Perseverance of the Quran

[Dimi95]

One might say, we have a Quran from some time between 568 and 645 AD.It makes it very close to the time when Mohammad lived.It is in Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham, UK.

But as impressive as that looks when you dig a little bit things get to show up.
One of the many reasons i don't trust it.

Uthman produced a standardised version of the Qur'an in 652. He sent a copy to each province, and ordered that all other Quranic materials "whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies," must be burned.

It is said that Ibn Mas’ud was displeased by the finished product; in particular:
That he accused Uthman's scribes of adding three extra suras (1, 113 and 114) that had never been part of the original, and of making many other small changes to the text.
That he preached a sermon in Kufa in which he called Uthman's standardised Quran a "deceit". "And whoever deceives like this will bring his deceit on the Day of Resurrection … I like it better to read according to the recitation of him whom I love than that of Zayd ibn Thabit … If I knew anyone to be more conversant with Allah's Book than I am, I would surely go to him if camels could carry me there."
-Muhammad ibn Saad. Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir. Translated by Haq, S. M. (1972). Ibn Sa'd's Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir Volume II Parts I & II. Delhi: Kitab Bhavan.



When Uthman's agents came to Kufa to burn all the variants, Abd Allah hid his copy from them.
-Tirmidhi 44:3104

He justified his own version of the recitation by reminding people: "I recited before Allah's Messenger more than seventy suras of the Qur'an. His Companions know that I have a better understanding of Allah's Book than they do; and if I were to know that someone had a better understanding than I have, I would have gone to him." It was said that nobody could find fault with Abd Allah's version.

-Sahih Muslim 31:6022.

When Uthman was called to account for his mismanagement as Caliph, one of the grievances against him was that he had destroyed variant readings of the Qur'an.[5]: 156  Much later, Abd Allah ibn Masud's variant readings were discussed on equal terms with the Uthmanic text by al-Farra (d. 207/822).
-Gilliot, C. (2006). "Creation of a fixed text.' In Dammen McAuliffe, J. : The Cambridge Companion to the Qur'an, p. 47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

However, the vast majority of Muslim scholars never accepted these reports due to their weakness, as well as many strong reports indicating the exact opposite to be true.

The Qur'an says in 15:87 "We have given thee seven of the oft-repeated (verses) and the great Qur'an." The seven often-repeated verses refer to al-Fatihah, the first sura of the Qur'an, which Abd Allah ibn Mas'ud is alleged to have denied. However, quoting Ibn Jarir al-Tabari, Ibn adh-Dhurays, Ibn al-Munzar and Ibn Mardwiyah, as-Suyuti narrated the following:

It is narrated from Abd Allah ibn Mas'ud, regarding the word of Allah, "We have given you the seven oft-repeated verses;" he said, "[It is] Fatihatu al-Kitab."
- as-Suyuti. Dur al-Manthur. (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr). pp. Vol.5, 94.

In another narration, Abd Allah ibn Mas'ud was asked why he did not write al-Fatihah in his mushaf. He replied, "If I were to write it, I would write it before every sura." Abu Bakr al-Anbari explains this saying every raka’a (in prayers) starts with al-Fatiha and then another sura is recited. It is as if Ibn Masud said, "I have dropped it for the sake of brevity and I have trusted its preservation by Muslims (collectively)."
-al-Qurtubi. al-Jami' li-Ahkam al-Qur'an (also called Tafsir al-Qurtubi). Cairo: Dar al-Kutab al-Misriyah, 1964. pp. Vol.1 pg 115.

There are also narrations from Abd Allah where he explicitly refers to suras 113 and 114 as surahs, for example: "Excessively recite two surahs. Allah will make you reach higher ranks in the Hereafter because of them. They are al-Mu'awwidhatayn (i.e. al-Falaq and an-Nas/nos. 113 & 114)…"
-ibn Abd-al-Malik al-Hindi, Ali. Kanz al-Ummal: Hadith 2743. Beirut: ar-Resalah Publications, 1981.

Four qira'at of the Qur'an (Qira'at of Hamzah, 'Aasim, Khalaf, Al-Kisa'i) have chains of transmission (isnad) going through Abd Allah ibn Mas'ud, and they all include the above three suras. These are mutawatir chains and thus Islamic scholars give precedence to them, disregarding much weaker chains that go against it as inauthentic.
-al-Jazri, Shams ad-Din. an-Nashr fi Qira'at al-'Ashr. (Cairo: Maktaba at-Tijariah al-Kubra, n.d.). pp. Vol1, 1 55, 165, 172, 185.

For these reasons, Islamic scholars rejected the notion of Abd Allah ibn Mas'ud rejecting suras. Al-Nawawi says: "The Muslims have all agreed that al-Mu'awwidhatayn and al-Fatihah are part of the Qur'an and whoever denies this becomes a disbeliever and whatever is quoted from Ibn Masud in this regard is not true."
-al-Suyuti. al-Ittiqan. pp. Vol.1, 271.

Ibn Hazm also rejected the notion of Ibn Masud denying these suras, along with the vast majority of Islamic scholars.
-Ibn Hazm. al-Muhalla. (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, n.d.). pp. Vol.1, 32.


Conflict with Uthman :

Uthman recalled Abd Allah to Medina. He walked into the mosque, where Uthman was speaking, but the Caliph broke off his speech to insult Abd Allah. Aisha then interrupted with protests against this manner of speech "to a companion of Allah's Messenger". Uthman forbade Abd Allah ever to leave Medina again and ordered him out of the mosque. His servants removed Abd Allah so violently that they broke two of his ribs and, amid loud protests from Aisha, he had to be carried home.
-Abbott, N. (1942). Aishah the Beloved of Mohammed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.


Uthman did not pay Abd Allah's pension for the rest of his life.
-Muhammad ibn Saad. Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir vol. 3. Translated by Bewley, A. (2013). The Companions of Badr. Loon:TaHa Publishers.

So , we have caliph Uthman taking all the evidence , ordering to everyone to burn the other manuscripts and make one copy of the Quran.
We don't know why , that's for sure - even when many Muslim are trying to justify it , it doesn't pass in any way.

This argument is not in any way connected to the belief system.

It is just an observation on the 'perserved Quran' as responce to the Islamic scholar community.

One may say that this is not evidence based position as one may say that this requires an extraordinary faith(which in some sense transforms in blind).

'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'. Carl Sagan

 

[Augustus]

Might be of interest:

"throughout most of Islamic history there were open discussions about variant readings of the Qur’an. Things changed only in the early twentieth century. In 1924 a committee organized by the Egyptian ministry of education produced a text of the Qur’an for use within the country (and had competing editions sunk in the Nile River). This Egyptian text (slightly revised later in 1924, and again in 1936, the first year of King Farouk’s reign, for which reason it became known as the King Farouk Qur’an) has now become the standard Qur’an text. Today this text is so widespread it might lead one to conclude that the Qur’an has never had any variants. Yet this reflects the success of the Egyptian project, and not the history of the Qur’anic text.

Nevertheless, while the history of Qur’anic variants has long been a topic of academic discussion, it has also long been thought that at least the Qur’an’s consonantal skeleton was unchanging. Before the Sanaa palimpsest, no early manuscript was known to vary significantly in terms of that skeleton. The basic form of the Qur’anic text, in other words, was thought to have been more or less perfectly preserved. Yet the Sanaa manuscript, which is almost certainly the most ancient Qur’an manuscript known to us, contains a surprising number of variants, including completely different words, and presents the chapters (known as suras) of the Qur’an in a different order...

the Sanaa manuscript has so many variants that one might imagine it is a vestige of an ancient version that somehow survived Uthman’s burning of all versions of the Qur’an except his own. The problem with this idea is that the variants of that manuscript do not match the variants reported in medieval literature for those codices kept by companions of the Prophet. Sadeghi argues that this must have been the codex of some unknown companion. This is an interesting, although speculative, idea. For now all we know is that our most ancient manuscript of the Qur’an does not agree with the standard text read around the world today." (Variant Readings - GS Reynolds)

 

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You can't verify Quran (completely) based on history. Historically, it can be doubted. What I believe the collecting of Quran was really about was negating the influence of hadiths which even though forbidden to write, people wrote some of the commentary of Quran with them. It was to hide the commentary of Rasool (s).

The best means to verify the Quran is to see how it phases Surah to Surah (order matters) and to witness it's perfection and to witness the plan of ending Nubuwa and safeguarding Quran as the world comes together and day of judgment approaches.