The Standardisation Under ʿUthmān

During the time of ʿUthmān, who is the third caliph, there is a campaign in Azerbaijan, and during this time there began to be some differences amongst the Muslims about the recitation of the Qurʾān. One of the things about the Qurʾān is that it was being written when there was no standardised writing. There were no dots — these are called diacritical marks — there were no diacritical marks and there were no vowels. So one does not know, looking at a bare word, whether it is kataba or kitābun. For this reason, although there were many people who had memorised it and knew what it was, there were other people who were beginning to learn it from the sheets and beginning to differ.

So ʿUthmān wanted to standardise the writing of the Qurʾān, and this is done in 658.^*** The Prophet (peace be upon him) dies in 632, and ʿUthmān begins to set out and standardise the Qurʾān. Again Zayd and three companions prepare it: they go back to this muṣḥaf of Ḥafṣah and they prepare the Qurʾān according to ʿUthmān's recommendations. And one of them was that if they differed about anything, then they should take the language of the Quraysh, because there were different ways of pronouncing words. The Quraysh had one pronunciation of a word and the Banū Tamīm another; the Quraysh said one form and other tribes said it differently. So there were differences of pronunciation.

ʿUthmān has this project carried through, and then sends copies — identical copies — to the various centres of the Muslims and to the governors, and demands, as the head of the Muslim government, that all of the Qurʾāns be burnt except those that were based on this writing.

Now, this is very early. Within the Jewish tradition, the Bible, the Old Testament, is really gathered over about nine hundred years according to modern scholarship, and there are four dominant versions — the Yahwist, the Elohist, the sacerdotal. There are some big differences there. Within the Christian tradition also, the final codification is already 325, when there is an agreement on the four Gospels at the Council of Nicaea.^**** The companions of the Prophet (peace be upon him) himself were the ones that gathered and did this, and they were people who had memorised the entire Qurʾān from the Prophet (peace be upon him), based on this oral tradition.