the history of the text." Then they were to pool their "resources with a view to a large volume dealing with the variants." (1)

Accordingly, Bergstr?sser concentrated on collecting the photographs of available Kûfic manuscripts of the Qur’ân and Jeffery worked on the collection of the "variant readings". The publication in 1927 of Ibn al-Jazarî’s Kitâb al-Nashr fî al-Qirâ’at al-‘Ashr at Damascus in two volumes gave a fillip to their plan. In 1928 Bergstr?sser visited Cairo and made a collection of Kûfic manuscripts of the Qur’ân along with a search for works on Qur’ânic "readings". He also visited Istanbul and made further photocopies of Qur’ân manuscripts. Meanwhile his student Dr. Otto Pretzl edited ’Abû ‘Amr al-Dânî’s Taysîr and al-Muqni‘, two important works on qirâ’ât, which were published respectively in 1930 and 1932. About the same time Jeffery discovered at Damascus two manuscripts of Ibn ’Abî Dâwûd’s (d. 316 H.) Kitâb al-Masâhif. In 1933 Professor Bergst?sser died of an accident; but his work of collecting photocopies of Qur’ânic manuscripts was continued by his students Dr. Pretzl, Antony Spitaler, and A. Fischer. Pretzl also finished the third fascicule of Bergstr?sser’s Geschichte des Qorantexts.

The plan of editing a text of the Qur’ân with an indication of the variant readings did not materialize. The upshot was the publication by Jeffery of his Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’ân: The Old Codices - The Kitâb al-Masâhif of Ibn Abî Dâud together with a Collection of the variant Readings from the Codices of Ibn Mas‘ûd, Ubai, ‘Alî, Ibn ‘Abbâs, Anas, Abû Mûsâ and other Early Qur’ânic authorities which represent a Type of Text Anterior to that of the canonical Text of ‘Uthmân. (2) It is to be pointed out that the title given by Jeffery to his work is misleading in two main respects. First, it tends to give the impression that the "variant readings" noted are taken from the "codices" of the persons mentioned, while the fact is that "the variant readings" recorded are not from the "codices" as such but from what is reported by others, the exegetes and lexicographers, as having come down from the codices mentioned. Second, the concluding part of the