4قالَ رَبّي يَعلَمُ القَولَ فِي السَّماءِ وَالأَرضِ ۖ وَهُوَ السَّميعُ العَليمُMuhammad AsadSay:1 "My Sustainer knows whatever is spoken in heaven and on earth; and He alone is all-hearing, all-knowing."According to the earliest scholars of Medina and Basrah, as well as some of the scholars of Kufah, this word is spelt qul, as an imperative ("Say"), whereas some of the Meccan scholars and the majority of those of Kufah read it as qala ("He [i.e., the Prophet] said"). In the earliest copies of the Qur'an the spelling was apparently confined, in this instance, to the consonants q-l: hence the possibility of reading it either as qul or as qala. However, as Tabari points out, both these readings have the same meaning and are, therefore, equally valid, "for, when God bade Muhammad to say this, he [undoubtedly] said it... Hence, in whichever way this word is read, the reader is correct (musib as-sawab) in his reading." Among the classical commentators, Baghawi and Baydawi explicitly use the spelling qul, while Zamakhshari's short remark that "it has also been read as qala" seems to indicate his own preference for the imperative qul.]