The Ark of the Covenant’s Spelling Controversy<b>: A Historical Linguistic Perspective</b>

Abstract This article examines a famous element in the reports on the canonization of the Qurʾānic text under the auspices of Uthman, in which the committee of scribes that were to write the standard text came to a disagreement on how to write the Qurʾānic word for at-tābūt “Ark.” After examining the different versions of the report that contain this episode, and concluding that the report of this episode goes back to the common link of Ibn Šihāb al-Zuhrī (d. 124/741–2), it is shown that early on the linguistic details of this disagreement were no longer understood. However, by examining how Aramaic and Classical Ethiopic loanwords that end in stem-final -ūt or -ōt are treated, this report can be understood as referring to two competing adaptations of this foreign word into Arabic. On the one hand at-tābūt , the form that ends up in the standard text, and on the other hand at-tābāh (or more precisely: at-tābōh ), which shows a similar strategy of adaptation as several other central loanwords in the Qurʾān such as aṣ-ṣalāh “prayer” and az-zakāh “alms.”