In answer to the video "Was the Quran Perfectly Preserved Through Oral Tradition?"
Uthman's compilation was written in a particular rasm (orthography) which became known as al-rasm al-Uthmani. That orthography included addition, deletion and substitution of letters to make the text easier to read. That rasm made it possible from the beginning for some words to be read in more than one authenticated qiraat/readings/recitations method, going back with strong certainty to the prophet
“I heard Hisham ibn Hakim ibn Hizam reciting Surat al-Furqan (Sura 25) differently from me, and it was the Messenger of Allah who had recited it to me. I was about to rush up to him but I granted him a respite until he had finished his prayer. Then I grabbed him by his cloak and took him to the Messenger of Allah and said, ‘Messenger of Allah, I heard this man reciting Surat al-Furqan differently from the way you recited it to me.’ The Messenger of Allah said, ‘Let him go.’ Then he said, ‘Recite, Hisham,’ and Hisham recited as I had heard him recite. The Messenger of Allah said, ‘It was sent down like that.’ Then he said to me, ‘Recite’ and I recited the sura, and he said, ‘It was sent down like that. This Qur’an was sent down in seven ways, so recite from it whatever is easy for you.’ ”.
Obviously no companion, including Umar ibn al khattab, the 2nd Caliph, quoted above, mastered all the qiraat/recitation types at once. But what is clear is that the companions were on the lookout for the slightest unapproved variant in recital.
Umar’s reaction, as a side note, is not a disapproval or ignorance of the phenomenon of variant readings. His reaction just shows that he was unaware of that particular reading of Hisham.
What had happened to Umar as he came across a mode of recitation other than his for the first time, had also occurred to Ubayy ibn Kaab
"I was in the mosque when a man entered and prayed and recited (the Qur'in) in a style to which I objected. Then another man entered (the mosque) and recited in a style different from that of his companion. When we had finished the prayer, we all went to Allah's Messenger and said to him: This man recited in a style to which I objected, and the other entered and recited in a style different from that of his companion. The Messenger of Allah asked them to recite and so they recited, and the Messenger of Allah expressed approval of their affairs (their modes of recitation)".
We see again the same pattern of the close companions being on high alert at all moments to the matter of the transmission and preservation of the Quran. The matter was so dear to Ubayy that
"there occurred In my mind a sort of denial which did not occur even during the Days of Ignorance".
Although Ubayy did not verbally express his thoughts, the prophet felt his unease
"he struck my chest, whereupon I broke into sweating and felt as though I were looking at Allah with fear".
The prophet engaged him physically so as to bring him out of his state of confusion and make him focus on what he was about to tell him
"He (the Holy Prophet) said to me: Ubayy. a message was sent to me to recite the Qur'an in one dialect, and I replied: Make (things) easy for my people. It was conveyed to me for the second time that it should be recited in two dialects. I again replied to him: Make affairs easy for my people. It was again conveyed to me for the third time to recite in seven dialects And (I was further told): You have got a seeking for every reply that I sent you, which you should seek from Me. I said: O Allah! forgive my people, forgive my people, and I have deferred the third one for the day on which the entire creation will turn to me, including even Ibrahim (peace be upon him) (for intercession)".
This state of momentary doubt is something that might affect any believer of the highest degree, even in the presence of a prophet. It is interesting that Christian critics bring this minor issue up of Ubayy's inner feelings as if it is anything similar to what is depicted in their own books; Peter, the pillar of the church and chief of the apostles forcefully denied Jesus after his arrest. Prior to that, he did Satan's work by being a "stumbling block" to Jesus. Judas explicitly gave Jesus up to the authorities. Eventually all of the close circle "forsook him, and fled".
Another instance involving Umar is when he heard a variant from someone who had studied under Ubay ibn Kaab. He immediately took the man to Ubay for confirmation and even made Ubay testify three times that the variant had come from the prophet, prior to letting the man go. It has also been reported that Ubay read 48:26 with the addition
"and if you had felt disdain like they felt, the masjid e haram would have been corrupted".
Umar was unaware of that reading and again objected, showing once more how the companions never felt complacent in the preservation of their sacred scripture. Umar did not simply let that pass based on the precedent of their being variants he did not know that proved to be true. He went and asked for the testimony of Zayd ibn Thabit, who sided with him. But upon Ubay's insistence, Umar let him read as he pleased, based on his virtues and trustworthiness in the transmission of the Quran (Al Haakim, Al Mustadrak alal sahihayn). What is clear however is that Ubay did not transmit this reading to his students, because it was an exegetical variant, as seen earlier, approved by the prophet but aimed at helping the companion personally in his own understanding and assimilation of the text. This is supported by 2 important points; Umar was not aware of that recitation although he heard this sura directly from the Prophet on the occasion of Hudaybiyya. And second Ubay's reading through Abu Jaafar, Ibn Kathir, and Abu Amr, does not report this addition (Kitab al Mabani, Muqaddimatan 91-93).
And if the companions themselves were not aware of every aspect of all readings approved by the prophet, then it is only natural that their students would sometimes encounter the same problem
"The companions of `Abdullah (bin Mas`ud) came to Abu Darda', (and before they arrived at his home), he looked for them and found them. Then he asked them,: 'Who among you can recite (Qur'an) as `Abdullah recites it?" They replied, "All of us." He asked, "Who among you knows it by heart?" They pointed at 'Alqama. Then he asked Alqama. "How did you hear `Abdullah bin Mas`ud reciting Surat Al-Lail (The Night)?" Alqama recited: 'By the male and the female.' Abu Ad-Darda said, "I testify that I heard me Prophet reciting it likewise, but these people want me to recite it:-- 'And by Him Who created male and female.' but by Allah, I will not follow them."
Both Alqama and Abu Darda recited 92:3 without "ma khalaqa", as we find in today's Quran. Alqama heard it from his master ibn Masud and Abu Darda confirmed the authenticity of that variant as coming from the prophet. But other readers recited differently, according to what their own masters and companions of the prophet taught them, meaning without those leniencies recited by the prophet to his companions. Since the prophet this time was not present to arbitrate, each side remained on a reading traced to the prophet. However the reading of ibn Mas'ud has reached us today and is called the reading of Shu'ba. Yet we do not find this variant in their recital. This shows that it was eventually dropped in favor of the massive consensus/tawattur, the ultimate criterion of preservation of the Quran. Ibn al Jazari (see his Nashr) was thus completely justified in rejecting that reading of 92:3 based on it being transmitted through ahad/isolated report that contradicts the consensus.
Even Ibn Abbas came across a manuscript thinking the scribe had made an error. These errors, such as 24:27, which in fact were simply variants he wasnt aware of, are all present in today's Quran. When he became aware of the authenticity of these readings, he accepted, them, just as Umar quoted earlier. This is because when ibn Abbas was asked
"Did the Prophet leave anything (besides the Qur'an)?" He replied. "He did not leave anything except what is between the two bindings (of the Qur'an)".
Al-Tabari reports ibn Abbas' comment on the verse 24:27. Ibn Abbas first quotes the conventional reading, after which he juxtaposes his own reading, showing what is already known about the 2 words tasta'nisu/tasta'dhinu being near synonyms. This also proves that he had approved the conventional reading.
It would be very far fetched for the different scribes to have copied the same error in all of Uthman's commissioned compilations. Further there are cases of reported scribal errors which were swiftly corrected by Uthman, during his compilation of the mushaf
"I was with ‘Uthmaan when they were presenting the Mus-hafs to him. He sent me to Ubayy ibn Ka‘b with the shoulder blade of a sheep, on which was written, “lam yatasanna” and “laa tabdeelah lil-khalq” and “fa amhil al-kaafireen”. He called for an ink pot and erased one of the two laams (in the word “lil khalq”) and wrote “li khalq-illah (“in the creation of Allah” – referring to the verse “No change let there be in Khalq¬illâh (i.e. the religion of Allâh)” [ar-Room 30:30]). He erased the word fa amhil and wrote “fa mahhil” (“so give respite” referring to the verse“So give respite to the disbelievers” [at-Taariq 86:17]). And he wrote lam yatasannah (“they show no change”, referring to the verse “they show no change” [al-Baqarah 2:259]); he added the letter haa’ to it".It was the purpose of Uthman's compilation effort, to integrate as many recitations methods as possible in one universal script. Hence the above cases of correction and discarding any defective script that didnt allow all that dynamism. Why would he allow a scribal error in all standardized texts to be disseminated when he went to such length in avoiding precisely that?
The standardized writen Qurans were thus sent to different parts of the Caliphate. They ranged from 4 to 9 according to different narrations (al-Ya'qubi,al-Suyuti,al-Jawzi,al-Salih) and were sent to Kufa, Basra, Mecca, Syria, Bahrein, Yemen, Egypt, al-Jazirah and Medina along with a qari to demonstrate the correct reading to the people who obviously were in vast majority illiterate. These Qurans were copied and spread to Muslims throughout the Islamic territories.
Compare this effort by the compilers of the Quran, just 10 years following the prophet's death, in making the text as readily accessible to as many people, to the Church effort in locking the language of the Bible into Latin for a 1000 years so as to purposefully prevent the common people from accessing it by themselves. What is very revealing and that most Christians are oblivious of, is that after the councils of Hippo and Cartage in the end of the 4th century where 27 books were finally canonized as NT scriptures, one would expect the Church to want its adherents to get to know the official books of the Church. Especially when there were many non-canonical books in circulation, competing sects and heresies. And yet this is absolutely not what happened. Not only were the people discouraged from reading the Bible on their own, but translations into native languages were prohibited (Council of Toulouse 1229, Tarragona 1234, Constance 1415), forcing translation efforts to go underground. Some were burned for doing so (Tyndale 1536). With the proliferation of unreliable versions, the church authorities had no choice but to begin an effort of official translations, especially done in the monasteries. Two main reasons motivated this concealment by the Church. First to maintain their own aura of elitism. Among the reasons Martin Luther was persecuted in the 1500s was because of his translation, giving the lowly folk access to the "lofty" Bible. Compare this to the early efforts of the Quran compilers just 10 years following the prophet Muhammad's death, to spread copies of the book in scripts that would unlock the primitive consonantal structure of the text. The second and most important reason for the Church's reluctance to make its canon accessible to the commoner, was to prevent Christians from finding out about Jesus' purely Jewish environment, teachings, legacy, as well as the Jewishness of his followers, prior to Paul's appearance on the scene. Despite all of Paul's missionary activities, early Jewish converts to Christianity still worshiped in synagogues until the late 4th century (Homilies against Jews by Chrysostom). The dominant Pauline Church wanted and needed to break with Jesus and his early followers' Jewish heritage. Something that would have been impossible to do as early on in the history of Christianity where the traditions transmitted by the original cluster of Jewish sects claiming descendency from Jesus and his followers, were still known. Instead the church presented limited editions to the people, they could not show the full version because the Gospel writers didnt and couldnt erase Judaism from Jesus' ministry. They couldnt do it, because it would have made Jesus contextually irrelevant, as if appearing in a vacuum.
But going back to the Quran compilation, improvements on the basic script did not end with Uthman. Even after him, additional work had to be done on the Quran script to make it easier to read for both Arabs and non Arabs Muslims who werent familiar with Quran recitation. As shown earlier, the first compilations of the Quran were written in a defective script, lacking vowels and dotting. This wasnt a problem to those that already knew the proper recitation but could confuse the others. Steps were thus taken to gradually improve the orthography, by adding vowels and dots. Ibn Umar (73/692) disliked the additions; others welcomed it, clearly because it was, in fact, doing no more than ensuring proper reading of the Quran as received from the Prophet, and this view was accepted by the majority of Muslims throughout the different parts of the Muslims world.
With the last mushaf written and sent to the distant provinces, while a copy remained in Medina to serve as a blueprint for further copies, the original scattered and partial pieces of written Quranic text in the hands of the Muslims had served their purpose of being a secondary preservation method next to the memorization, and could now be safely discarded and burned. Once again, not because there were competing traditions and texts, but because, in light of parallel evidence provided by multiple memorizers, they were incomplete, or erroneous. The miraculous preservation of the Quran isnt undermined by the presence of scribal errors, which is inevitable, but whether the entire written text is lost from the hands and especially the memories of the community, which has never happened as it did with the Biblical tradition several times over. In addition to the imperfections that prompted the destruction of those personal copies, even those texts in Muslim hands that were correct prior to Uthman's standardization, their basic script did not integrate the multiple qiraat/recitals.
The whole idea behind Uthman's compilation effort was to standardize the written text in a manner that could facilitate its reading depending on one's recitation. No written text prior to his, integrated as many potential recitations in its skeletal structure. That is the truth about the whole mountain of conspiracy created by Islam's misleading critics, seizing upon this opportunity which no Muslim ever protested against, to build their baseless charges against the Quran's authenticity. Scholars contemporary to Uthman, such as Abu ad-darda' made comparative studies between the mushaf of Medina and the others. The findings revealed no variation in the skeletal structure but a total of 40 single letters differences scattered over 6 mushafs. These 6 mushafs were not private copies based on the ones approved and sent by Uthman, but were the very ones compiled under his watch then dispatched throughout the Muslim territories. This shows that these variants were known and approved. The compilers might have left them in because they agreed with the authenticated prophetic qiraat. This is the view of al Dani who stated that because Uthman could not accomodate all the qiraat in a single mushaf, he spread them throughout the masahif. Although the Medina mushaf was lost during the unrest that followed Uthman's assassination, based on the comparative notes left by the scholars that studied it, the present day Quran is in perfect congruence with what has been transmitted to us from the Medina mushaf.
That is why Uthman is depicted as unbothered by copies based on his standardized text having grammatical flaws in them, to be disseminated because eventually
"the Arabs will be able to recite it correctly".Again, this isnt speaking of errors in the script. Uthman would never have allowed such phenomenon be spread under his watch and despite his compilation efforts. These mistakes pertain to recitation. It isnt straightforward to grasp for non Arabs but some words if written in accordance with a particular recital can change the structure of that word. For example having 2 dots above a letter in one recital, but 1 dot in another. Or having an added ya at the end of a word. This may confuse the one unfamiliar with that particular recital and trying to read the word. Here is a similar situation
"When the writing of the Mus-haf was finished, it was brought to ‘Uthmaan and he looked at it, then he said: You have done well. I see something but we will be able to correct it according to our dialect".Uthman saw something written differently from the way Quraysh would pronounce it, as happened with the word taaboot, which can be written with 2 different taa. He promised and did correct it according to the dialect of Quraysh.
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