The Debated Grammatical Constructions of the Quran: Three Verses the Grammarians Argued Over

A Pause Over the Parchment

Medina, around the year 650. In a room near the Prophet's mosque, a committee headed by Zayd ibn Thabit is producing the master copies of the Quran on the orders of the caliph Uthman. Copies will soon ride out to Kufa, Basra, Damascus and Mecca; every future mushaf will descend from them. According to a report preserved in the literature on the Quranic script — its chain argued over for centuries — a finished copy was brought to Uthman himself. He looked into it and said one sentence that would be debated for a thousand years: "I see lahn in it, and the Arabs will set it right with their tongues."

What did he see? Later scholars pointed to a handful of verses — three above all — where the case-endings appear, at first sight, to break the rules the grammarians of Basra and Kufa themselves codified. The debate is not a modern invention. It sits inside the classical Islamic library: in Tabari's tafsir, in Sibawayh's grammar, in the books on the Uthmanic script, and in the defenses written against the objectors.