The Collection of the Qur)an

SYNOPSIS The way the Quran was collected; a review of the traditions about the collection of the Quran; their contrariety and inconsistency; their discord with those accounts that indicate that the Quran was collected during the lifetime of the Prophet; their incongruity when compared with the Book and the intellect; their disagreement with the consensus of the Muslims that the Quran cannot be established except through its uninterrupted [transmission]; using these traditions as evidence necessi‌ tates maintaining the belief in ta/:trif [in the sense of] addition, whose invalidity has been accepted [by all the scholars].

The manner in which the Quran was collected is among the issues that have been used by those who maintain the belief in ta/:trif (alteration) to prove that there has been ta/:trif [in the sense of the corruption of the text] as well as taghyfr (change) in the Quran, and that the very manner of the Qurans collection would, in the normal course of events, involve this corruption and change in it. Hence, it is imperative that the discussion [in this chapter] should be undertaken in order to complete the treatment of the subject regarding the protection of the Quran from corruption and its freedom from omission or any alteration.
The source of this error [about ta/:trif] is the claim that the Quran was collected
under AbU Bakrs order, following the slaying of seventy reciters of the Quran at the battle ofBir Mauna, and offour hundred persons at the battle ofYamama. Fearing that the Quran would be lost and would disappear from the people, Umar and Zayd b. Thabit undertook to collect it from fragments written on palm branches, flat stones, and pieces of wood, and from the breasts of the people [who had memorized it], pro‌ vided that two witnesses would testify that what they [reported] was part of the Quran. All this has been suggested in a number of accounts. Ordinarily, it is expected that some of it would be lost to those who assumed the responsibility for this task, except if they were infallible [and divinely protected from forgetting]. This can be witnessed among those who undertake to collect the poetry of one or more poets, when this poetry is scattered. This rule is inevitable and arises from habit. The least that we can