Quran Pocket Guide

The number of transcribers who worked at different times is put at forty-two. A sizeable number, four of whom are worth mentioning: Abu Darda, Muadh ibn Jabal, Zayd ibn Thabit and Abu Zayd even possessed the complete Qur’an in its present arrangement. The Quran and the Prophet Muhammad It has been established from authentic traditions that the angel Gabriel, who conveyed the revelations of God to the Prophet, himself arranged these verses: each year during the month of Ramadan, Gabriel would come to the Prophet and recite before him all the Quranic verses revealed up till that time in the order in which they exist today, after which the Prophet would repeat the verses in exactly the same order. This dual process has been termed al-Irza, ‘mutual presentation,’ in the books of hadith. It has also been established that in the last year of the Prophet’s life, when the revelations had been completed, Gabriel came to the Prophet and recited the entire Quran in the existing order twice, and similarly the Prophet also recited to Gabriel the entire Quran twice. This final presentation is called al-Arz al-Akhirah in the books of hadith. (Fathul Bari, p. 659-663) When by the help of Gabriel the Quran was fully and systematically arranged, the Prophet recited it to his companions on different occasions in the order with which we are familiar today. The Quran was thus preserved in its pristine form in the memories of tens of thousands of the tompanions during the Prophet’s lifetime. The preservation of the Quran passed through three stages: transcription, compilation and collection. In the first stage, as soon as a chapter or a verse was revealed, it was committed to writing. The following items are mentioned in books as examples of the writing materials used: Riqa‘a—Thin leather piece Likhaf—Thin slates of white stone Katf—The round bone of the shoulder of the camel ‘Asib—The wide part of the root of the date branch. In the hadith, the second stage of this process is referred to as “compilation.” That is, first the verses were written down at the time of revelation. Then, when one chapter was completed, the whole chapter (often it took several revelations to complete one chapter) was written in compiled form, i.e. arranged in proper order on riqa‘a (leather). Such copies of the compiled Quran (complete or incomplete) were in the possession of a large number of people during the lifetime of the Prophet. We have the well known incident of Umar who beat his own sister and brother-in-law mercilessly for having accepted Islam. Finally, when his anger had subsided, he asked them to show him the book they were reading from. His sister replied that he could not touch it in a state of impurity and only after he had bathed himself did his sister give him the book (Ibn Hisham). The third stage of this process is termed “Collection” that is, writing down the entire Quran together in one volume. The form of the bound volume consisting of pages of the same size was not prevalent in the Prophet’s time. According to a narration recorded by Bukhari, only four companions Ubayy ibn Kaab, Muadh ibn Jabal, Abu Zayd, and Zayd ibn Thabit had the entire Quran put together during the life of the Prophet. In Kanz al Ummal, referring to Muhammad, Ibn Kab Al-Qurzi gives us the names of five such collectors of the complete Quran. However the status of their collections was that of a personal possession. The official version was produced under the direction of the caliph Abu Bakr, who had it bound after arranging for all the verses to be written on square papers of the same size. Imam Malik has also recorded (citing as his source, Shahab Zuhri, who had learned it from Salim, son of Abdullah ibn Umar) that Zayd ibn Thabit wrote down all the verses of the Quran on al-qaratis (papers of the same size) at the command of Abu Bakr. This volume was called Raba‘a (square). (Itqan, v. 1, pp. 84,85) The Compilation of the Quran in Later Times In later times the written Quran became the main source of Islamic learning. But one danger was still lurking. In sacred books even very minor differences can become a source of great controversy. It was feared that if people wrote the Quran on their own, differences in transcribing (kitabat) e.g. writing ‘eether’ for ‘either’ and in recitation would create widespread dissension and there would be no way of putting an end to it. For instance, just one word in the first chapter of the Quran was written in different ways