Uthmanic Codex: How the Quran Was Compiled as a Single Text

The Uthmanic codex is the standard written text of the Quran that Muslim tradition says was prepared under the third caliph, Uthman ibn Affan, around 650–656. Copies were sent from Medina to the main cities of the young caliphate, and differing versions were ordered destroyed. The consonantal text it fixed is the basis of virtually every Quran used today, and early manuscripts such as the Birmingham folios have made its history a lively field of research.

Revelation and early transmission

Muslims believe the Quran was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad over about 23 years, from around 610 until his death in 632 (see the rise of Islam). It was first transmitted mainly orally: memorised, recited in prayer and taught by the Prophet’s companions. Parts were also written down by scribes on materials such as parchment, palm stalks, flat stones and bone.

At Muhammad’s death the revelations did not yet exist as one bound book. Several companions, including Ubayy ibn Ka’b and Abd Allah ibn Mas’ud, are reported to have kept their own written collections, which differed in some readings and in the order of the chapters (suras).

The first collection under Abu Bakr

According to reports collected in the Sahih of al-Bukhari, the first collection took place under the caliph Abu Bakr (632–634). After many reciters of the Quran were killed at the Battle of Yamama in 632 or 633, Umar ibn al-Khattab urged Abu Bakr to gather the text before it was lost.

Abu Bakr gave the task to Zayd ibn Thabit, a young man from Medina who had served as one of Muhammad’s scribes. Zayd gathered written fragments and the testimony of people who knew the text by heart. The resulting sheets (suhuf) were kept by Abu Bakr, then by Umar, and after Umar’s death by his daughter Hafsa, one of the Prophet’s widows.

Uthman’s standard text

During the conquests, Muslims from different regions met in the army camps. The traditional account says that around 650, the commander Hudhayfa ibn al-Yaman, returning from campaigns in Armenia and Azerbaijan, warned Uthman that soldiers from Iraq and Syria were quarrelling over how to recite the Quran.

Uthman (caliph 644–656) borrowed Hafsa’s sheets and appointed a committee: Zayd ibn Thabit, Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, Sa’id ibn al-As and Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Harith ibn Hisham. Where they differed over spelling, he instructed them to follow the dialect of Quraysh, the Prophet’s tribe. Copies of the finished text were sent to the main garrison cities, usually said to include Kufa, Basra and Damascus, with one kept in Medina. Reports differ on the total, giving four to seven copies.

Uthman then ordered other written collections to be burned. The decision was not universally welcomed. Abd Allah ibn Mas’ud, a respected companion living in Kufa, is reported to have objected strongly at first. Criticism of Uthman’s handling of the Quran later became one of the grievances raised against him before his murder in 656, which led to the First Fitna.

What was standardised

The early Uthmanic copies recorded the consonantal skeleton of the text, known as the rasm. Early Arabic script did not consistently mark short vowels, and dots that distinguish some letters were used only sparingly. One written form could therefore be read in more than one way.

Over the following centuries, scholars added dots and vowel signs. Reports link these reforms to the late 7th and early 8th centuries, including the time of the Umayyad governor al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf. Different accepted ways of reciting the same rasm, called qira’at (readings), were transmitted by expert reciters. In the 10th century the Baghdad scholar Ibn Mujahid (died 936) recognised seven of them as canonical; later scholars accepted ten. The reading most widely printed today is Hafs from Asim.

The manuscript evidence

Early manuscripts allow scholars to test the traditional account. The best known include:

• The Birmingham folios. Two leaves in the Mingana Collection at the University of Birmingham. In 2015 radiocarbon tests dated the parchment to between 568 and 645 with a probability of about 95 per cent. They are thought to belong to the same manuscript as leaves held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris.
• The Sana’a palimpsest. Discovered in 1972 in the Great Mosque of Sana’a, Yemen. Its erased lower text preserves a version that differs in many small ways from the Uthmanic text, while the upper text follows it. Radiocarbon dating places the parchment in the 7th century.
• Codex Parisino-petropolitanus. Large portions of a Quran in early Hijazi script, now divided between Paris, St Petersburg and other collections, generally dated to the second half of the 7th century.

Several manuscripts traditionally believed to be Uthman’s own copies, such as the Samarkand codex in Tashkent and a Quran in the Topkapi Palace, Istanbul, are now dated by most specialists to the 8th century or later.

Myths and facts

A popular belief holds that several surviving Qurans are Uthman’s own copies, and some are said to bear stains of his blood from the day of his murder. The Samarkand codex in Tashkent and manuscripts in Istanbul and Cairo have all been venerated in this way. Palaeographers, who study the development of scripts, date their large Kufic or early Kufic hands to the 8th century or later, so they are best understood as early copies that came to be associated with Uthman’s name.

Another common assumption is that the Uthmanic text removed or added substantial material. The differences recorded for the companions’ codices, such as those of Ibn Mas’ud and Ubayy ibn Ka’b, mostly concern spelling, individual words, the order of suras and, in Ibn Mas’ud’s case, the absence of the two short protective suras at the end. The Sana’a lower text likewise differs mainly in small wording and order. Scholars debate what these variants mean, but they do not point to a fundamentally different scripture.

It is also sometimes claimed that Uthman’s committee composed the text. Even critical historians generally see its work as editorial, collecting and standardising existing material rather than writing new passages.

Scholarly debates

In the 1970s some Western scholars, notably John Wansbrough, argued that the Quran’s text was not fixed until around 800. The early manuscripts have made this view hard to maintain, and most researchers now accept that a stable consonantal text was in circulation by the second half of the 7th century, consistent with the Uthmanic tradition.

Debate continues on the details: how far the text was standardised under Uthman rather than later, the role of the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik (685–705) and al-Hajjaj in revising spelling and distributing copies, and what the Sana’a lower text reveals about variant versions. Muslim scholarship has its own long tradition of studying the collection and the readings, and generally affirms the integrity of the text as recited by the Prophet. Later reforms, under the Umayyad caliphate, refined how the text was written rather than its content.

Timeline

• c. 610–632: revelation of the Quran to Muhammad, according to Islamic belief.
• 632 or 633: Battle of Yamama; many Quran reciters are killed.
• c. 633–634: Zayd ibn Thabit collects the text for Abu Bakr.
• 644: Uthman ibn Affan becomes caliph.
• c. 650: Uthman orders a standard copy prepared and distributed to the provinces.
• 656, June: Uthman is murdered in Medina.
• c. 700: dots and vowel signs begin to be added more systematically.
• c. 936: death of Ibn Mujahid, who defined seven canonical readings.
• 2015: radiocarbon dates for the Birmingham folios are announced.

Why it matters

The Uthmanic codex gave the Muslim community a single written scripture across a vast and diverse empire. Its consonantal text has been used for nearly fourteen centuries, and the surviving early manuscripts make the Quran one of the best-attested texts of late antiquity, central both to Islamic faith and to modern historical scholarship.