What Is the Quran? A Brief History

وَقُرْآنًا فَرَقْنَاهُ لِتَقْرَأَهُ عَلَى النَّاسِ عَلَىٰ مُكْثٍ وَنَزَّلْنَاهُ تَنْزِيلًا

“And it is a Recitation We have divided into parts, so that you may recite it to people slowly, at intervals; and We sent it down in stages.” (Q 17:106)

That verse says the Quran came down in stages.

Turning it into today's book also took stages. Centuries of them.

Tradition says it came over about 23 years, until 632, mostly memorised.

After many reciters died at Yamama, Abu Bakr had Zayd ibn Thabit gather it onto sheets.

Around 650, Caliph Uthman had those sheets copied into one standard codex and ordered other copies burned.

But he fixed only a skeleton: consonants, few dots, no vowels.

The oldest manuscripts show exactly that. Birmingham's parchment dates to 568 to 645.

In Sana'a, an erased text underneath even differs in wording.

A skeleton like that can be read more than one way. Finishing the book took more steps.

Tradition credits Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali with red dots for vowels.

Around 700, under al-Hajjaj, dots telling similar letters apart became systematic.

Later, al-Khalil ibn Ahmad devised today's vowel signs.

Still, readers voiced the text differently. In the 900s, Ibn Mujahid limited the accepted readings to seven.

The most widely printed text today goes back to a 1924 Cairo edition, in one reading: Hafs.

But even today, more than one reading is in print.

Across much of North Africa, Qurans follow another reading, Warsh.

That's next, at TheQuran.com.