Hafs and Warsh: Two Printed Qurans

A Bookshop in Casablanca

A traveler from Karachi lands in Morocco on business. In a bookshop near the old medina of Casablanca he buys a handsome green-bound Quran as a gift. That evening, in his hotel room, he opens it to Surat al-Fatiha — the chapter he has recited five times a day since childhood — and stops. His copy at home reads مَالِكِ يَوْمِ الدِّينِ, "Master of the Day of Judgment." The copy in his hands reads مَلِكِ يَوْمِ الدِّينِ — one letter shorter. He keeps turning pages. Some words carry different vowels; in places an entire word differs. Verse numbers do not match his memory. The basmala, which he has always counted as verse one of al-Fatiha, is not numbered here at all. Nothing looks like a misprint: the calligraphy is careful, the publisher reputable, and on the title page stands a phrase he has never examined on his own mushaf: بِرِوَايَةِ وَرْشٍ عَنْ نَافِعٍ — "by the transmission of Warsh from Nafi'." His copy in Karachi says حفص عن عاصم — "Hafs from 'Asim." Two printed Qurans. Two names. And a question that has been asked, in one form or another, for a very long time.

This article does not mock any religion. It will do what we always do: open the books, present the texts exactly as they are, set the history beside them, and let the scholars of both sides speak in their own words. The verdict, as always, is yours.