How the Qur'an Was Revealed and Compiled
Section 28 of 28 · Foundations of Islam · Hamza Yusuf
The Seven Variants
There are seven variants of the Qurʾān, which are dialectical. In other words, some of the Arabs could not pronounce the Prophet's language, and so the Qurʾān was revealed in different variants based on the different tribes, and they are all accepted. There are seven of them, and it is a hadith that is written. It does not change the meaning: by consensus, one will find no doctrinal change in the Qurʾān.
For instance, one may learn according to Imam Warsh, who is the African reciter; and there are other people who recite according to ʿĀṣim — to Ḥafṣ, who is originally from Kufa — as the vast majority of Muslims do. If such people hear a recitation in Warsh and they are ignorant, they might think a mistake is being made; but if they are educated, they will know right away that this is a sound variant being read.
To give an example, in Sūrat al-Fātiḥah there is the verse:
مَـٰلِكِ يَوْمِ ٱلدِّينِ
“the Master of the Day of Requital.” (1:4)
One reading gives māliki yawm al-dīn, which means the possessor of the Day of Judgement, and the other gives maliki yawm al-dīn, which means the king. So the meaning is not changed; they are both sound. It is the same root, and the difference is just a mark right there. So there are only a few differences like that; the others will be more in pronunciation.
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* Kept as said. Waraqah ibn Nawfal is generally identified in the sīrah literature as Khadījah's paternal cousin, the son of her father's brother, rather than her uncle.
** Kept as said. The Qurʾān has 114 sūrahs in total; the figures of eighty-five Meccan and thirty-nine Medinan sum to 124.
*** Kept as said. ʿUthmān's caliphate ran from 644 to 656 of the Christian era, and the standardisation is usually placed at about 650.
**** Kept as said. The Council of Nicaea of 325 did not settle the biblical canon; the earliest surviving list of the four Gospels among the twenty-seven books of the New Testament is the festal letter of Athanasius of 367.
***** Kept as said. The fire in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, in which a codex attributed to ʿUthmān was destroyed, occurred in 1893.