inadmissible in the language, let alone in recitation, yet all of them acquiesced in this wrong without anyone correcting it. Such a claim is known to be false as a matter of ordinary experience. It is also incompatible with the religion of these people—who do not agree upon misguidance, but enjoin every good and forbid every wrong—that they should leave a wrong in Allah’s Book without any of them correcting it, especially when none of them had any interest in doing so. Had ‘Uthmān been told, “Order the scribe to change it,” changing it would have been among the easiest things for him to do.

These and similar considerations establish with certainty that anyone who claims that the written Quran contains a grammatical error or some other mistake is mistaken. Even if such a claim is reported from certain individuals whose statements are not authoritative, they may have erred in what they said. By contrast, those who transmitted, wrote down, and recited the contents of the written Quran could not collectively have erred in doing so. As ‘Uthmān said: “If you disagree over anything, write it in the dialect of Quraysh.” Likewise, ‘Umar told Ibn Mas‘ūd: “Teach people to recite in the dialect of Quraysh, not in the dialect of Hudhayl, for the Quran was not revealed in the dialect of Hudhayl.”

Allah’s words in the Quran support this:

“We never sent a messenger except in the language of his people.”

His people were Quraysh, as Allah said:

“Your people have rejected it, though it is the truth.”

As for Kinānah, they are the neighbours of Quraysh, and the person reporting their usage is reliable. However, a transmitter reports what he has heard. He may have heard this usage with indeclinable demonstrative and relative pronouns and assumed that they used it with other nouns as well. This differs from someone who heard “bayna udhunāhu” (“between its two ears”) and “la-nābāhu” (“for its two fangs”), since these are explicit examples involving nouns other than demonstrative and relative pronouns.