The history of Islam
How the Quran was compiled
By Muslim accounts the Quran was gathered under Abu Bakr and standardised under Uthman, who ordered all other copies burned. Manuscripts from the seventh century survive.
The Muslim account
After the battle of Yamama (632/633) killed many reciters, Umar urged Abu Bakr to collect the Quran; Zayd ibn Thabit gathered it into sheets kept by Abu Bakr, then Umar, then Umar's daughter Hafsa. Under Uthman, quarrels over recitation led him to have Zayd and others make copies from Hafsa's sheets in the dialect of Quraysh, send them to the provinces and burn the rest.
Sahih al-Bukhari 4986 Summary, not a quotation
The first collection under Abu Bakr.
Read the full text on sunnah.comSahih al-Bukhari 4987 Summary, not a quotation
Uthman's standard copy and the burning of the others.
Read the full text on sunnah.comThe manuscripts
Early Quran manuscripts include the Birmingham leaves (radiocarbon-dated 568-645), the Sana'a palimpsest (whose lower text is non-Uthmanic) and other seventh-century fragments. Early Arabic script lacked most dots and vowel marks, which were added over the following centuries; the canonical readings (qira'at) were fixed by Ibn Mujahid (died 936).
Where scholars disagree
- Whether the standard text dates to Uthman (the traditional view, supported by many scholars and manuscripts) or was fixed later under Abd al-Malik (a minority view) is debated.
Sources
- Earliest source Sahih al-Bukhari 4986, 4987.
- Francois Deroche, Qur'ans of the Umayyads (Brill, 2014).
- Shady Hekmat Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur'an (Brill, 2013).