The Haman Hoax

Jochen Katz

Structure:

[To fully understand the argument, it is important to read the various parts in their intended sequence. The reader is advised to start with the Introduction.]

Stage Four: Caner Taslaman

On 28 June 2011, nearly 20 months after publishing my rebuttal of the Haman Hoax, which discusses in detail the versions by Maurice Bucaille, Islamic Awareness and Harun Yahya, I accidentally¹ discovered that there exists yet another variant of this miracle claim.

Caner Taslaman’s version of the Haman miracle is not (yet) spread so widely on the internet, but during May and June 2011 it really seems to have proliferated and Google currently already knows of some 60 pages where Taslaman’s article is posted.² This observation merits an update and expansion of my analysis and refutation of this Muslim hoax since these claims obviously continue to enjoy quite a bit of attention.

As we will shortly see, Taslaman’s version is partly dependent on Harun Yahya’s formulation,³ but the author managed to creatively develop the claims around this story and introduce even more errors over and above those which are found in the versions of Maurice Bucaille and Harun Yahya. Those additional errors are mostly small formal mistakes, but there is also a substantial error of content, and a couple of unsubstantiated assertions.

Caner Taslaman’s book, The Quran : Unchallengeable Miracle,⁴ was published in May 2006. On 430 pages the author presents scores of alleged scientific and mathematical miracles of the Qur’an. Around the middle of the book, we find that Chapter 60 is devoted to Haman. Consisting of only two short pages and containing hardly any new and startling information beyond what is found in Harun Yahya’s article, together with the fact that the author is still young and relatively unknown, may be the reason why Taslaman’s version hadn’t received much attention until recently.

In the first part of my rebuttal, I will simply quote his text, section by section, and add some comments where necessary. I am going to take his statements at face value, and respond to them “as they are”. In the second part of this rebuttal, I am going to investigate the sources that Taslaman plagiarized from. Some of his specific formulations and mistakes betray the sources he used for his text, and after these sources are identified, it then becomes clearer how some of these errors came into being in the first place, and what he may have meant by some of his mysterious statements. This investigation will be quite revealing.

Caner Taslaman writes on pages 214-215 of his book:⁵

As much as I appreciate Taslaman’s attempt to be brief – given that he wants to cram more than a hundred miracles into his book – this is simply too cryptic. Which “hieroglyph” was deciphered when, where and by whom? Taslaman speaks of “the hieroglyph” with a definite article, so he is referring to something specific, but he does not tell us what that is.

Moreover, his use of the word reveals that he doesn’t really know what he is talking about. Hieroglyphs are a writing system, a script, like Chinese characters. So, one hieroglyph (character, logogram) would represent one word, or perhaps only one letter. But how could “one character” corroborate the account in the Qur’an? That doesn’t make sense. Taslaman is confused on the meaning of “hieroglyph”. Did he perhaps mean a certain “text (inscription) written in hieroglyphs”? After all, even the Egyptian name that Bucaille claimed to represent “Haman” consists of three hieroglyphic characters.⁶

Another clear and telling error in this last paragraph is that Maurice Bucaille never wrote a book with this title. Wherever Taslaman picked this up, it is clear he has not made any attempt to verify this, or he would have realized that no such book exists. This is extremely shoddy research. The Haman Hoax was started with the claims Bucaille propagated in the book Moses and Pharaoh: The Hebrews in Egypt, Mediascope, 1994 (English edition) and Moïse et Pharaon : Les Hébreux en Egypte, Seghers, 1995 (French edition).

Interestingly, Taslaman’s book has a Bibliography that lists two books by Bucaille on page 422, but the alleged Moise et L’Egypte is not among them. This is very sloppy.⁷ Claims must be supported by evidence and proper references. We will see more of this sloppiness as we continue.

No comment is necessary on this paragraph, apart from noting one small positive detail: While Bucaille tried to disassociate the Quranic from the Biblical Haman by using different spellings (cf. Appendix 2), Taslaman at least recognizes that it is the same name that is used in both the Bible and the Qur’an.⁸ He continues:

Apart from the wrong claims about the name Haman, this paragraph is full of citation errors. Taken together they expose (again) that Taslaman has not made any effort to verify his sources and is a very shoddy researcher.

First error: The statement “In the Hof Museum of Vienna one can read …” is written in the present tense, but as we observed earlier, there has not been a “Hof Museum” since September 1921, i.e. for nearly ninety years by now (1, 2 - link to Bucaille and Harun Yahya). This error was probably taken over from Harun Yahya’s version.

Second error: The publisher name of Wreszinski’s book is misspelled. It must be “J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung”.

The third, fourth, fifth and sixth errors are found in this reference: Herman Renke, Die Aegyptischen Personnennamen, Vierzeischnis der Namen, published by J. J. Augustin in Glückstadt, Band I, 1935.)

Being German, having to read this butchered reference makes my toenails curl. The proper bibliographical reference is: Hermann Ranke, Die Ägyptischen Personennamen, Band I (Verzeichnis der Namen), Verlag von J. J. Augustin in Glückstadt, 1935. In other words, it must be Hermann instead of Herman, Ranke instead of Renke, Personennamen instead of Personnennamen, Verzeichnis instead of Vierzeischnis.

But there are not only these “minor” citation errors. The claims themselves are also wrong. As Muslims never tire to repeat the same false claims, I am going to repeat that they are wrong and list them again.

First content error:

Even if the name of the museum had been updated, the claim that there “one can read of Haamaan’s close relations to the Pharaoh” remains utterly wrong no matter how often it is repeated. In Wreszinski’s entry on the inscription under discussion there is no reference to Pharaoh, let alone mentioning a close relationship between “hmn-h” and the Pharaoh.

Second content error:

The name “Haamaan” is recorded neither in this museum, nor in Wreszinski’s book and not even in Ranke’s dictionary – at least not as “head of the quarry workers” in Egypt. Ranke neither mentions “Haaman”, nor does he say anything about a “head of quarry workers”. Wreszinski speaks of a head of quarry workers, but does not transliterate the name. Taslaman has clearly never opened any of these books. These claims have been refuted and exposed as wrong in the earlier parts of this series (specifically Part 1 and Part 2). Taslaman merely copied these baseless assertions from other Muslim propaganda texts without doing any critical investigation himself.

Bucaille could not find the name “Haamaan” in this dictionary, because it is not there. That whole story is a hoax, see my discussion on Bucaille’s original version (*). However, it is interesting that Taslaman refers to the same dictionary in two different ways in consecutive paragraphs. We have just analyzed the many spelling errors in the German bibliographical reference. Given that he now presents a (seriously wrong) English translation of the German title (as it was given by Bucaille), one starts to wonder whether Taslaman even realized that he is talking about the same book twice?

Apart from his creative spelling, up to this point Taslaman has not presented anything substantially new, going beyond the claims of Bucaille. The next paragraph, however, contains two serious claims:

Starting this paragraph with “Another discovery” means that Taslaman speaks of something else than before, i.e. he claims there are at least two inscriptions that contain the name Haman. Now, that is new. Bucaille only spoke of one. Taslaman does not present any evidence for his claim. But this formulation shows that he is probably dependent on Harun Yahya who was the first to change Bucaille’s “stela” into a “monument”. And Yahya also spoke of several inscriptions (found on some tablets and on a monument).⁹ Taslaman apparently internalized that understanding and therefore speaks here of “another discovery” and is not bothered by the fact that he cannot provide any reference for this second instance. It remains a naked assertion.

Taslaman then turns to discuss a specific detail of the inscription. But which one? The one on the monument, or the one that was discussed before and about which he had already claimed earlier that it signifies “Haamaan’s close relations to the Pharaoh”? Or is that a feature found in both of them?

Pictures of the one inscription referenced by Wreszinski are linked in Appendix 3. What bracket is Taslaman talking about? Which scholarly book on the hieroglyphic texts can he quote in order to support his last sentence, “The Egyptians used to write the words linked together unless it was to indicate a special situation.”? And how does he make the leap from “a special situation” to “his special position in relation to the Pharaoh”? Did Taslaman invent all of this himself or did he uncritically take it over from some other source? Did Bucaille’s “determinative” perhaps mutate into Taslaman’s “bracket”? (Cf. our discussion of Bucaille’s claims.)

Although this last paragraph introduced two substantial claims, the author has not provided any evidence for them.

He then concludes his chapter on the miracle of Haman with these words:

The only miracle I can see in this context is the miracle of gullibility and believing anything and everything. Taslaman has certainly not done the least bit of “probing” on any of the many particular points associated with this major Muslim hoax. Does he really think that probing is unnecessary as long as claims are made in support of Islam?

The story of Haman in the Qur’an remains a major problem for the historical credibility of this book and thus for the claim of its divine authorship.

Searching for the missing links

Caner Taslaman is fascinated with the Darwinian theory of evolution¹⁰ and has written books and papers from the position of a critical observer and commentator. However, with his chapter on Haman he has finally become an active participant in another kind of evolution, i.e. the selection, mutation,¹¹ and propagation of Qur’an miracle claims. Taslaman’s version of the Haman miracle was not created ex nihilo, but was developed from certain predecessors which can be clearly identified.¹² In this section, I will present the results of my detective work of searching out the original sources of Taslaman’s peculiar formulations and errors.

Mystery 1: Taslaman’s strange bibliographical references. What could be the reason for ascribing to Maurice Bucaille a book with the title “Moise et L’Egypte”, and where originated the horribly butchered reference “Herman Renke, Die Aegyptischen Personnennamen, Vierzeischnis der Namen”?

Mystery 2: What did Taslaman mean when he wrote, “Prof. Maurice Bucaille, in his Moise et L’Egypte, speaks of the use of the name Haamaan mentioned in the Quran, alluding to the objections raised in history to the use of this name, and gives an account of the corroboration of the account given in the Quran after the deciphering of the hieroglyph.”

Mystery 3: Why does Taslaman speak of “another discovery”, i.e. of at least two inscriptions with the name Haman?

In order to solve Mystery 1 we need to take a somewhat lengthy detour through the Turkish version of this chapter, Kur’an : Hiç Tükenmeyen Mucize, pages 233-35, which is also available online here.

After quoting the verses from the Qur’an, he writes:

I have underlined the relevant parts for faster identification. Observe: The misspellings discussed in the first part of this rebuttal are all there. They were not introduced by an incompetent English translator but are found in this way in the original Turkish edition of this book.¹³ However, Bucaille’s book has a different title in the Turkish text: “Musa ve Mısır”. Translating it literally, the underlined sentence means in English: The French scientist Prof. Dr. Maurice Bucaille has recently written a book named “Moses and Egypt”.

Seeing that Bucaille was explicitly called a French scientist, Ender Gürol, the translator of Taslaman’s book from Turkish to English, apparently assumed that Bucaille must have written his book in French¹⁴ and thus simply performed a literal back-translation on the title attributed to Bucaille in Turkish. This literal translation of the alleged Turkish title into French resulted in “Moise et L’Egypte”, a title that never existed in French.

Ironically, the title is wrong even in Turkish. There is no Turkish translation of a book by Bucaille that has this title. The Turkish translation of Bucaille’s book, Moses and Pharaoh: The Hebrews in Egypt, was published in 2002 under the title “Musa ve Firavun: Çıkış Kitabı”.¹⁵ The above discovery explains the appearance of the title “Moise et L’Egypte”, but it simply pushes the same question back into another language. We are still left wondering: Where did Caner Taslaman get the title “Musa ve Mısır” from?¹⁶

The solution to all of “Mystery 1” is finally discovered in this posting on a Turkish internet discussion forum that is run by a group that Caner Taslaman associates with:

The second half of the above text is an abridged translation of section 4.5 of the Islamic Awareness article, Version 1.6 from 20 November 2000 as a comparison of the text and the footnotes easily reveals.¹⁸

I was not able to determine the original source of the first part of the above posting, but both parts were apparently passed around on the web, on various forums. The second part existed also by itself (e.g. here¹⁹), but who added the first part with all those errors in the references is unclear.²⁰ The earliest example that I could find so far, with both parts together was posted here (1, 2) on 13 April 2002, but that is hardly the original. Most likely there were earlier versions posted on other web boards / forums, or passed around on mailing lists.²¹

In any case, a comparison of the texts in this posting and in Taslaman’s Turkish edition shows that Taslaman used this text heavily. It is similar in many aspects. Not only does it contain many of the same errors in the references, but the first paragraph after the subheading in Taslaman’s chapter is a nearly verbatim copy of the third paragraph (after the quotations from the Qur’an) as it is found in the forum posting.

Whoever composed this first part is most likely the originator of the alleged title “Musa ve Mısır” for this book by Maurice Bucaille.Here is a possible explanation for how this title came into being: The author of this text may simply have “abbreviated” the genuine title “Moses and Pharaoh: The Hebrews in Egypt” by taking the underlined words from the beginning and the end, thus collapsing it to “Moses and Egypt”.

Anyhow, Mystery 1 is solved and the solution provides further evidence that Taslaman has simply taken unreliable sources and incorporated them into his chapter without verifying anything, plagiarizing various formulations – including a host of typos.

Mystery 2 and Mystery 3 will become clear when we take a closer look at the first version of the text by Harun Yahya (here). He explicitly turns the one inscription mentioned by Bucaille (and Islamic Awareness) into at least two, when he writes:

Note that Yahya uses the word “tablets” in the plural and additionally mentions a monument. The word “monument” suggests something different than a tablet. Whether Yahya intended this or not, the formulation certainly gives the impression that these are two different entities and Caner Taslaman apparently understood it that way, internalized that it refers to different artefacts, and thus he explicitly writes of “Another discovery” in his own text.

Moreover, Yahya gives the impression that the deciphering of hieroglyphs on the Rosetta stone, and subsequently of the hieroglyphic writing system as a whole (about 200 years ago), immediately led to the discovery of the name Haman and thus the vindication of the account of the Qur’an. He writes of critics that have attacked the story of Haman in the Qur’an and then states:

To state that attacking the story of Haman in the Qur’an was exposed as ridiculous already 200 years ago, assumes that the name Haman was discovered immediately after the deciphering of the hieroglyphic writing system. This then explains what Taslaman meant with the formulation, “Prof. Maurice Bucaille … speaks of the use of the name Haamaan mentioned in the Quran, alluding to the objections raised in history to the use of this name, and gives an account of the corroboration of the account given in the Quran after the deciphering of the hieroglyph.” In contrast to Bucaille who claims that it was his own discovery – though with the help of a famous Egyptologist – that he found the name Haman in Ranke’s dictionary and could connect it to the story in the Qur’an, Taslaman like Yahya gives the impression that the deciphering of the hieroglyphic writing system immediately and automatically led to the corroboration of the account of the Qur’an. This twist was introduced by Yahya and taken over by Taslaman.