Asmaa Hussein May 27, 2020:

muṣ·ḥaf (Arabic: مصحف‎, Arabic pronunciation: [ˈmʊsˤħaf] plural "ṣuhuf/ ṣuhuf صُحُف") is an Arabic word for a codex or collection of sheets, but also refers to a written copy of the Quran

Fuad Yahya May 20, 2020:

@ MKU (2) As you can see, one of the challenges you have with this text is that the reported sayings are exactly that: sayings, literally. They do not come from a written discourse. In fact, they do not even come from a formal oral disquisition, like a Friday sermon, for instance. They are rather utterances from a real conversation. The speech pattern shows the rough and tumble of everyday speech. We can see this very clearly in the sentence

وقد كان الناس ولهم مصاحف

If Malik was to dictate the same idea to a scribe, he probably would have dictated something like:

وقد كان عند الناس مصاحف

How do we know this is what he meant? Simply by looking at the continuation of his thought:

والسنة الذين وصى إليهم عمر بن الخطاب كانت لهم مصاحف

(Notice here also how the word وصى is reported أوصى in some versions.)

By looking at the two sentences together, we understand what Malik was trying to say: In the early days after the death of the Prophet, there were many مصاحف (copies of the Quran) around. People had their own copies. Even the Six had their own copies. Therefore, one should not be surprised to find some minor differences in different copies, all of which should be considered legitimate.

Fuad Yahya May 20, 2020:

@ MKU In answer to your first question: Malik is the speaker of the sentence:
وقد كان الناس ولهم مصاحف

In fact, the two sentences:

لا أرى في اختلافهم في مثل هذا بأساً
and
وقد كان الناس ولهم مصاحف

appear in some versions as one continuous saying by Malik. The verb وقال between the two does not appear in all versions of the story. The fact that the verb وقال appears in some versions indicates an ellipsis. To clarify, Malik may have said other things between the first sentence and the second sentence that are not germane to the argument here, so those other things are omitted because they are irrelevant. In modern English, we use dots (". . . ") to indicate ellipsis. In medieval Arabic, they did not have the punctuation and printing conventions that we use today. By saying وقال again, the reporter is essentially breaking the quoted saying into quotable segments.

To complicate things further, even the words themselves appear differently in different editions. For instance, وقد كان الناس may appear as ولقد كان الناس in some editions. This is due to the fact that the story being reported is an oral tradition. There is no written record of it. I will continue in the next discussion entry.