As for the later Madinan tally, Ismāʿīl ibn Jaʿfar held that the Qur’an contains six thousand, two hundred and fourteen verses.
Al-Faḍl stated: According to the Meccan scholars the Qur’an consists of six thousand, two hundred and nineteen verses.
Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā said: The total number of verses according to the Kufans is six thousand, two hundred and thirty-six; this is the figure transmitted by Sulaym and al-Kisāʾī from Ḥamzah, and al-Kisāʾī traced it back to ʿAlī—may Allah be pleased with him.
He also said: The complete number of verses according to the Basrans is six thousand, two hundred and four, a count on which their predecessors have remained until today.
Regarding the people of Syria, Yaḥyā ibn al-Ḥārith al-Dhimārī reported a total of six thousand, two hundred and twenty-six verses; another narration gives six thousand, two hundred and twenty-five—one verse fewer.
Ibn Dhakwān remarked: I think Yaḥyā did not include “In the Name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful.”
Abū ʿAmr commented: These are the various figures that people have circulated in their compilations and by which they reckon in all regions, both past and present.
As for its words, al-Faḍl ibn Shādhān said: According to ʿAṭāʾ ibn Yasār, the Qur’an comprises seventy-seven thousand, four hundred and thirty-nine words, and its letters number three hundred and twenty-three thousand and fifteen.
I say: This conflicts with what al-Himmanī cited earlier.
ʿAbd Allāh ibn Kathīr related from Mujāhid: “What we have counted of the Qur’an amounts to three hundred and twenty-one thousand, one hundred and eighty letters,” which also differs from al-Himmanī’s previous tally.
[Chapter: On the meaning of sūrah, verse, word, and letter]
In Arabic usage, a sūrah is so called because it is distinguished from and separated from another sūrah, and because through it one ascends to a higher rank. Al-Nābighah said:
Have you not seen that Allah has granted you a lofty sūrah—
Before which every king beneath it wavers?
That is, a noble station to which you have been elevated above the rank of kings. Others say it was named for its dignity and elevation, just as anything that rises above the ground is called a sūr (wall). Still others hold that it was so named because its reciter rises above what had not