Emmanuelle Stefanidis, “Does Sūrat Yūnus (Q 10) Belong to the Sabʿ al-Ṭiwāl?”

Описание: This paper was presented at the conference 'The “Seven Long Ones” (al-Sabʿ al-Ṭiwāl):
Approaches to Surahs 2–7 and 9', held at Pembroke College, Oxford (24-25 March 2025). The event was organized as part of the project 'Qur’anic Commentary: An Integrative Paradigm', which is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 771047).

Recent progress in the study of early Qur'anic manuscripts has significantly advanced the dating of the Qur’an’s codification. However, the process by which the official edition commonly known as the ʿUthmanic muṣḥaf was adopted throughout Muslim lands remains obscure. The silences and biases of historical sources make it difficult to reconstruct this key moment. Tracing the development of a systematised discourse on the Muslim scripture provides one approach to the early stages of the Qur’an’s canonisation. What categories emerged to define and apprehend the Qur'an, and what negotiations accompanied their formation?

This paper focuses on debates about the identity of the last surah in the group. An early tradition attributed to Saʿīd b. Jubayr asserts that the seventh of the sabʿ al-ṭiwāl is not Q 8 (al-Anfāl) or Q 9 (al-Tawbah) but Q 10 (Yūnus). Stefanidis examines the origins and transmission of this tradition and argue that it originates in the memory of a pre-ʿUthmanic codex, which positioned Sūrat Yūnus as the seventh surah (not counting the Fātiḥah), as is reported for the codices of both Ibn Masʿūd and Ubayy.