How the Quran Became a Book
What Muslim tradition and modern research tell us
Muslim tradition [1] explains the Quran was first put together in written form under the first caliph, Abu Bakr (11–13 AH)[2]. He was prompted to order this when warned that many of those who had memorised revelations taught by the Prophet were being killed in battle and consequently parts of the Quran might be lost for ever. Tradition goes on to say the Prophet’s revelations were then gathered together from a wide variety of materials on which pieces of text had been written — “from leafless stalks of date-palm trees, from leather strips, from hides, and stones” — and from the memories of men.
This, however, did not produce an official and agreed written Quran. This happened circa 30 AH under the third caliph, Uthman (23–36 AH), nearly 20 years later.
According to tradition, Uthman ordered it because disagreements broke out about its correct recitation between Islamic military contingents at communal prayers while on campaign in Armenia and Azerbaijan. After it was produced and copies distributed to the main Islamic centres Uthman ordered all other written versions of the Quran or of Quranic material to be destroyed.
The traditions explaining how Uthman went about producing his official Quran vary. Some say Uthman used the written sheets that had been compiled under Abu Bakr while others have him ordering an original collection, in which text for the Quran would only be accepted as genuine if two witnesses could vouch for it. Other traditions also have him undertaking the collection for different reasons.
Whatever exactly happened, it did not completely solve the problem as at this time Arabic writing was very basic. It lacked markings or signs for vowels and showed only consonants. It had only 17 signs to represent 28 consonants so some signs could stand for more than one consonant, and the use of dots to distinguish consonants was limited and inconsistent. The text of Uthman’s Quran might still be read in different ways.
Arabic writing developed with symbols and signs for vowels and dots for distinguishing all the consonants and they were applied to the text of the Quran, especially under the caliph, Abd al-Malik (65–86 AH), and his governor of Iraq. However, different readings persisted and were eventually brought under control when seven readings were selected by a famous scholar and Quran reader Ibn Mujahid (244–324 AH), 250 years after Uthman. They were the prevailing readings in the major Muslim centres of Medina, Mecca, Damascus, and Basra, and three in Kufa. Ibn Mujahid had the support of the authorities especially the vizier, Ibn Muqla, who decreed punishments for anyone who persisted in reciting other readings.
It thus seems the production of an official, state recognised, written Quran between two covers took some time and may have, especially in the early period, involved considerable efforts. Muslim tradition has a lot to say about what people said and did but often it raises more questions than it gives answers.
Muhammad was involved!
Why was gathering necessary? Why weren’t such important words carefully recorded right from the beginning? One reason given by tradition is that while the Prophet was alive there was always the possibility of further revelations and new revelations could and did sometimes abrogate earlier ones. In this state of addition and change, it was not desirable or practical to have or attempt a collection of the text.
In contrast to this, tradition also says that Muhammad employed secretaries and scribes when he was in Medina and some of the scribes were used to write down Quranic revelations. A famous Muslim scholar al-Suyuti (d. 911 AH) says that even though the Quran was not put together in one place all the separate revelations were written down and carefully stored. He gives a tradition saying the Prophet had a hand and writing was involved. In the later stages of revelation: “When [Muhammad] received a revelation, he would summon one of those who acted as his scribes and say, ‘Put this passage in the sura in which so-and-so is mentioned’, or ‘Put it in such-and-such a place’”. The Prophet also choose some of his close Companions to teach the Quran.
The famous Western scholar Arthur Jeffery said:
…. there is internal evidence in the Quran itself that the Prophet kept in his own care a considerable mass of revelation material belonging to various periods of his activity, some of it in revised and some of it in unrevised form, and that this material was to form the basis of the Kitab [Book] he wished to give his community before he died. Death, however, overtook him before anything was done about the matter. [3]
Companion codices
That the Quran, very early on, was recorded in written form is suggested by the existence at that time of Companion codices. A codex (plural codices) is a book made up from folded or joined single sheets of parchment, such as vellum, or papyrus. The term is usually used to describe only hand-written contents. As noted the Prophet instructed scribes to write down his words. In these circumstances, it is no surprise that those whom he selected to teach and some of his other Companions began written collections of his revelations.
There are no extant examples of these Companion codices but we know about them from a large body of early Muslim literature discussing and comparing them, which too has been lost but was used and reported on by later Muslim scholars before modern times. Two of the most famous of these literary works were al-Kisai’s (d. 189 AH) Discrepancies between the Manuscripts of the People of Madina, Kufa, and Basra and al-Madaini’s (d. c. 231 AH) Book of al-Madaini about the discrepancies between the manuscripts and the compiling of the Quran.
One surviving example of this literature, Ibn Abi Dawud’s (d. 316 AH) Book of Quran codices, was discovered by Arthur Jeffery and published in 1937. Based on this work and other sources Jeffery identified 15 Companion codices.
Some variants are different vowels with the same consonantal text and some are simply different ways of writing letters or forming words. The majority of variants concern differences in the consonantal text which lead to different words and expressions, sometimes in the form of synonyms, and in some cases words are added or omitted. Some changes look like explanatory touches for theological reasons.
More from traditions
The famous tradition collections also contain reports concerning the contents of the Quran indicating its collection for publication might have been complicated. For example, these is a tradition in which one of the Prophet’s closest Companions claims that two suras (chapters) are missing from the Uthman text which would have amounted to 129 verses.
There are also traditions that reproduce what some of these missing verses covered. Al-Bukhari, the most famous tradition collector, records “The Prophet used to say, ‘If the son of Adam were given a valley full of gold, he would love to have a second one; and if he were given the second one, he would love to have a third…”.
Muslim scholarship deals with the question of “missing” verses under the Islamic doctrine of abrogation. This is a very complex subject and there are various forms of abrogation. For example, a verse might lose its legal status because it is replaced by a later verse, or a passage does not need to be in the Quran because the subject is covered in the hadith traditions.
The punishment of stoning for adultery is an example of the latter case, and Muslim tradition also gives an interesting explanation of how the relevant passage came not to be in the Quran. Aisha, one of the Prophet’s wives, put the manuscript under her pillow, and while no one was paying attention, a tame sheep came in and ate it. In another version of this tradition the culprit is a goat.
Evidence of early manuscripts
There are no complete Qurans that can be dated to the first two centuries AH and the manuscripts and fragments available from this early period do not cover the full Quran of 114 suras found today. The most important discovery to-date is that in Sanaa, Yemen. Its significance is clearly stated in research published in 2012.
The lower text of Sanaa 1 is at present the most important document for the history of the Quran. As the only known extant copy from a textual tradition beside the standard Uthmanic one, it has the greatest potential of any known manuscript to shed light on the early history of the scripture. [4]
Radiocarbon dating indicates the lower text was written very soon after the death of Muhammad in 11 AH and before Uthman’s standardisation efforts circa 30 AH, though another famous modern scholar based on its writing style suggests it was written in the second half of the first century AH. [5]
Ancient hand-written manuscripts such as the standard Uthmanic text to which almost all extant Quranic manuscripts belong exhibit a range of variants. The range of variants for the Uthmanic text is significantly different to the range of variants found in the Sanaa lower text and reported for the best-known Companion codices. Study of these variants can be used to work out how the texts are related, a family tree, and some of the properties of the prototype from which they are probably descended.
Such examination in this case suggests the suras of the Quran were composed early and supports the less common view that the sequences of verses and sentences were fixed in the Prophetic prototype.
Variants take the form of additions, omissions, transpositions, and substitutions of entire words and sub-word elements. They involve elements of language such as suffixes, prefixes, prepositions, and pronouns or involve changes of person, tense, mood, or voice (passive or active), or the use of different words having the same root. Very exceptionally variants are at the level of sentences or verses. For example, the Sanaa lower text has the two short, three word, verses 31 and 32 in Sura 20 in reverse order, and a short verse of Sura 9 is missing. [6]
Notes/References
[1] A Muslim tradition is a report passed word-of-mouth person to person and from one generation to the next. It gives the name of the person who originated the report, the report itself, and the names of the persons in each generation who passed it on. Traditions were eventually written down, giving the names of the originator and transmitters, and are found in the sira (biographies of Muhammad produced after about 125 AH), early Muslim literature about the Quran (mostly after 150 AH), and hadith collections such as al-Bukhari’s famous collection produced around 240 AH.
[2] Dates are AH. “After Hijra”, the number of Islamic lunar years after Muhammad and his followers migrated from Mecca to Yathrib (now Medina). Abu Bakr’s rule (11–13 AH) converts to (632–634 CE Current Era)
[3] Arthur Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Quran: The Old Codices, E.J. Brill, 1937, p5
[4] Behnam Sadeghi and Mohsen Goudarzi, Sana 1 and the Origins of the Quran, Der Islam 87 (2012), 1–129
[5] François Déroche, Qurans of the Umayyads: A First Overview, Brill (2013), p54
[6] For a full account of all the above, see The Collection and Codification of the Quran. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08TW3NNFP
