A review on Nöldeke's accounts on orthography and recitation of Quran

One of the orientalists who enjoy standing fame and prominence amongst all orientalists is Theodore Noldeke from Germany. The third section of his book “the history of Quran” “Geschet des Quran” called has been specialized to the issues of orthography and recitation of the Quran. The topics of recitation and orthography of the holy Quran have a long-lasting record. Both the importance and precedence of these two subjects prompted the intellectuals to write and edit frequent amount of books and writings; in a manner that some of them have particularly put forth their works in the above mentioned subjects. Notwithstanding all these ample works on the subjects (and the clarity prevails over them) still there exist some doubts and problems though being responded with sound and noteworthy reasoning. Noldeke in his research has propounded the doubts and his views about the text, recitations and orthography of the Quran. The very article addresses some of his opinions as: the allegation of ascribing all recitations to the prophet Muhammad (Peace be on him and his progeny), the exact relation between Quran and recitations, the non-existence of a unique text for Quran, the formation of difference in recitations due to variety of accents, the validity of Hadith of seven Ahruf, the alleged ascription of existence of literal errors in the Quran to the prophet, the existence of inaccuracy in Uthmani style of manuscript and finally the incompleteness of the Quran at the lifetime of the prophet.