Islam critiqued goes back in time; Early Muslims opinion on the Quran?

In answer to the video "Perfect Preservation of the Quran is a Modern Invention"

There is zero proof that early Muslims doubted the Quran's authenticity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Once the institution of prophethood was sealed, Allah, contrary to His previous revelations, pledged that He would gather and structure, then protect His final revelation. No other book or divine scripture has this pledge of protection from God Himself. Many Quranic verses refer to the ongoing process of writing it down 80:11-16,85:21-22,6:77-80,25:5.

Many ahadith whether from the Muatta, Kitab Al-Nida Lil-Salah, Bukhari's Kitab Fadailul-Quran, all confirm the Quran was entirely written on different support in Muhammad time, although not compiled in one book. This in itself wasnt a problem to the multitude of memorizers contemporaries to the prophet. They knew its correct order.

We read in sahih Muslim of the prophet's command

"Do not take the Qur'an on a journey with you, for I am afraid lest it should fall into the hands of the enemy".

Again in Bukhari

"its confirmed that among those who compiled the Quran in the Prophet's time are Abdullah Ibn Mas’oud, Muadh and Ubayy Ibn Ka’b".

This close circle of the prophet's companions recited the Quran as it was revealed, from beginning to end (10 times according to some traditions) in front of the Prophet all of which indicates that it was in a gathered and structured form although not collated in the form of a book.

Again in al-Sirat al-Mustaqim, Anas, whom this youtuber claims did not think the Quran was correctly preserved, says:

"Four men collected the Qur’an during the life of the Prophet (S) those being my father, Mu’adh, Zaid(Ibn Thabit), and Abu Zaid".

Zaid ibn Thabit reported

"We used to collect the fragments of the verses of the Quran and put them in their appropriate places at the instruction of the Messenger of Allah (S). Despite this, the verses were still fragmented so the Prophet (S) ordered ‘Ali (a) to gather them in one place and warned us against losing them." 

Other examples of Quran compilers during the Prophet's time is the one of a woman named Umm Waraqah (al Itqan,v1,p215).

The Quran challenges its opponents to find discrepancies in it, or to produce similar verses or suras meaning that these suras were there in the public hands. The Quran was transmitted, learned and passed down both verbally and in script form, on a scale never seen for any document, let alone religious. Any unbiased individual can see this is a process which is still continuing today. But the primary source of transmission was always oral.

All written texts were dependent on it and it still is the case today as all written texts must be attested *by the oral tradition of transmission through a Hafiz. Again, this simply is a statement of fact. Writing down was only meant to consolidate the process of oral preservation. This is what the novices to Islam, which is the case of most of its self-proclaimed critics, fail to grasp. They approach Quran authenticity with their own scriptural history in mind, thinking that the Quran was put to writing out of thin air.

This dual method of control, textual but mainly oral, which was never practiced by the transmitters of the Bible, made it impossible for any tampering as it would immediately be detected by the thousands of memorizers in all corners of the Muslim territories. The number of people having transmitted the Quran is so vast that any error in the transmission, textual or oral, became impossible. This is why the Quran is labelled "mutawattir", a level of authenticity attributed to an oral transmission when it has been related exactly the same way by countless independant sources.

Extremely few ahadith have been labelled as such or reached the level of multiple independant sources as the Quran. Most ahadith are based ahad reports or singular transmissions. Further and in contrast to the Quran, the ahadith require isnad (detailed chain of transmission) to be validated, because the earliest communities often disputed and argued about the veracity of these statements.

The Quran never required any isnad to gain a sense of credibility and authenticity because the text and veracity of the Quran was agreed to by a consensus of the earliest Islamic communities. Despite the abundance of 1st-2nd century hijra manuscripts, there is zero proof that the Quran was transmitted in anyway other than tawatur. Hence the position of mainstream academia as regards the authenticity of the Islamic narrative of compilation, preservation, transmission of the text and recitals. See further below.

The Quran, contrary to both hadith and sunna does not seek support because it has community consensus or reliable transmission chain. Rather, it requires one to believe in its veracity based on it clear arguments. No scripture can be accepted purely on the basis that the same community profess its Divine origins and have themselves sought to protect it.

When Islam spread to territories where the people hadnt yet received an oral transmission of the Quran, but only the script, they were confused on the proper pronunciation of the words. The basic nature of the early script, especially the lack of headings or separations between the suras, could have most probably been the reason for some people to have confused the beginning and ending of certain suras.

There are for instance 2 reports attributed to Abu Ubaid and Aisha, reports that are deemed unauthentic and unreliable by hadith scholars, on sura Ahzab. In one report the person argues that there was a time when sura Ahzab, which currently counts 73 verses was similary in length to surah Baqarah which now has 286 verses. Some people thought that al ahzab and others were longer than they actually were. This could easily be explained by the fact that both al ahzab and al baqara were revealed in Medina. But sura Baqara was revealed over 10 years and so it could have been that at the time the comment was made on sura Ahzab's length, al baqara was also around 70 verses in length until a time came where it became longer. Assuming for argument's sake that al Ahzab did count 200+ verses, one would have to explain the intricate internal coherence of this short sura as we have it today. It has no inappropriate gaps, no discordant passages or unexplainable blanks the likes of which one would expect finding in a sura out of which a chunk of 200 verses was taken away, leaving only a mere 70. Even if we forget the issues regarding this hadith's authenticity, this misunderstanding could have been due to the basic early Quranic script as noted before, with no separations between verses and suras.

Similarly some companions were unsure whether sura tawba/bara'a and sura anfal, the one preceding it, were one and the same sura. Hence the famous absence in today's Quran, of the opening formula from sura tawba, the bismilla

"What is your reasoning with Surah Al Anfal, which has less than a hundred verses, and Surah At-Tawbah, which has more than a hundred verses, yet you put them together without writing in the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful between them and you placed them with the seven long surahs. Why did you do that? Uthman said: Al-Anfal was among the first to be revealed in Medina and At-Tawbah was among the last of those revealed of the Quran and their discussions resemble each other, so we thought that they were part of each other. Then the Messenger of Allah died and it was not clear to us if they were part of each other. For this reason, we put them together without writing in the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful and we included them with the seven long surahs".

Even a superficial reading of that report reveals the inconsistencies. Uthman himself in that hadith states that Anfal and Tawba/Bara'a were revealed on different occasions, meaning he knew they were separate. In addition the prophet never said they were a single unit. He recited on several occasions sura Tawba on its own. His companions prior to Uthman's compilation, treated sura tawba as a separate sura

“I entered the mosque on a Friday when Muhammad was delivering the sermon. I went and sat near Ubayy. The Prophet recited Surah Bara’ah/tawba.” "Umar ibn Khattab had written the directive: “Learn Surah Bara’ah and teach your women Surah Nur.”

Further ibn Abbas states that the companions divided the Quran into 7 portions, composed of 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 suras and then the last portion which extends from the mufassal to the end. This grouping can only be correct if anfal and tawba are separate. All these facts, as well as the suspicion on the personality of 'Awf or of Yazid al Farisi who is the sole narrator from ibn Abbas, make it highly unlikely that Uthman was unsure about the separation between anfal and tawba.