Surah 92:1–3:
By the night when it covers, and the day when it shines, and He who created the male and the female.
The opening of the Surah features a familiar, rhythmic sequence of environmental oaths peaking in verse 3: "And [by] He who created the male and the female" (wa-mā khalaqa adh-dhakara wal-unthā).
The Textual Discrepancy: While the modern standard Uthmanic codex (Mus-haf) uses the relative pronoun mā to refer to the Creator ("He who created..."), early manuscript history and the premier canonical companions of Muhammad recorded a fundamentally different text.
The Hadith Evidence: As explicitly documented in the most authoritative Islamic archives, including Sahih al-Bukhari (Hadith 4944), the prominent companion Abdullah ibn Mas'ud—whom Muhammad explicitly commanded his followers to learn the Quran from—vehemently insisted that verse 3 did not contain the words "He who created." Instead, Ibn Mas'ud recited the verse simply as: "By the male and the female" (wadh-dhakari wal-unthā).