Method and evidence
Why you can trust a number in this dataset, and exactly how far that trust is meant to extend. Every claim here is attributed, every attribution has a state, and an unattributed position stays visibly unattributed rather than being quietly rounded up.
The smallest reviewable claim
One position, and the counting systems that treat it as a head of ayah. That is the unit. Everything else in the package is either derived from it or evidence for it.
A position records three things: the fāṣilah wording it ends on, which anchors it to the text; its kind — the end of a Kufan ayah, or a break inside one; and which systems count it.
Kufan is the reference axis, because it is the numbering of the muṣḥafs in common use, which makes referring the others back to it straightforward. Surah totals, the conversion files, the transmitter files and this website's data are all generated from that one layer. No total is written by hand unless it is itself a transmitted statement.
Two cases, and there is no third
Because Kufan is the axis, every disagreement takes one of two shapes — and each shape moves the target system's total in one direction only.
| Case | What follows |
|---|---|
| A position at the end of an ayah, which Kufan counts | Any system that does not count it merges that ayah with the next, so its total falls below Kufan’s. |
| A position inside an ayah, which Kufan does not count | Any system that counts it splits that ayah in two, so its total rises above Kufan’s. |
Both directions occur in the same surah, so totals cancel and a per-surah count cannot be derived from a total.
The six, and who transmitted them
A counting system is not a convention someone chose. It is a transmission, attributed to a named chain, and the systems are six because the muṣḥafs ʿUthmān sent to the garrison cities were.
| System | Transmission | Relied on for |
|---|---|---|
| First Madinan | Transmitted by Nāfiʿ from his two teachers Abū Jaʿfar and Shayba ibn Nassāḥ. | Qālūn and Abū Jaʿfar |
| Last Madinan | Transmitted by Ismāʿīl ibn Jaʿfar and Qālūn from Sulaymān ibn Muslim ibn Jammāz, from Shayba and Abū Jaʿfar. | Warsh |
| Makkan | Transmitted by ʿAbd Allāh ibn Kathīr from Mujāhid ibn Jabr, from Ibn ʿAbbās, from Ubayy ibn Kaʿb, from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. | Ibn Kathīr |
| Basran | Transmitted by ʿĀṣim al-Jaḥdarī, Ayyūb ibn al-Mutawakkil, and Yaʿqūb al-Ḥaḍramī. | Abū ʿAmr and Yaʿqūb |
| Kufan | Transmitted by Ḥamza from Ibn Abī Laylā, and by Sufyān al-Thawrī from ʿAbd al-Aʿlā, both from Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī, from ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib. | ʿĀṣim, Ḥamza, al-Kisāʾī and Khalaf |
| Damascene | Transmitted by Yaḥyā ibn al-Ḥārith al-Dhimārī from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿĀmir, from Abū al-Dardāʾ. | Ibn ʿĀmir |
Some add a seventh, the Ḥimṣī count, transmitted by Shurayḥ ibn Yazīd with a chain to Khālid ibn Maʿdān. This dataset publishes six and does not carry it.
Evidence tiers
Each witness records the work, the locator within it, the edition relied on, the systems it supports, and its tier.
| Tier | What it means |
|---|---|
| primary | An explicit statement in an accepted counting work |
| commentary | A commentary tied closely to a primary text |
| secondary | A later manual or specialist treatment |
| modern-reference | A contemporary reference, used as context |
| api-check | A machine-readable external check — never sufficient on its own |
The works this rests on are the classical literature of the science: al-Bayān fī ʿadd āy al-Qurʾān of Abū ʿAmr al-Dānī; Nāẓimat al-Zahr of al-Shāṭibī; Ḥusn al-Madad of al-Jaʿbarī; Saʿādat al-Dārayn of al-Ḥaddād al-Ḥusaynī; al-Qawl al-Wajīz of al-Makhallalātī; al-Farāʾid al-Ḥisān of al-Qāḍī; and Murshid al-Khillān of ʿAbd al-Razzāq ʿAlī Mūsā.
Documentation states
verification_status describes how well attested a position is. It is on every position, and it is
kept visible rather than averaged into a score.
| State | What it means |
|---|---|
| uncited | No citation entered yet |
| secondary_only | Supported only by commentary, later manuals, or modern references |
| primary_cited | At least one primary citation, no recorded review yet |
| primary_cited_and_reviewed | A primary citation and a recorded scholarly review |
| disputed | Sources or reviewers disagree |
| unresolved | Known to need more work; not to be treated as settled |
Read the state before you present a position as established. The diagnostics view shows the current split per system, read live from the data rather than quoted here — a number quoted in prose is a number that goes stale.
What this project will not do
- It will not infer a disputed position from differences in totals alone.
- It will not adjudicate between conflicting sources without evidence.
- It will not present a position as better attested than its sources allow.
- Where sources conflict, nothing is quietly smoothed away: the position stays marked
disputeduntil specialists settle it.
Review applies to the claim and its evidence, not to the generated tables — those follow the source layer and are not reviewed separately. A reviewer checks the fāṣilah and its wording as it stands in the text, the kind of the position, and the attribution: which systems count it, and which leave it.
How it is checked
The validation suite checks the source layer for internal consistency, checks that every generated output matches it, and reconstructs the muṣḥaf display for every surah in all six systems. Rebuilding the numbering from the boundary primitives reproduces all six published totals exactly — 6,236 · 6,226 · 6,219 · 6,214 · 6,214 · 6,204 — which is the check that the derivation is right.
Two display rules fall out of the method and are worth stating, because they are where a reader notices the system they chose:
- Ayahs are numbered by the displayed system, not by Ḥafṣ, unless Kufan is what is displayed.
- Where a system does not count the basmala of al-Fātiḥa, it is shown in place but unnumbered, rather than folded into ayah one.
Al-Fātiḥa in Last Madinan numbering: the basmala sits unnumbered, al-ḥamdu lillāh becomes ayah 1, and ayah 7 splits in two — seven ayahs by a different route.