland UniversitySaarland University is a university located in Saarbrücken, the capital of the German state of Saarland, and Homburg. It was founded in 1948 in Homburg in co-operation with France and is organized in 8 faculties that cover all major fields of science...
, in
SaarbrückenSaarbrücken is the capital of the state of Saarland in Germany. The city is situated at the heart of a metropolitan area that borders on the west on Dillingen and to the north-east on Neunkirchen, where most of the people of the Saarland live....
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
Sana'a Qur'an find
Gerd Puin was the head of a restoration project, commissioned by the
YemenThe Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....
i government, which spent a significant amount of time examining the
ancient Qur'anic manuscripts discoveredThe Sana'a manuscripts, found in Yemen in 1972, are considered by some to be the oldest existent version of the Qur'an. Although the text has been dated to the first two decades of the eighth century The Sana'a manuscripts, found in Yemen in 1972, are considered by some to be the oldest existent...
in
Sana'a-Districts:*Al Wahdah District*As Sabain District*Assafi'yah District*At Tahrir District*Ath'thaorah District*Az'zal District*Bani Al Harith District*Ma'ain District*Old City District*Shu'aub District-Old City:...
,
YemenThe Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....
, in 1972, in order to find criteria for systematically cataloging them. According to writer Toby Lester, his examination revealed "unconventional verse orderings, minor textual variations, and rare styles of orthography and artistic embellishment." The scriptures were written in the early Hijazi Arabic script, matching the pieces of the earliest Qur'ans known to exist. Some of the papyrus on which the text appears shows clear signs of earlier use, being that previous, washed-off writings are also visible on it. In 2008 and 2009 Dr Elisabeth Puin published detailed results of the analysis of Sanaa manuscript DAM (dar al-makhtutat) 01.27-1 proving that the text was still in flux in the time span between the scriptio inferior and the scriptio superior of the palimpsest (Ein Frueher Koranpalimpsest aus San'a', part 1 in Schlaglichter 2008, part 2 in Vom Koran zum Islam 2009, both ed. Markus Gross and Karl-Heinz Ohlig, Verlag Hans Schiler Berlin).
More than 15,000 sheets of the Yemeni Qur'ans have painstakingly been cleaned, treated, sorted, cataloged and photographed and 35,000 microfilmed photos have been made of the manuscripts. Some of Puin's initial remarks on his findings are found in his essay titled the "Observations on Early Qur'an Manuscripts in San'a" which has been republished in the book
What the Koran Really SaysWhat the Koran Really Says: Language, Text and Commentary is the title of a book edited and translated by Ibn Warraq and published by Prometheus Books...
by
Ibn WarraqIbn Warraq is the pen name of a polemical author of Pakistani origin who is critical of Islam, and who founded the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society . He is a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry focusing on Qur'anic criticism...
.
Assessment of the Qur'an
In the 1999 Atlantic Monthly article referenced below, Gerd Puin is quoted as saying that:
Written publications
Ohlig, K.-H.Karl-Heinz Ohlig is a German professor of Religious Studies and the History of Christianity at the University of Saarland, Germany.He is the co-editor with Gerd Rudiger Puin of the book Die dunklen Anfänge...
& Puin, G.-R., 2005 .
Die dunklen Anfänge. Neue Forschungen zur Entstehung und frühen Geschichte des Islam ("The dark beginnings: new research on the origin and early history of Islam,") Hans Schiler Verlag.
Ohlig, K.-H. & Puin, G.-R., 2008.
The hidden origins of Islam : new research into its early history Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
¨Uber die Bedeutung der ¨altesten Koranfragmente aus Sanaa (Jemen) f¨ur die Orthographiegeschichte des Korans’ (About the importance of the oldest Qur'an fragments from Sana'a (Yemen) Orthography for the history of the Quran), in H.-C. Graf von Bothmer, K.-H. Ohlig and G.-R. Puin, ‘Neue Wege der Koranforschung’, Magazin forschung (Universit¨at des Saarlandes) 1 (1999), 37–40,
See also
- Christoph Luxenberg
Christoph Luxenberg is the pseudonym of the author ofThe Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran: A Contribution to the Decoding of the Language of the Qur'an and several articles in anthologies about early Islam....
- Patricia Crone
Patricia Crone, Ph.D., is a scholar, author, Orientalist, and historian of early Islamic history working at the Institute for Advanced Study. She established herself as a major challenger to the established narrative of the early history of Islam.- Career :Patricia Crone completed her...
- John Wansbrough
John Edward Wansbrough was an American historian who taught at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies . Wansbrough's emphasis was on the critique of traditional accounts of the origins of Islam...
- History of the Qur'an
External links