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W. Matt Malczycki
era.' Most of his definitions, however, roughly equate hanif with muslim.26 It
is best left untranslated.
6-8 There are nearly perfect parallels to these lines in the hadith collections and in the Qur'an (6:14 and 6:161-3).27 The variation is minor: instead of
using wa-an akuna min al-Muslimin as in the papyrus, the Qur'an and hadith
use wa-ana awwalu al-Muslimin. The syntax that the scribe used is, however,
similar to another Qur'anic passage (Qur'an 6:14), the relevant part of which
reads qul inni umirtu an akuna awwala man aslama wa-la takhnanna min
al-mushrikina.
There is also an orthographic variation. In P.Utah Ar. inv. 205 the scribe
included the dots to mark the finalya's in the words nusuki, mahyaya, mamati,
and salati. Classical Qur'anic orthography does not dot these ya's, even though
they represent the first-person possessive pronoun -1.28
8 The scribe omitted one of the dots in the ya' of the word yaftatihu
thereby giving the letter the appearance of ba' rather than ya'. He did the same
thing on the verso in the words yashra'u (line 1) and yusalli (line 2).
9 The second word of this line contains an interesting hypercorrect
spelling of al-Qur'an. The scribe spelled the word alf-lam-qaf-ra'-waw-alfnun. The plene spelling of al-Qur'an is alf-lam-qaf-ra'-hamza-alif-nun. The
Classical spelling is alif-lam-qaf-ra'-alif mamduda-nun. The alif mamduda is an
orthographic device that represents the combination of hamza and plene alif.
The alif mamduda came into existence no earlier than the third/ninth century.
Without full vocalic marking (i.e., without the tilde on top of it), however,
alif mamduda looks like a regular alif. Hopkins cites a few examples in which
scribes used two alif-s to represent alif mamduda, but the general tendency is
to omit the hamza.29 Before the appearance of alif mamduda, scribes simply
used a regular alif to write the word al-Qur'an, so it is curious that the scribe
of this papyrus added a wa-w. As mentioned in the commentary to line 1 there
are no instances in which the scribe unambiguously omitted hamza; therefore,
the waw in al-Qur'an must represent the hamza in that word.
Why the scribe chose waw instead of writing two alif-s or omitting hamza
altogether is difficult to explain. It seems that the scribe made his choice based
26 Ibn Manznr (n. 20) 4:249-250.
27 Abi Dawnd (n. 8) 1:130 and 2:482; al-Darimi (n. 8) 1:198 and 2:64; Ibn Hanbal (n.
8) 1:118, 1:128, 3:458; Ibn Majah (n. 8) 458-459; Muslim (n. 8) 2:307-308; al-Nasai (n.
8) 1:145-146 (two hadith); al-Tirmidhi (n. 8) 2:879-881 (three hadith). See also Qur'an
6:79 and 6:161-163.
28 al-Dani (n. 25) 68-69.
29 Hopkins (n. 12) 20, 22-24.
