Two Witnesses for Every Piece

So they begin to collect it, and they have a criterion; and the criterion is that each piece of the Qurʾān must be brought and must have been written in the presence of the Prophet (peace be upon him), with two witnesses. This is the criterion. And this takes place during that period. It took them a while to do this, and they did it; and there are only two verses, at the end of Sūrat al-Tawbah, which is the chapter of repentance, for which they could not find two witnesses. They only had one: Khuzaymah.

Now, Khuzaymah was an Anṣārī, from the people of Medina. There is a tradition that says that a man from the people of the book came to the Prophet (peace be upon him), and he disagreed with the Prophet (peace be upon him) about something, and there were no witnesses; and Khuzaymah said: I will bear witness for you, O Messenger of God. And the Prophet (peace be upon him) looked at him and said: were you there, that you should believe me? And he said: we believe a revelation comes to you from God, so shall we not believe you about a business transaction? And so the Prophet (peace be upon him) said: the witnessing of Khuzaymah is like two people. And so those two verses of Khuzaymah's, which were known by other companions — but it was the writing in the presence of two witnesses that they wanted — were accepted as part of it.

This was made into one muṣḥaf, which literally comes from ṣaḥīfah, which is tablets. Generally they used papyri and gazelle skin, leather, things like that. Prior to that they had been using palm fronds, and they were using the shoulder blades from camels, which are quite large, to write verses and things like this. They would use a type of ink, and this is how they were writing the Qurʾān. They put the entire Qurʾān together, and it was kept: ʿUmar kept it, and then it was given to Ḥafṣah.