'Abdallab b. Mas'ud (sometimes quoted in the sources as 'Abd Allah and sometimes as Ibn Umm 'Abd1, was a Companion and one of the early Muslims who could boast that he had joined the faith earlier than 'Umar. As a youth he had herded cattle for 'Uqba b. Abi Mu'ait and so was sometimes referred to contemptuously as the Hudhalf slave (Tabari, Annales I, 2812). When he became a Muslim he attached himself to the Prophet and became his personal servant. He went on the Hijra to Abyssinia and also to Madina and was present at both Badr and Uhud. It was his boast that he had learned some seventy Suras directly from the mouth of the Prophet, and tradition has it that he was one of the first to teach Qur'an reading (Ibn Sa'd, III, I, 107). He seems not to have been a great success when tried in an official capacity, but at Kufa, to which the Caliph sent him, he became famous as a Traditionist and as an authority on the Qur'an. Tradition tells that he was one of the four to whom Muhammad advised his community to turn for instruction in the Qur'an.2 It was doubtless his close personal contact with the Prophet over so many years that gave such prestige to his opinions on Sunna and Qur'an.
We have no information as to when he began to make his Codex. Apparently he began to collect material during the lifetime of the Prophet and worked it up into Codex form when he was established at Kufa and was looked to as the authority on Qur'anic matters. At any rate we find his Codex in use there and followed by the Kufans before the official Recension was made by 'Uthman. When 'Uthman sent to Kufa the official copy of his standard text with orders that all other texts should
1 Sources for his life an-Nawawi,
Tahdkib, 396 ff; Ibn al-Athir, Usd al-Ghaba,
III, 256-260; Ibn Hajar, Isaba II, 890-893; Tahdkib VI, 27, 28;
Ibn al-Jazari, Tabaqat No. 1914; Ibn Sa'd II, ii, 104 ff,
III, I 106 ff.
- Nawawi, 373; Bukhari (ed. Krehl) III, 396.
be burned, Ibn Mas'ud refused to give up his copy, being indignant that the text, established by a young upstart like, Zaid b. Thabit should be given preference to his since he had been a Muslim while Zaid was still in the loins of an unbeliever1. There seems to have been considerable difference of opinion in Kufa over this question of the Codex, some accepting the new text sent by 'Uthman, but a great many continuing to hold by the Codex of Ibn Mas'ud2 which by that time had come to be regarded as the Kufan text. The strength of the position of his Codex in Kufa is well illustrated by the number of secondary Codices of which some information has come down to us and which followed the text of Ibn Mas'ud. It was from its vogue in Kufa that his Codex came to be favoured by Shi'a circles, though one is not disposed to accept as genuine all the Shi'a readings that are attributed to his Codex, nor indeed those found in Sunni sources in favour of Ahl al-Bait.
It was well known in the early days of Islam that one peculiarity of Ibn Mas'ud's Codex was that it did not contain Suras I, CXIII, and CXIV, i.e. the Fatiha, which is the opening prayer to the book and the Mu'awwidhatani with which it ends. Modern scholarship on quite other grounds holds that these were not originally part of the Qur'an but are of the nature of liturgical additions. That Ibn Mas'ud knew of these passages as used liturgically is evident from the fact that we have preserved to us notes of words in which he differed from the customary way of reading them.
A second peculiarity equally well known was that the order of Suras in his recension differed considerably from that of 'Uthman's recension. Two lists giving this Sura order have been preserved to us, which do not, however, entirely agree with one another. The earlier is that given by Ibn an-Nadim (377)4 in the Fihrist, p.26 (ed. Fl�gel) on the authority of Al-Fadi b. Shadhan (before 280), which runs as follows:
1 Ibn Abu Dawud p. 13ff.
2 Ibn al-Athir Kamil
(ed. Tornberg) III, 86, 87.
3 On them see N�ldeke-Schwally I, 108ff.
The Fatiha was apparently added to some copies that gave Ibn
Mas'ud's text. C.f. Itqan, 152, 187 and the statement of Ibn
an-Nadim Fihrist 26.
4 This is the date he is said to have
finished an Fihrist: the date of his death is uncertain.
2, 4. 3, 7, 6, 5, 101, 9, 16, 11, 12, 17, 21, 23, 26, 37, 33, 28, 24. 8, 19, 29, 30, 36, 25, 22, 13,34, 35, 14, 47, 312, 39, (40 bis 46)3, 40, 43, 41, 46, 45, 44, 48, 57, 594, 33, 50, 65, 49, 67, 64, 63, 62, 61, 72, 71, 58, 60, 66, 55, 53, 51, 535, 54, 69, 56, 68, 79, 70, 74, 73, 83, 80, 76, 75, 77, 78, 81, 82, 88, 87, 92, 89, 85, 84, 96, 90, 93, 94, 86, 100, 107, 101, 98, 91, 95, 104, 105, 106, 102, 97, 103, 110, 108, 109, 111, 112.
The Suras missing here are 1, 15, 18, 20, 27, 42, 99, 113, 114.
That Suras 1, 113, 114 were omitted in his Codex we have
already seen, but as variants from all the others omitted here
are found quoted from him the material of which they are
composed must have been in his Codex. Indeed they are all to
be found in the list of his Suras given in the Itqan. When we
examine these missing Suras we discover that 15 is the last in
the 
series; 18 comes immediately
before the 
Sura (19) and is
suspected to have had some connection therewith (Goossens in Der Islam XIII, 211);
20 is the sole 
Sura; 27 is the
Sura which breaks in between
two 
Suras; 42 is the
Sura which breaks into the
Suras, so that one may suspect
that there is something behind their omission in the Fihrist.
Yet in view of the fact that the missing Suras are in the list in
the Itqan, and the Fihrist itself expressly says that
it reckoned 110 Soras whereas there are only 105 in the list, the
probability is that the list as we have it has been defectively written.
The second list is in the Itqan of as-Suyuti (ed. Calcutta,
1 In Tabari Annales, I, 2963
the Sura of Yunus which is the Tenth Sura in the modern editions is
called the Seventh as here. Schwally suggests a misprint in the text
of Tabari of 2 The text reads 3 4 This 5 Fihrist says that some gave 52
as coming before 51.
for
, but against this see Bauer
in ZDMG, LXXV, 15.
which is the title of Sura 54, but as this is given later under the title
we must with Fl�gel, Anmerkungen 14
correct to 
which, as Schwally notes, is confirmed by the
Itqan.
means the group of Suras beginning with 
and is here doubtless but an introductory tide to the group of six succeeding Suras.
which gave Schwally trouble and was also a puzzle to Fl�gel is clearly but
part of the title of Sura 59. There was a group of Suras called
viz. Suras 57, 59, 61, 62, 64
(See Bauer in ZDMG, LXXV, 16).
p.151), quoting from Ibn Ashta a statement going back to Jarir b. 'Abd al-Hamid (188), who related traditions from al-A'mash and others of Ibn Mas'ud's school1. This list runs:
here we find missing besides the expected 1, 113, 114, the Suras 50, 57, 69, for whose omission no reason can be suggested save that they may have dropped out by scribal error. Well known variants are quoted from each of them and they are all in the list in the Fihrist. The two lists correspond sufficiently closely for us to supply the missing members of the one from the other, and we may treat them as variants of a common tradition as to the Sura order in Ibn Mas'ud's Codex.
The value of this tradition is another matter2. It is not a priori likely that the arrangement of material in any of the rival Codices would have followed the same combination into Suras as in the text established for 'Uthman by Zaid b. Thabit. In the accounts of that official Recension we find bits of material coming in and the Committee considering the most appropriate place to put them, and it is against all probability that the composite Suras made up of bits of Meccan and bits of Madinan material, of very different date and provenance, would have been fitted in exactly the same way by different collectors. Neither is it likely that the different collectors would have chosen the same titles for the Suras. The traditions as to the Sura order, in the case of this and of other of the Old Codices, come from persons who were familiar with the 'Uthmanic Sura order, but knew that the material was differently disposed in the other
1 Ibn Hajar Tahdhib, II, 75-77.
2 There is a statement in the Fihrist,
p. 26 from Mhd. b. Ishaq, that there were many Codices in existence
purporting to be exemplars of Ibn Mas'ud's Codex, but no two of them
agreed with one another. Ibn an-Nadim claims to have seen a very old
copy in which the Fatiha was included.
Codices and so constructed a Sura list to express the difference1.
The variant readings which follow are necessarily arranged according to the order of the present official text. Sometimes in the sources the variant is expressly said to come from the Codex of Ibn Mas'ud. More often, it is merely, given as a reading (harf or qira'a) of Ibn Mas'ud. Occasionally also readings are given as coming from the Companions of Ibn Mas'ud, but as these observations represent the tradition as to his text they are included here. In view of the great importance of the readings of Ibn Mas'ud and Ubai, all readings from them that survive are included in the lists even where they do not depend on a different consonantal text from that of 'Uthman. It has also seemed worth while to note the places where they are specially recorded as supporting the textus receptus.
1 As alternative theory is that
when the 'Uhmanic text was in general currency the material in
Ibn Mas'ud's Codex was arranged in new copies made thereof under
the Sura headings of the 'Uthmanic text, though not in the same
order. It is obvious, of course, that later writers using
material from one of these Old Codices would quote it according
to Sura and verse of the 'Uthmanic text.
Suras 1 - 2
Suras 3 - 5
Suras 6 - 8
Suras 9 - 11
Suras 12 - 14
Suras 15 - 19
Suras 20 - 25
Suras 26 - 31
Suras 32 - 40
Suras 41 - 50
Suras 51 - 60
Suras 61 - 70
Suras 71 - 92
Suras 93 - 114
