The Quran Before Uthman

Variant Codices and the Myth of Perfect Preservation

🔍 Introduction: The Claim of Perfect Preservation

For over a millennium, Muslims have repeated a foundational claim: that the Qur’an has been preserved “word for word, letter for letter” since it was revealed to Muhammad in the 7th century. This belief is central to Islamic theology and often cited to prove the Qur’an’s divine origin. According to this doctrine of hifz (preservation), not a single verse has been lost, altered, or misplaced.

But the historical record tells a different story — one of competing codices, burned manuscripts, suppressed readings, and human editorial control. The Qur’an we have today is not the result of divine preservation, but of political standardization and selective retention.

This post explores the variant codices that existed before the Uthmanic recension, the companions who resisted the official version, and the manuscript and historical evidence that fatally undermines the myth of perfect preservation.

🗃️ Codex Variants: Ibn Mas’ud, Ubayy ibn Ka’b, and Others

Islamic tradition itself acknowledges that various companions of Muhammad preserved their own versions of the Qur’an:

• Abdullah ibn Mas’ud: Personally trained by Muhammad, he reportedly refused to include Surah al-Fatiha and the last two surahs (113 and 114) in his codex. He openly opposed Uthman’s standardized text and told followers to hide his version.
• Ubayy ibn Ka’b: Regarded as one of the most knowledgeable reciters, his codex included additional surahs like Surat al-Khal and Surat al-Hafd — both absent from today’s Qur’an.
• Ali ibn Abi Talib: Reportedly compiled his own mushaf in chronological order, but it was not adopted. He was not included in Uthman’s editorial committee.

Even Sunni hadith confirm these differences. In Sahih Muslim 2464 and Bukhari 6:61:527, we find explicit references to disputes between companions over Qur’anic verses.

🔥 Key point: The fact that codices existed in parallel and were later destroyed by state mandate proves that there was no universal agreement on what the Qur’an was during the first few decades after Muhammad’s death.

📂 The Role of Hafsa’s Manuscript and Uthman’s Burning Campaign

After Muhammad’s death in 632 CE, the first caliph Abu Bakr commissioned a written compilation of the Qur’an due to fear of loss in battle (especially after the Battle of Yamama). This version, compiled by Zayd ibn Thabit, was entrusted to Hafsa, daughter of Caliph Umar.

Fast forward 20 years to Caliph Uthman ibn Affan. Civil disputes had erupted between Muslims due to variant recitations. Uthman responded by ordering a unified version — again using Zayd — and burned all other versions.

According to Sahih al-Bukhari 4987:

“Uthman sent a message to Hafsa saying, ‘Send us the manuscript so that we may compile the Qur’anic materials in perfect copies…’ And he ordered that all other Qur’anic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt.”

This wasn’t preservation. It was enforcement — a state-controlled canonization.

📉 Lost Verses and Forgotten Revelations

Muslim sources admit some Qur’anic content was lost:

• Stoning Verse: Reportedly about adulterers. Umar said, “Had it not been that people would say Umar added to the Qur’an, I would have written it.”
• Verse of Suckling Adults: Mentioned by Aisha. She said a verse mandating breastfeeding for adult men was under her pillow and eaten by a goat. ([Sunan Ibn Majah 1944])
• Supplication Surahs: Ubayy ibn Ka’b included Surat al-Hafd and Surat al-Khal, which were part of communal prayer but are absent from the standard Qur’an.

Many of these verses are considered “abrogated” or lost — but the point remains: they were once treated as Qur’anic revelation. This contradicts the idea of an unchanging, divinely protected text.

📚 Early Manuscripts Tell a Different Story

Modern manuscript evidence supports the claim of early fluidity:

• Sana’a Palimpsest (7th century): Found in Yemen in 1972. The undertext (scraped and overwritten) contains numerous variant readings not matching today’s Qur’an — differing in vocabulary, structure, and verse order.
• Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus: One of the oldest Qur’anic manuscripts. Contains textual discrepancies from the standard Cairo edition.
• Birmingham Manuscript: Radiocarbon-dated to within a few decades of Muhammad’s life — but only fragments. Its content matches known passages, but cannot confirm completeness or stability.
• Topkapi and Samarkand Manuscripts: Traditionally claimed to be Uthmanic originals, but modern analysis shows they are later copies from the 8th–9th centuries.

🧪 Conclusion from physical evidence: Early Qur’ans were not uniform. The later standardization buried competing traditions.

📏 Theological Implications

Surah 15:9 says:

“Indeed, it is We who sent down the Qur’an, and indeed, We will be its guardian.”

This verse is commonly cited as proof of divine preservation. But if verses were forgotten, codices disagreed, and manuscripts show variation, then this claim cannot be upheld as fact.

Islamic theology asserts a perfect, unchanged Qur’an. But the historical and textual evidence exposes this as a myth — one that evolved over centuries as the Islamic empire consolidated power and sought legitimacy through religious unity.

⚖️ Rebuttals from Muslim Apologetics — Do They Hold?

Common Muslim responses include:

❌ “Differences were only in dialect, not content.”

False. Some variants involved entire verses or surahs being added or omitted.

❌ “Those were abrogated.”

Convenient, but unverifiable. Some lost verses were not abrogated — they were simply forgotten or suppressed.

❌ “Uthman’s recension was divinely guided.”

Circular reasoning. This assumes what it seeks to prove — that the Qur’an we have today is what Allah intended.

🧠 Conclusion: What Has Actually Been Preserved?

What we have today is:

• A standardized Qur’an, curated by Uthman’s committee.
• Lost variants acknowledged in Islamic sources.
• Codices destroyed to enforce unity.
• Manuscripts that reveal evolution, not fixity.

This does not constitute “perfect preservation.” It constitutes political canonization under the guise of divine command.

The myth of a perfectly preserved Qur’an — letter for letter, unchanged — is just that: a myth.

And it collapses under the weight of its own history.