After the death of the second Caliph, ‘Umar ibn al-Khattaab, a committee made up of six of the most famous companions of the Prophet (r) chose ‘Uthmaan ibn ‘Affaan to be the third caliph.

During the reign of Caliph ‘Umar (634-644 CE/13-23 AH), the Islaamic state had expanded beyond the borders of the Arabian peninsula into Egypt, Syria and ‘Iraaq. In the subsequent reign of Caliph ‘Uthmaan, the expansion continued on into Persia, India, Russia, China, Turkey and across North Africa. Many of the people of these regions accepted Islaam and learned the recitation of the Qur’aan from the early Muslims. The Qur’aan was revealed to the Prophet (ﷺ) in seven different Arabian dialects, and the early Muslims taught the Qur’aan in its different readings.

In the Muslim provinces, some Arabs began to boast that their dialect was superior to that of the others. Also, when new Muslims made mistakes in their recitation of the Qur’aan, it was sometimes difficult to tell whether it was really an error or whether it was one of the seven reading which had been taught by the Prophet (r). These problems eventually became a source of confusion in the Muslim provinces outside of Arabia. One of the sahaabah by the name of Huthayfah ibn al-Yamaan noticed the confusion while he was in ‘Iraaq, and feared that it might lead to a breakup of the Muslim nation and the changing of the Qur’aan. On his return to the capital, he informed Caliph ‘Uthmaan of what he had heard and seen. Caliph ‘Uthmaan realized the seriousness of the situation and called the major sahaabah together in order to find a solution to the problem.

They decided to make official copies of the Qur’aan from the one compiled in Caliph Aboo Bakr’s time and limit the people to its recitation. ‘Uthmaan asked Hafsah for the original copy of the Qur’aan and called on Zayd ibn Thaabit to head a committee of four Qur’aanic scholars who would take on the task of making the official copies.82

When the copies were completed, the original was returned to Hafsah. A total of seven copies were made and one was sent to Makkah, another to Syria, one to Basrah, one to Koofah, one to Yemen, one to Bahrayn, and one was kept in the capital, Madeenah.83 Apparently, different copies were written by different members of the committee.84 Caliph ‘Uthmaan sent an official reciter of the Qur’aan with each copy in order to clear up any problems which might later arise.85 He also ordered that all other copies of the Qur’aan be destroyed, as people had made notes on their personal copies and some copies were incomplete.86 All new copies were then made from the official copy, called Mushaf ‘Uthmaan. In that way the Qur’aan was saved from any kind of change or loss. This process was completed in the year 646 CE, two years after ‘Uthmaan became the new Caliph.

The Madeenan Mus-haf was kept in the Prophet’s Mosque. A reference to it appears in contemporary accounts of a fire in the Mosque in 654 AH which caused extensive damage. The mus-haf was, however, saved. Some reports suggest that it was transferred to Istanbul by the Turks during World War I, but it is now lost.87

The Syrian mus-haf was kept in the Jaami‘ Masjid in Damascus. Ibn Katheer (d. 774 AH) mentioned seeing it, as did Ibn Batootah (d. 779 AH) and Ibn Jazaree (d. 833 CE/1430 AH). It was kept locked up, but was brought out for public viewing after Jumu‘ah prayers. A fire in 1892 CE/1310 AH destroyed the masjid, and the mus-haf perished with it. A handwritten copy of it made shortly before its destruction was also transferred to Istanbul during WWI.88

An early manuscript on gazelle parchment exists in Dar al-Kutub asSultaaneeyah in Egypt. It is written in Kufic script without dots or vowel markings. It had been previously kept in the oldest mosque in Cairo, Masjid ‘Amr Ibn al-‘Aas. It was brought there in 347 AH by a man from ‘Iraaq, who claimed it was the mus-haf that ‘Uthmaan was reading when he was killed. This information was reported by the historian al-Maqrizee, writing in 378 AH. There was scepticism about the claim even at that time. There are bloodstains on some of the pages, but many ancient Qur’aanic manuscripts had blood applied to them to support the claim that they were the mus-haf of ‘Uthmaan.89

There is a manuscript in Tashkent that seems to be the best candidate for the claim to be one of the copies com-missioned by ‘Uthmaan. It was purchased during the late Middle Ages by a Muslim ruler in Central Asia, but eventually fell into the hands of the Russians when they conquered the country. They took it to St. Petersburg, but after the Bolshevik revolu-tion, in 1923, it was returned to Samarqand. In the 1940s it was transferred to Tashkent, which is where it is today. 90 Soviet authorities allowed Muslim scholars to photograph that manuscript. Hyderabad House in Philadelphia published a copy of it, side by side with the modern Arabic text with the added dots and vowel markings.

The same principles of analysis that were applied to Bible manuscripts by Bible scholars, and which exposed its many flaws and changes, have been applied to Qur’aanic manuscripts gathered from around the world. Ancient manu-scripts from all periods of Islaamic history found in the Library of Congress in Washington, the Chester Beatty Museum in Dublin, Ireland and at the London Museum have been compared with those in museums in Tashkent, Turkey and Egypt. The result of all such studies confirm that there has not been any change in the text from its original writing. For example, the “Institute fur Koranforschung” of the University of Munich, Germany, collected and collated over 42,000 complete or incomplete copies of the Qur’aan. After some fifty years of study, they reported that in terms of differences between the various copies, there were no variants, except occasional mistakes of copyists, which could easily be ascertained. The institute was destroyed by American bombs during the Second World War.91