ElArabe | New Muslim Association
All praise is due to Allah, the One who revealed the Noble Qurʼān, perfected its verses, and made it a guidance and mercy for mankind. May peace and blessings be upon His Messenger, our Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ, upon his family and his Companions, and upon all those who follow his guidance with excellence until the Day of Judgement.
To proceed:
Ever since Allah revealed the Noble Qurʼān, those who harbour doubts concerning Islam have sought to cast suspicion upon its authenticity, preservation, and transmission. At times objections are directed toward its language and eloquence; at times toward its verses and chapters; and at times toward the manner in which it was written, collected, transmitted, and standardized.
Among the most frequently repeated objections are those concerning the collection of the Qurʼān. Critics portray the history of its compilation as evidence of uncertainty, disagreement, or alteration. Yet when the historical evidence is examined carefully, and the reports are weighed by the standards of hadith criticism rather than repeated at face value, these objections do not touch the preservation of the Qurʼān. The history of its transmission reveals instead an extraordinary system of preservation involving memorization, writing, verification, communal transmission, and continuous recitation.
The preservation of the Qurʼān passed through several stages. Three of the most significant were:
The preservation and writing of the Qurʼān during the lifetime of the Prophet ﷺ
The collection of the Qurʼān into a single set of written sheets (ṣuḥuf) during the caliphate of Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq رضي الله عنه
The standardization and dissemination of authoritative copies during the caliphate of ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān رضي الله عنه
These stages are sometimes presented as evidence that the Qurʼān was uncertain or incomplete before the time of ʿUthmān. In reality they represent successive measures of preservation suited to the circumstances of each period.
We will therefore address three common doubts surrounding these stages.
The First Doubt: Why Was the Qurʼān Not Compiled Into a Single Book During the Prophet's Lifetime?
The first objection is simple. If the Qurʼān was intended to be preserved, why did the Prophet ﷺ not collect it into a single bound volume during his lifetime?
The answer is that the absence of a single bound codex does not mean the absence of preservation.
During the lifetime of the Prophet ﷺ the Qurʼān was preserved through two complementary means: memorization and writing.
The Companions learned the Qurʼān directly from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. They recited it in their prayers, taught it to others, memorized its verses, and carried it throughout the Muslim community. At the same time the Prophet ﷺ had scribes who wrote down the revealed verses as revelation descended upon him.
The Qurʼān was therefore never dependent upon a single written manuscript. Its preservation existed simultaneously in the memories of numerous Companions and in written materials recorded during the Prophet's own lifetime.
That these written materials were not yet assembled into one physical codex is not evidence of incompleteness. Revelation was still descending, and the final arrangement of the revelation had not yet reached its conclusion. The Prophet ﷺ was alive, new verses and instructions were still coming to the community directly from him, and verses continued to be placed within their sūrahs by his instruction. Producing a definitive bound volume while revelation was still ongoing would therefore have served little practical purpose — and any such volume would have required continual revision.
The situation changed completely with the death of the Prophet ﷺ. Revelation had ceased, and the Muslim community now possessed the complete revelation. It was at this point that circumstances arose which made collecting the written material into one organized set of sheets particularly beneficial.
Thus the absence of a single codex during the Prophet's lifetime should not be confused with the absence of preservation. The Qurʼān had already been preserved through the strongest means available: mass memorization, written documentation, direct teaching, and continuous recitation.
The later compilation was therefore not the creation of a previously incomplete Qurʼān. It was the gathering and organising of material that had already been preserved through these established means.
The Second Doubt: Why Was Zayd ibn Thābit Chosen to Collect the Qurʼān?
A second objection concerns the decision of Abū Bakr رضي الله عنه to entrust the collection of the Qurʼān to Zayd ibn Thābit رضي الله عنه.
Critics point to the narration in which the Prophet ﷺ said:
"Take the Qurʼān from four: from ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd, Sālim the freed slave of Abū Ḥudhayfah, Muʿādh ibn Jabal, and Ubayy ibn Kaʿb."
— Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, no. 4999; Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, no. 2464
They then ask: if these four were specifically recommended for learning the Qurʼān, why was Zayd ibn Thābit selected for the task of collection?
This objection rests upon a confusion between two different tasks.
The Prophet's recommendation establishes the excellence of those Companions in learning and reciting the Qurʼān. It does not mean that only those four possessed the qualifications necessary for every task connected to the Qurʼān — and it was never phrased as a restriction. Ibn Ḥajar and others noted that the wording is a direction toward excellence, not a limitation excluding all others; the Prophet ﷺ himself praised the recitation of Companions not named in it.
The task assigned to Zayd was not simply to recite the Qurʼān from memory. He was entrusted with collecting and verifying the written material of the Qurʼān and assembling it into one organised corpus.
Zayd ibn Thābit رضي الله عنه possessed several qualities that made him exceptionally suited to this responsibility. He was:
a Companion who had memorized the Qurʼān;
one of the scribes of revelation;
familiar with the written revelation produced during the Prophet's lifetime;
young, intelligent, and meticulous;
trustworthy and free from any suspicion;
present in Madinah and available for the work;
and among those who witnessed the final review of the Qurʼān.
Abū Bakr رضي الله عنه stated these reasons openly when he summoned him. In the narration of Bukhārī, Abū Bakr said to Zayd that he was a young man of sound intellect whom they held no suspicion against, and that he used to write the revelation for the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.
Zayd himself described the weight of what was asked of him, saying that had they burdened him with moving a mountain it would not have been heavier upon him than the command to collect the Qurʼān (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, no. 4986). This is precisely what we would expect from a man who understood the seriousness of preserving the Book of Allah — and it is worth noting that a man forging or reconstructing a scripture does not tremble at the task.
The method employed was not based merely upon Zayd's personal memory. He did not sit down and write the Qurʼān from his own recollection. Rather, he sought out the written materials upon which the Qurʼān had been recorded and cross-checked them against the established recitation preserved in the breasts of the Companions. The process therefore joined written evidence and memorized transmission together, each verifying the other.
This is one of the strongest features of the early collection. It was not a case of one man remembering the Qurʼān and writing it down. It was a process of verification against material already known to an entire community — and verification is only possible where the standard is already established.
Furthermore, those who participated were not isolated individuals living centuries after the revelation. They were the very people who had received the Qurʼān directly from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and had recited it in his presence.
Therefore the question should not be, "Why was Zayd chosen instead of the four mentioned in the hadith?" The more appropriate question is, "Why would Abū Bakr choose anyone other than a man who was himself a memorizer, a scribe of revelation, present in Madinah, and trusted by all, to lead a carefully verified collection?"
What about the four themselves?
It is also worth noting the circumstances of the four Companions named in the hadith at that particular moment.
Sālim رضي الله عنه had been martyred at the Battle of Yamāmah — the very battle whose casualties prompted the collection in the first place.
Muʿādh ibn Jabal رضي الله عنه was not in Madinah. He had been sent to Yemen by the Prophet ﷺ, and in the years following the Prophet's death he was engaged in the lands of Shām, where he later died in the plague of ʿAmwās.
ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd رضي الله عنه was likewise not resident in Madinah at the time of the collection; he was later sent to Kūfah, where he taught the Qurʼān to a great many.
Ubayy ibn Kaʿb رضي الله عنه was in Madinah — and he was not excluded. Reports of the collection indicate that Ubayy participated in the work, and he was subsequently among the committee appointed by ʿUthmān رضي الله عنه for the copying of the maṣāḥif. The objection therefore collapses at exactly the point where it seemed strongest: the most eminent reciter available was not sidelined at all.
The hadith, then, does not establish that Zayd was unqualified. It establishes the excellence of several Companions in recitation, while the circumstances of the compilation called for a particular set of qualifications — memorization combined with scribal experience of the written revelation, availability, and universal trust — which Zayd possessed.
The Third Doubt: Did the Companions Disagree About the Qurʼān?
The third objection seeks to exploit reports describing differences among some Companions concerning particular sūrahs or matters related to the written collection.
Two examples are cited most often: a report concerning ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd رضي الله عنه and the sūrahs Al-Falaq and An-Nās, and a report in which ʿUthmān رضي الله عنه was asked about the relationship between Sūrah Al-Anfāl and Sūrah At-Tawbah.
Critics present these as though they demonstrate that the Companions did not know what belonged to the Qurʼān. This conclusion does not follow — and before we even reach the substance, both reports have a difficulty the critic rarely mentions.
First: these reports must be graded before they are used
A principle that governs this entire discussion: a report must be authenticated before it can be interpreted. Those who cite these narrations in polemics almost never examine their chains, though they are quick to demand documentary rigour from Muslims.
The report concerning Al-Anfāl and At-Tawbah is narrated in Sunan Abī Dāwūd, no. 786 (Kitāb al-Ṣalāh); Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī, no. 3086 (Kitāb al-Tafsīr); and Musnad Aḥmad, no. 399 (1:57). (Note: Sunan Abī Dāwūd has two numbering systems in circulation — in editions using in-book numbering this is Kitāb al-Ṣalāh, no. 396.) Al-Tirmidhī graded it ḥasan. However, its chain includes Yazīd al-Fārisī, who was criticised by hadith scholars, and the report has been graded weak (ḍaʿīf) by later verifiers. Ibn Ḥajar and others also noted difficulties in it.
The report concerning Ibn Masʿūd and the last two sūrahs is narrated in Musnad Aḥmad and elsewhere. Its gradings differ considerably among scholars. A number of leading scholars held that the position was never soundly established from Ibn Masʿūd at all — Ibn Ḥazm rejected the attribution outright, and al-Nawawī declared what is transmitted from him in this matter to be untrue. Others held that some chains are sound but that Ibn Masʿūd's objection concerned whether the two sūrahs were to be written in his personal codex, given that he regarded them primarily as the two sūrahs of seeking refuge which the Prophet ﷺ taught for protection — not a denial that they were revealed.
The critic therefore builds his case upon reports that are, at minimum, contested. That alone should end the argument. But let us grant him the reports for the sake of discussion, because the answer holds even then.
Second: isolated reports cannot overturn mass transmission
The Qurʼān was not established through one individual's statement, one manuscript, or one isolated chain of transmission. It was transmitted through the collective recitation and memorization of the Muslim community, generation after generation. This is what the scholars mean when they say the Qurʼān is established by tawātur — mass transmission by numbers so large that collusion upon error is impossible.
An isolated report (khabar al-wāḥid) describing the recollection or personal judgement of one Companion cannot overturn what is established by the collective and continuous transmission of the entire community. This is not an ad hoc rule invented to escape an embarrassment; it is the standing methodology of the scholars of Qurʼānic sciences, applied consistently — which is why isolated reports were never accepted as capable of adding to the Qurʼān either.
Several distinct matters must also be kept apart. A Companion might have:
not yet heard a particular verse or recitation directly from the Prophet ﷺ;
been unaware of a particular ruling of abrogation;
differed as to whether two passages constituted one sūrah or two;
recited according to a mode (ḥarf) permitted by the Prophet ﷺ that differed from another's;
or expressed a judgement about what should be written in his own personal codex.
None of these establishes that the Qurʼān itself was lost, altered, or unknown to the wider community.
The example of Al-Anfāl and At-Tawbah
As established above, the chain of this report is weak on account of Yazīd al-Fārisī (Sunan Abī Dāwūd, no. 786; Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī, no. 3086; Musnad Aḥmad, no. 399), and that is sufficient to dispose of any argument built upon it. But set the weakness aside and take the report at face value. What it describes is a discussion of the similarity in subject matter between the two sūrahs and the absence of a basmalah between them.
That is a question about arrangement and classification — whether the material constitutes one sūrah or two, and how it is to be laid out in the written copy. It is not a question about whether the verses were revealed.
The difference is enormous. There is a world between saying, "I am uncertain whether these verses are Qurʼān," and saying, "I know these verses are Qurʼān, and I am considering how they relate to one another in the arrangement of the written sūrahs." Only the first would touch authenticity, and it is not what the report says.
The example of Al-Falaq and An-Nās
Again, set aside the dispute over authenticity. Even on the assumption that something of this was said, it must be read against the overwhelming evidence establishing these two sūrahs as Qurʼān.
The Prophet ﷺ taught these two sūrahs explicitly. He commanded ʿUqbah ibn ʿĀmir رضي الله عنه to recite them, describing them as the like of which had never been seen (Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, no. 814). He recited them in seeking refuge, and ʿĀʼishah رضي الله عنها reported his practice of reciting the muʿawwidhāt into his hands and wiping over himself each night (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, no. 5017). They are recited in prayer by the entire ummah and were transmitted by mass transmission from the beginning.
A contested report about the personal codex of one Companion cannot stand against that. The Qurʼān is not authenticated by isolated historical anecdotes; it is authenticated by continuous, communal transmission beginning with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. And it is worth observing that the very ummah among whom Ibn Masʿūd lived and taught — including his own students in Kūfah — recited these two sūrahs without interruption.
The Final Review Between the Prophet ﷺ and Jibrīl
An important consideration is the final review (al-ʿarḍah al-akhīrah) of the Qurʼān between the Prophet ﷺ and Jibrīl عليه السلام in the last Ramaḍān of the Prophet's life.
Fāṭimah رضي الله عنها reported that the Prophet ﷺ confided to her that Jibrīl used to review the Qurʼān with him once each year, but that he had reviewed it with him twice that year, and that he saw in this a sign that his time had come (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, no. 3624; Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, no. 2450).
This review is significant because it demonstrates that the revelation reached a settled, final form before the Prophet ﷺ passed away — its wording and its arrangement fixed and rehearsed in full. It is therefore incorrect to imagine the Companions independently reconstructing an uncertain scripture after his death.
The people who undertook the later collection were the very generation who had received the Qurʼān directly from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. They had heard it from him. They had memorised it. They had written it. They had recited it in prayer behind him. And they had taught it to others in his lifetime and with his approval.
The written collection therefore functioned as an additional safeguard within a system of preservation that was already complete.
The Collection of Abū Bakr and the Standardization of ʿUthmān
It is essential to distinguish between the work of Abū Bakr رضي الله عنه and the work of ʿUthmān رضي الله عنه. They were different tasks, undertaken for different reasons, and conflating them is the source of much confusion.
The collection of Abū Bakr
The collection undertaken in the caliphate of Abū Bakr رضي الله عنه was prompted by the Battle of Yamāmah, in which a large number of the reciters of the Qurʼān were killed. ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb رضي الله عنه came to Abū Bakr and expressed his fear that if the reciters continued to be killed in the battles, much of the Qurʼān would be lost. He therefore urged that the Qurʼān be collected into one organized set of sheets (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, no. 4986).
This sentence — ʿUmar's fear of loss — is the single most frequently quoted line in polemics on this subject, so it deserves to be met directly rather than passed over.
ʿUmar's concern was real, but understanding what he feared requires reading the rest of the same narration. Three things establish his meaning:
First, the concern was tied to the reciters being killed in battle. The reciters carried both memorized text and the written materials in their possession. A locality could lose its teachers; written fragments held by individuals could perish with them. What ʿUmar feared was the erosion of the human and material carriers in particular places — precisely the kind of loss that a single, centrally held, verified written corpus would guard against for all time.
Second, the remedy he proposed proves the point. If the Qurʼān had genuinely been slipping away, collecting it into sheets would have been useless — you cannot record what is already gone. The remedy makes sense only on the assumption that the Qurʼān was fully known and needed consolidating before any risk could accumulate. ʿUmar was acting to prevent a future danger, not to repair a present loss.
Third, the method of the collection settles it. Zayd's task was verification: gathering the written materials and checking them against the established recitation of the Companions. Verification presupposes a known standard. A community that had lost its Qurʼān would have had nothing to check anything against.
Abū Bakr رضي الله عنه initially hesitated, saying, "How can I do a thing which the Messenger of Allah ﷺ did not do?" — a hesitation that itself testifies to the caution of these men regarding the Book of Allah, and is hardly the demeanour of men inventing a scripture. ʿUmar continued to urge him until Allah opened his breast to it, and he recognized the benefit in the measure.
Zayd ibn Thābit رضي الله عنه was then entrusted with the task, and he carried it out by the method already described. The resulting ṣuḥuf remained with Abū Bakr, then with ʿUmar after him, and then with Ḥafṣah bint ʿUmar رضي الله عنها.
The standardization of ʿUthmān
Later, in the caliphate of ʿUthmān رضي الله عنه, Islam had spread into distant regions, and Muslims from different lands — many of them new to the religion and taught by Companions who had settled in different cities — were encountering differences in modes of recitation and beginning to dispute over them.
These differences were not competing Qurʼāns. They fell within the framework of the aḥruf which the Prophet ﷺ himself permitted. ʿUmar رضي الله عنه once heard Hishām ibn Ḥakīm رضي الله عنه reciting Sūrah al-Furqān differently from how he had been taught, and brought him to the Prophet ﷺ, who listened to both and said that each was correct, saying that the Qurʼān was revealed in seven aḥruf (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, no. 4992; Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, no. 818).
Note what this establishes: the variation was prophetic in origin, not accidental. It was a concession granted by Allah through His Messenger ﷺ, not a corruption that crept in later.
Nevertheless, ʿUthmān رضي الله عنه recognized that Muslims of later generations — without the Prophet ﷺ present to affirm each recitation — could fall into serious division over it. Ḥudhayfah ibn al-Yamān رضي الله عنه came to him alarmed at the disputes he had witnessed among the armies in Armenia and Azerbaijan and urged him to act before the ummah differed over its Book as earlier communities had differed over theirs (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, no. 4987).
ʿUthmān therefore sent to Ḥafṣah for the ṣuḥuf, commissioned a committee headed by Zayd ibn Thābit to copy them into standardized maṣāḥif, and returned the original sheets to her. Copies were dispatched to the major centres of the Muslim world, and other personal written materials that could cause confusion were ordered to be burned.
The purpose was not to create a new Qurʼān. It was to unify the written copies upon one authoritative standard and prevent the community from dividing over the written representation of its Book. And it must be stressed that ʿUthmān did not act alone or by personal preference: he acted upon the counsel of the Companions and with their agreement. ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib رضي الله عنه is reported to have said that ʿUthmān did not do what he did except after consultation with them, and that had he been in his position he would have done the same.
The distinction, then, is clear:
Abū Bakr's collection gathered the Qurʼān into one organised written corpus.
ʿUthmān's standardization unified the ummah upon authoritative written copies of that corpus.
Neither process involved inventing, editing, or reconstructing the Qurʼān.
Conclusion: Preservation, Not Reconstruction
When the whole history is taken together, the picture that emerges is fundamentally different from the one the critics present.
The Qurʼān was:
revealed to the Prophet ﷺ over approximately twenty-three years;
memorized by numerous Companions in his lifetime;
written down by his scribes as it was revealed;
recited publicly and privately, in prayer and outside it;
rehearsed in full with Jibrīl عليه السلام in the final year of his life;
taught directly from one generation to the next;
collected into one organized written corpus under Abū Bakr رضي الله عنه;
and standardized and distributed throughout the Muslim world under ʿUthmān رضي الله عنه.
These were not successive attempts to discover what the Qurʼān was. They were successive measures to preserve what the Muslim community already knew it to be.
The history does not present us with a text that was lost and later reconstructed. It presents us with a revelation preserved through multiple overlapping mechanisms — memorization, writing, recitation, teaching, communal transmission, and scholarly verification — any one of which would be remarkable, and which together are without parallel in the history of any book.
This is precisely why isolated reports concerning individual Companions cannot overturn the established text. The Qurʼān was never dependent upon the testimony of a single individual. Its preservation was communal from the first day.
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ taught it to his Companions. The Companions transmitted it to those after them. Those generations transmitted it to the generations after them. And the ummah has continued reciting, memorizing, teaching, and preserving the same Qurʼān across fourteen centuries — in every land, in every language of its people, without a rival edition and without a lost original.
The attempts to cast doubt upon its preservation ultimately fail because they confuse the history of preservation with the history of invention.
The Qurʼān was not composed by the Companions.
It was not reconstructed by Abū Bakr.
It was not edited by ʿUthmān.
It was revealed by Allah, taught by His Messenger ﷺ, preserved by his Companions, transmitted by the ummah, and protected by the promise of Allah — a promise He made concerning it and has kept:
إِنَّا نَحْنُ نَزَّلْنَا الذِّكْرَ وَإِنَّا لَهُ لَحَافِظُونَ
"Indeed, it is We who sent down the Reminder, and indeed, We will be its Guardian."
— Sūrah al-Ḥijr 15:9
لَا يَأْتِيهِ الْبَاطِلُ مِن بَيْنِ يَدَيْهِ وَلَا مِنْ خَلْفِهِ ۖ تَنزِيلٌ مِّنْ حَكِيمٍ حَمِيدٍ
"Falsehood cannot approach it from before it or from behind it. It is a revelation from One who is Wise and Praiseworthy."
— Sūrah Fuṣṣilat 41:42
And Allah knows best.
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