Was the Quran preserved?

History

Under Abu Bakr. After the battle of Yamama, ʿUmar told Abu Bakr that "Casualties were heavy among the Qurra' of the Qur'an" — the memorisers — and feared more would die. Abu Bakr charged Zayd ibn Thabit (ra), the Prophet's (pbuh) scribe, to "search for (the fragmentary scripts of) the Qur'an and collect it in one book." Zayd says: "I started looking for the Qur'an and collecting it from (what was written on) palme stalks, thin white stones and also from the men who knew it by heart." He found the last verses of Sura al-Tawba only with Abu Khuzayma al-Ansari. The sheets stayed with Abu Bakr, then ʿUmar, then ʿUmar's daughter Hafsa (ra) (Bukhārī 4986 Ṣaḥīḥ (sound)).

Under ʿUthman. Hudhayfa urged ʿUthman to "Save this nation before they differ about the Book"; ʿUthman had copies made from Hafsa's sheets, told the copyists that where they differed they should "write it in the dialect of Quraish", sent copies to the provinces, and ordered other Quranic materials "burnt" (Bukhārī 4987 Ṣaḥīḥ (sound)).

Why the burning? The report gives no explicit reason for the burning itself; ʿUthman acted after Hudhayfa's warning that people would "differ about the Book". The burned materials were other written copies. Their full contents are unknown, because most were destroyed; the reports about Ibn Masʿud's copy (below) and the Sanaa lower text give partial glimpses.

History

The Birmingham leaves. Two leaves in the University of Birmingham, in Hijazi script (the early Arabic script of Mecca and Medina, with no short-vowel marks and some consonants marked with "oblique dashes"), containing parts of suras 18–20, were radiocarbon-dated at Oxford to "1465±21 years BP (before 1950), which corresponds with 95.4% confidence to the calendar years CE 568–645 when calibrated" (Wikipedia). BP means "before present", where "present" is fixed at 1950. The range begins before the Quran's revelation began — which shows the limits of the method: radiocarbon dates the death of the animal whose skin became the parchment, not the writing. David Thomas notes the text "could have been written as late as 650–655"; François Déroche has "expressed reservations about the reliability of the radiocarbon dates" (Wikipedia).

Tübingen. A fragment in Tübingen University Library (Ma VI 165) was dated to AD 649–675 with 95.4% probability (Medieval.eu).

The Sanaa palimpsest. A palimpsest is a manuscript whose first text was scraped off and written over. In the Sanaa manuscript, both layers are Quran. Wikipedia gives the parchment's radiocarbon range as 578–669 CE, citing Sadeghi & Bergmann (2010, p. 348); its sentence "95% accuracy to before 669 CE, and 75% probability from before 646 CE" has no citation. The lower text "contains many variations from the standard text", and its sura order "corresponds to no known Quranic order". Two examples: at 2:196, where the standard text has fa-man kāna minkum ("whoever among you"), the lower text has fa-in kāna aḥadun minkum ("if one of you"); at 9:125, where the standard text has "in their hearts is disease" (maraḍ), the lower text has "in their hearts is filth" (rijs). Wikipedia's own judgement, without a citation, is that the variants "rarely diverge from the fundamental meaning". It also cites Éléonore Cellard as finding "numerous similarities" with the sura orders reported for Ibn Masʿud and Ubayy. Sadeghi and Goudarzi find some overlap with Ibn Masʿud's reported variants but "the differences much outnumbering the correspondences"; Asma Hilali argues both layers may be "school exercises", a view Nicolai Sinai has criticised.

History

What is reported. Reports say his copy "excludes the first chapter, as well as the two chapters known as Al-Muʿawwidhatayn" — suras 1, 113 and 114 (Wikipedia, citing Sadeghi & Bergmann 2010 and Harvey 2017). But "historical accounts are inconsistent regarding the details", the variant "has not been definitively found in any existing early Quranic manuscript", and his reading had supporters in Kufa "as late as the 9th century". Classical explanations of the omission have not yet been consulted.

History

The consonantal text. Early Arabic script wrote consonants without vowels and often without the dots that distinguish letters. This written skeleton is the rasm; the ʿUthmanic copies fixed it.

Readings. A qirāʾa is an accepted way of reciting that skeleton, with particular vowels and pronunciation, traced back through chains of teachers. Ḥafṣ and Warsh are two transmissions of two of these readings. Brockett, comparing them closely, concluded that "the limits of their variation clearly establish that they are a single text" (Islamic Awareness, quoting Brockett, 1988). Islamic Awareness's own example of an acceptable difference is dot placement: taʿlamūn ("you know") against yaʿlamūn ("they know").

Modes. The aḥruf ("seven modes") of a well-known hadith are, in one common explanation, the dialectal forms in which the Quran was first allowed to be recited, reduced to the dialect of Quraysh under ʿUthman (Islamic Awareness). Scholars differ on what the seven aḥruf were; that debate was not covered here.

History

The verse of stoning. Ibn ʿAbbas (ra) reports ʿUmar (ra) saying: "I am afraid that after a long time has passed, people may say, 'We do not find the Verses of the Rajam (stoning to death) in the Holy Book'", and so leave "an obligation that Allah has revealed" (Bukhārī 6829 Ṣaḥīḥ (sound)). The tradition has a category for this: naskh al-tilāwa dūna al-ḥukm, a verse whose wording was abrogated (no longer part of the recited Quran) while its ruling remained. Which classical scholars applied it to this report, and how, has not yet been consulted in a named source. Critics see it as evidence that the text lost material. Both sides read the same report.