Were the companions allowed to change words of the Quran, and was that only a temporary concession?

cave. That he was doing this this spiritual meditation in the cave and then because the bar in here, it's been argued that it's it's what they call a either bar. So, like the bar is there you you you vocalize the the bar, but in meaning it doesn't take any meaning. It's silent in the But, even if it even if it did take meaning with that, it would still fit in the sense that you know, this how you're trying to connect do it with or in the name of God.

That's an interesting I've well, I've never really thought of it like that, but that's a very fascinating kind of take. I feel that this whole thing of seeing the Quran with this kind of dynamism like let's say it is a a meaning it is and Allah is the say it is it is not a kind of Arabic This then gives much more kind of it really fleshes out the argument that the Quran when it does manifest can have a dynamic nature to it.

Like let's say when people did synonymize certain words, they substituted certain words that were very similar, but this wasn't really something it was not I mean it it isn't then all of a sudden such a difficult thing to comprehend. Do you feel this or Well, yeah, I think what has happened and I don't know whether it's just a modern phenomenon or whether there's classical roots for this, but like many many views about the Quran and this is not just Muslims, but like academics as well.

People take a very fixed and rigid view of what the Quran is and the whole dynamism is lost. Right? So, it I don't see anything inconsistent with the idea that the recitation cuz remember the recitation the Quran as recitation is the revelatory product. It's just like the end of the whole process.

The recitation according to again most theological schools, it's not identical with the the divine speech or the transcendent kitab. It's just a gateway to it. So, theologically speaking there's no problem with seven roof. There's no problem with the idea that the prophet Muhammad allowed variable or what they call multi-form recitations of the same surah.

There's no problem if the prophet said, "Okay, you can substitute certain divine names for other divine names and it's still Quran." I think it's quite likely that that this did happen. The roof Hadith is quite early and I have a hard like I don't know for what purpose in the time of Malik ibn Anas they would just forge a Hadith that undermines the fixed view of the Quran.

To me it doesn't make sense. So, I think there's some historical truth behind that roof tradition and it points to the fact that the prophet probably did allow this oral variability. And I would I agree with with Yaseen Dutton's argument that there's no actual original Quran. Okay. people are looking for the Well, there's no original Quran in the sense that there's no original text cuz the prophet didn't write it down.

And there's not even a single original recitational form. Rather, the prophet seems to have authorized a multiplicity of oral recitational formats for even the same surah and I don't even think it's a dialect issue cuz if the seven if you look at the seven Hadith if they're both like Qurayshi people who are reciting differently, it's not like someone came from another region in Arabia and had a different recitation.

So, I think it's quite likely that at the very early period the prophet either he recited it in slightly different ways. He substituted some words for others in the same surah and then people heard this. So, now you have variability or the prophet recited it in one way and then when people were reciting it differently, he authorized it and said, "Yeah, that's fine." Either way, what you're dealing with is you have multiple oral Yeah, because I would feel that the You see, so this view what Yaseen Dutton and I'm trying to arrange to kind of connect with him and I'd love to get

him on as well. But, what he I I feel I believe he calls it the multi-form. It's what I call the the dynamism or the dynamic nature of the Quran. You see, many traditional scholars like Ibn Abd al-Barr and these people discuss in Hadith and in other books that look the view of people like Imam Malik and Imam Shafi'i and they say others as well was that the Sahaba the companions were synonymizing words in the Quran.

They were kind of substituting. They don't use the word synonym. They say substituting them with other words. And maybe sometimes with certain like so they may have missed out a or replaced the wow with a fa or things like this. Now, the question here the debate the crux of the debate here is this substitution this dynamism was this a rukhsa?

Was this something or was it the azima? Was this something which they were allowed to do as a dispensation to make life easy for them? As many of the scholars did say so many I think Abu Bakr ibn al-Arabi and others Ibn Abd al-Barr I feel they said that look, this was a kind of rukhsa for them. So, they were allowed to do it. Once they died out the rukhsa had gone.

I say that you see where I would and it's difficult to ascertain what which view Imam Malik how he felt with it because obviously you know, the the dialogue wasn't that you know, delineated then. I would say that this dynamism was inherent. It was the actual nature of the Quran. It wasn't a rukhsa. It wasn't azima. It was the default position. The only difference is the Quran as it I kind of described given an analogy just as an approximation of like kind of in chemical isotopes and said that when you get some that have certain you know, they've got more

kind of different kind of compound structure to them, some will inevitably always be more stable than others. And and usually one or two will predominate by one mean or another whether it's just easier or politics or whatever. But, as it does stabilize, that becomes the version. Um So, eventually it did become the qira'at al-amma, and it became generally Hafs and Asim.

So, that is the kind of stable version that has predominated. But, the Quran in and of itself had that agility, that dynamism to and it because it was more it was always a a reflection or a statement of a description of the divine meaning. But, yeah. I mean, this this has been um um my kind of uh way of looking at it.