Did Abu Bakr or Uthman Ibn Affan Compile the Quran?

Answered by Shaykh Anas al-Musa

Question

Were all companions in agreement with the compilation of the Quran by Uthman ibn Affan?

Answer

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

Before answering the question, we must briefly examine the stages of the Quran’s written compilation. The written Quran (mushaf) passed through various stages until it was brought together in a most diligent and scrupulous effort to preserve it until this very day.

The 3 Stages of the Quran’s Compilation

Stage One: During the Time of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace)

The companions wrote down the Quran during the time of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) under his command and supervision. Anytime any part of the Quran was newly revealed to him, he would call over the scribes and dictate it to them. They would write it on the various materials they had available to them at their time, such as cloth, stones, flat bones, and palm leaves.

Stage Two: During the time of the First Caliph Abu Bakr al-Siddiq (Allah be pleased with him)

The reason for Abu Bakr’s compilation of the Quran was that many of the expert reciters of the Quran among the companions were killed in the wars against the apostates. It caused him to take the necessary precautions for future wars against the two greatest empires of the time.

Abu Bakr’s efforts are reported by Bukhari: Zaid ibn Thabit, who was one of the scribes of the revelation, narrates: “Abu Bakr summoned me at the time of the killing of the army at Yamama while Umar was with him.

Abu Bakr said, ‘Umar has come to me and said, “The killing was intense on the day of Yamama, and I fear that the killing of the Quran experts will intensify throughout the lands. Much of the Quran will go if you do not compile it, and so I think you should compile the Quran.” I told Umar, “How can I do something that the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) did not do?” and Umar replied, “It is, by Allah, good.”

Umar continued to beg me to reconsider until Allah made my heart content with that, and so I thought the same as Umar.’ Umar was sitting there, without speaking.

“Abu Bakr continued, ‘You are a young intelligent man, and we have no suspicions of you. You used to write the revelation for the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace), so you shall seek out the Quran and compile it.’ By Allah, were he to task me with moving a mountain, it would not be more heavy on me than instructing me to compile the Quran.

I said, ‘How can you both do something that the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) did not do?’ Abu Bakr said, ‘It is, by Allah, good.’ I continued to beg him to reconsider until Allah made my heart content with that which Allah made Abu Bakr and Umar’s heart content.

“I then began to pursue the Quran and compile it from the cloth, the bones, the palm branches, and the hearts of the men. I found two ayas in Surah al-Tawba with Khuzayma al-Ansari that I did not find with anyone else: ‘There certainly has come to you a messenger from among yourselves. He is concerned by your suffering, anxious for your well-being…’ [Quran, 9:128] until the end of the surah. The pages in which the Quran was compiled were with Abu Bakr until Allah took his life, and then they were with Umar until Allah took his life, and then with Hafsa bint Umar.”

The meaning of “I did not find them with anyone else,” means that he did not find it written down, not that it was not memorized. Zayd himself was one of the companions who had memorized the entire Quran during the time of the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace), along with other companions who were alive at the time.

What Zayd did was compile the dispersed excerpts of the Quran in order to compare them and refine the precision of his own copy via the community of those companions who memorized the entire Quran and who remained alive.

This allowed for all of the companions to be involved and aware of what was being compiled so that no one who had any knowledge would miss out so that no one would doubt the final master copy, and so that they would have no suspicions that it was put together by a large group among them.

That is how the mushaf was compiled. It served as a master copy to stay with the Caliph and to be relied upon through the confrontations that awaited the nation in the future. This way the matter would not be left to be reliant upon the various written copies that were in the hands of the scribes of the revelation, or to the memory of those who had memorized it individually.

Al-Harith ibn Asad al-Muhasibi summarizes the effort that was undertaken by Abu Bakr in his book Fahm al-Sunan: “Writing the Quran was not a newly invented practice, as the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) used to instruct for it to be written.

It was dispersed among the cloth sheets, the bones, and the palm branches, and so Abu Bakr instructed it to be copied from one place to another. This can be seen as the Quran being written down on pieces of paper and dispersed around the house of the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace), and so someone decided to bring it together and bind it with a string so that nothing of it gets lost.”

Stage Three: The Compilation of the Quran by Copying the Mushaf during the Time of Uthman (Allah be pleased with him)

New circumstances arose in the time of Uthman (Allah be pleased with him) that necessitated spreading the written copy of the Quran, which was compiled at the time of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, and distributing it across the lands in order to achieve the objectives for which it was compiled.

This took up much time and effort.

The report of Imam al-Bukhari from Anas ibn Malik summarizes the reason for Uthman compiling the Quran. Anas ibn Malik narrates, “Hudhayfa ibn al-Yaman came to Uthman after having fought the people of Sham in the conquest of Armenia and Azerbaijan with the people of Iraq.

Their differences in recitation had panicked Hudhayfa, so he said to Uthman, ‘Leader of the Muʿminin, save this nation before they begin to differ as the Jews and the Christians did.’ Uthman sent to Hafsa saying, ‘Send to us the Mushaf so that we may duplicate it into other manuscripts, and then we will return it to you.’ Hafsa sent it to Uthman, and he instructed Zayd ibn Thabit, Abdullah ibn Zubayr, Saeed ibn al-ʾAs, and Abdul-Rahman ibn al-Harith ibn Hisham to copy it into other manuscripts.

Uthman said to the group of three men from Quraysh among them, ‘If you and Zayd ibn Thabit disagree on anything in the Quran, then write it in the language of Quraysh, for it came down in their language,’ and so they did. When they copied the pages down into the manuscripts, Uthman returned the pages back to Hafsa. He sent a copy of what they copied down in each direction and instructed for anything else of the Quran in any scroll or bound book to be burned.”

This report clarifies what Uthman bin Affan did (Allah be pleased with him), and that the reason for which he did it was the variation of the people’s recitation of the Quran, each reciting it in their own dialect. This led some to call others incorrect, and Uthman feared that this would escalate. He copied the Quran from the scrolls to a master manuscript that was placed in the order of the surahs and standardized according to the language of Quraysh.

Uthman’s compilation was in order to preserve the text of the Quran from anything else being added to it, or for it to be subject to any type of distortion, relying on the several mutawatir modes of recitation in which the Quran may be recited. This is how Uthman prevented the disputes and chaos that would ensue from these modes of recitation. Everyone now knew the verified ways in which the Quran could be recited due to now relying on a single source that was unanimously agreed upon by the Companions (Allah have mercy on all of them), i.e., the manuscript that was compiled during the time of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq.

A Summary of the Differences between Abu Bakr’s Compilation and Uthman’s

The Quran had not already been brought together into a single relied-upon manuscript at the time of Abu Bakr. The copies that existed were the personal responsibilities of those who transcribed the revelation. Abu Bakr compiled the Quran from the written excerpts as well as from the memories of the companions according to the order in which the people learned it from the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), and upon which the scribes of the revelation had written it.

All of the Quran was then preserved in one single place that accommodated all of the seven ahruf. It was to be relied upon, and all of the companions were to participate in its compilation to prevent anything from being missed due to those who had memorized it passing away. The effort of Abu Bakr was a product of Umar’s encouragement; he said, “I fear that the killing of the Quran experts will intensify throughout the lands. Much of the Quran will go if you do not compile it, and so I think you should compile the Quran.”

The impetus for Uthman’s compilation of the Quran (Allah be pleased with him) was the fear of chaos ensuing among the Muslims with regard to their religion because of the different ways of recitation in which the Quran was being recited, so he had a Mushaf written that would be the master copy for everyone. Its ways of recitation would not be disputed and so everyone would be prevented from being lost. Uthman (Allah be pleased with him) made the source for that master copy the Mushaf that was compiled during the time of Abu Bakr, and he instructed the scribes to refer to the dialect of Quraysh as their criterion upon any disagreement. In order to achieve the principle objective for which Uthman had the Quran compiled, he ordered all other copies to be burned and then distributed the copies that he had compiled to the main cities. Uthman sent with each copy someone to teach the way of reciting the Quran.

This is how the written Quran was preserved. The entire nation agreed upon what was written in those manuscripts and asserted that this was the word of Allah, without any addition or omission. Thus, the promise of Allah, “It is certainly We Who have revealed the Reminder, and it is certainly We Who will preserve it.” [Quran, 15:9]

Allah ultimately knows best.

May the blessings and peace of Allah be upon our Master and Prophet Muhammad, and upon his family and companions.