[n4r9]

> I'm not quite sure where you read there is a debate

I think the debate is less about how the Qira'aat vary, more about how genuinely/accurately they reflect pre-Islamic dialects. For example, Marijn van Putten has a book "Quranic Arabic" where he apparently advances the argument that the Quran was originally composed in Hijazi Arabic, and subsequently evolved into the reading traditions we have today.

> For example, the letter ق is never pronounced as /g/ when reciting the Quran, even though that pronunciation existed, and exists today in spoken Arabic.

Indeed; one side of my family is Iraqi :)

[za3faran]

It's always important to take what Orientalists write with a *huge* grain of salt - we have found mistakes countless times in their writings and assumptions. Case in point, the synopsis for the book has a mistake, and the entirety of the book builds on it. You can throw it into ansari.chat to get a good starting point on the fundamental misunderstandings it makes.

> Indeed; one side of my family is Iraqi :)

Yep, I was thinking about it and it very well seems that /g/ is the most widespread pronunciation in the Arab word: Iraq, many parts of West Asia (parts of Syria, parts of Jordan, and parts of Palestine), the Gulf states, Yemen, and many parts of North Africa, even parts of Egypt.

Those who wrote about Tajweed (Quranic Recitation) early on mentioned a lot of those other dialects (including examples of tribes that utter them) which would not be valid to recite the Quran. ك to /sh/ or /ch/ is another one, those also exist today and existed pre-Islam.

[n4r9]

> the synopsis for the book has a mistake, and the entirety of the book builds on it

Not sure what you mean here. I asked ansari.chat [EDIT turns out I used the new version ansari.ai] for an overall assessment of the book as well as a critical analysis of the synopsis. It praised the book but highlighted some tensions between its findings and Islamic theological assumptions: https://askansari.ai/share/de25f788-60fd-4bdd-9383-ac6752f06...

The summary assessment of the synopsis is:

> The synopsis accurately represents a work of brilliant linguistic reconstruction that is highly supportive of the Quran’s historical authenticity, yet challenging to certain traditional theological assumptions about the transmission of the Qira’at.

If anything, it vindicates my statement that there is "ongoing debate" over the historical nature of Qira'at.

--------------------------

EDIT

I realised that I was using the "new" version ansari.ai. Perhaps you went with the "old" version? I asked the old version as well, although it did not know about the book so I could only ask about the synopsis: https://ansari.chat/share/6a4780a6623c605140a58f76

The conclusion:

> From a Sunni Islamic perspective, this synopsis appears to approach the Quran through a secular academic lens that is incompatible with Islamic beliefs ...

> While academic study of Quranic Arabic linguistics can be beneficial, it must be grounded in the Islamic understanding that the Quran is the preserved Word of Allah, not a text that evolved through human linguistic processes.

I don't find this compelling. We must be able to challenge theological assumptions and "because I say so" type arguments.