Compilation and Preservation of the Qurʾān
Qurʾānic sciences (ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān) · From memory and scattered leaves to the ʿUthmānic codex
Muslim tradition describes the Qurʾān as preserved from the first both in memory and in writing, and gathered into a single standard written codex within a generation of the Prophet's ﷺ death.
At a glance
| Arabic | جمع القرآن |
|---|---|
| Two modes | jamʿ fī al-ṣudūr (in memory) · jamʿ fī al-suṭūr (in writing) |
| Traditional stages | in the Prophet's ﷺ lifetime · under Abū Bakr · under ʿUthmān |
| Standard codex | the ʿUthmānic muṣḥaf (rasm) |
The traditional account distinguishes two channels of preservation: memorisation by the ḥuffāẓ (those who learned the whole text by heart) and the writing down of revelations, in the Prophet's ﷺ lifetime, on whatever materials were to hand. In the reports gathered in the Sunni collections, the losses of memorisers at the battle of Yamāma prompted the caliph Abū Bakr, at ʿUmar's urging, to have the scattered written and memorised materials collected into a single set of leaves (ṣuḥuf) — kept with Abū Bakr, then with ʿUmar, and afterwards with ʿUmar's daughter Ḥafṣa.
A second stage is credited to the caliph ʿUthmān, who — as regional differences in recitation became a source of dispute — is reported to have commissioned an authoritative written text (the rasm) copied from that collection, sent copies to the main centres, and had divergent private codices withdrawn. Scholars distinguish these acts carefully: the first was a gathering (jamʿ), the second a standardisation of the written skeleton, which did not by itself fix every detail of vocalisation — hence the later, related science of the qirāʾāt.
The preservation of the Qurʾān is a point on which the mainstream of both Sunni and Twelver Shiʿi scholarship agree: major Shiʿi authorities — classical figures such as al-Shaykh al-Ṣadūq and al-Ṭūsī, and modern ones such as al-Khūʾī — affirm the integrity of the received text, even as the early literature of both traditions preserves scattered reports of textual variation that the mainstream of each tradition interprets away or rejects. The details of committees, materials and sequence vary between the transmitted reports, and historians and traditional scholars continue to weigh them.
Related in Chronicle
Curated reference on Islamic belief and thought. On matters where traditions differ, positions are attributed rather than adjudicated; verify points of doctrine with qualified scholars.