During Muhammad’s lifetime, his revelations were mostly conveyed by listening, remembering, and repeating. But even then, a few literate Muslims were writing them down on whatever materials were at hand. The written copies could be used as memory prompters or they could be taken to other towns as learning materials. Four Medinans are credited with the bulk of this task, and one of them, Zayd ibn Thabit, went on to be the chief editor of the final Quran during Uthman’s Caliphate.
Zayd was a young boy in Medina when the Prophet arrived. By the time he was 11 or 12, he was actively seeking a larger role in the community. Since he was too young to fight, he devoted himself to memorizing and reciting. We don’t know when he learned to read and write, but some Meccan prisoners of war worked off their ransoms by teaching children in Medina, and Zayd may have been one of these.
Many men who were able to recite the Quran died in the Ridda Wars, but the need to teach more Muslims was greater than ever. What if such a battle threatened the loss of the text? Caliph Abu Bakr appointed Zayd to collect all of the written copies he could find. Zayd reported in a hadith that he found copies on date palm stalks, stones, and pieces of leather (parchment?). His collection went into Abu Bakr’s keeping, then to Umar, then to Umar’s daughter, the widowed Mother of the Believers Hafsah.
Caliph Uthman faced a new problem: somehow, the recitation of the Quran had changed in the territories. In Basra and Damascus, they were repeating slightly different verses. Which version was correct? So he brought back Zayd ibn Thabit to work with a committee to create an authoritative full copy that could be sent to the provinces.
One problem was with Arabic dialect. The Qurayshi Arabic was slightly different from the Medinan, not to mention all of the other dialects that were now mixed together in the Muslim community. The Quran was not written with vowel markings or punctuation, so the spoken version clarified which word was intended, when the consonants were not clear. In addition to Zayd, Uthman appointed three aristocratic Meccans: Abdullah, Sa’id and Abd Al-Rahman (ibn Harith.
These four men sifted and put in order the full set of revelations of the Quran. They specifically made no actual changes to the Quran as it was then recited in Medina. If two verses seemed to conflict, they didn’t reconcile them. A later verse is said to take the place of an earlier verse, if they don’t agree; but the Quran is not in time order, so we can only make educated guesses. The surahs were not titled at that time, but they were put in order. It was probably an order that had become customary during all-night recitations; the longer surahs came first. Only two surahs are thought to be in time order, the first and the last.
They made five master copies of the Quran, each bound as a book. It took four months to make a full copy of the Quran! By this time, books were bound as pages with a spine, not as long rolls the way early Bible copies were. The pages were on parchment, a specially treated and bleached leather. In the animal-rich economy of Arabia, this type of writing material made sense, but it was still expensive. There would be few full Quran copies until paper technology arrived later. The copies were the most precious resource. Each was to be kept wrapped in silk and always stored on a high shelf.
One copy stayed with Caliph Uthman in Medina, while other copies were sent to the provinces. The provincial governors were ordered to have more copies made and distributed, but also to destroy alternative versions of the Quran. All through Medina and Mecca, this destruction was also carried out. And so the Quran was standardized as the empire grew.
- After the Prophet, by Lesley Hazelton.
- The Heirs of Muhammad, by Barnaby Rogerson