History of the Quran: how it was revealed, written and compiled

Short answer: the Quran was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ in Arabic, in parts, over about 23 years, from 610 CE to his death in 632 CE. As each passage came, he recited it to his Companions, who memorised it, and his scribes wrote it on whatever was at hand: parchment, palm stalks, flat stones and bones. A year or so after his death, the first caliph, Abu Bakr, had the scribe Zayd ibn Thabit gather the whole Quran into one written copy. Around 650 CE, the third caliph, Uthman, had that copy reproduced and sent to the main cities, so that everyone recited from the same text. That text, the Uthmani mushaf, is the Quran printed today.

Timeline

The revelation

The Prophet ﷺ was about forty and used to go alone to the cave of Hira to worship. One night in Ramadan the angel Jibril came to him and said, "Read!" He answered, "I am not a reader." After the third time, the angel recited the first verses of Surah Al-Alaq. He went home trembling to his wife Khadijah, who comforted him and took him to her cousin Waraqah ibn Nawfal, a Christian scholar, who told him this was the same angel who had come to Moses (Sahih al-Bukhari 3). The Quran says it was first sent down in Ramadan, on a blessed night:

After that it came in parts, sometimes a few verses, sometimes a whole surah, often in answer to events or questions. The Quran explains why:

Revelation came in different ways: Jibril in the form of a man, Jibril in his true form, and most often as a sound "like the ringing of a bell", which the Companions saw was hard on the Prophet ﷺ, so that he sweated even on cold days (Sahih al-Bukhari 2).

Memorised from the first day

The Quran was first preserved in memory. The Prophet ﷺ was told not to hurry to memorise it as it came, because Allah Himself would gather it in his heart:

He recited what came to him to his Companions, who learned it by heart and recited it in their prayers. Every Ramadan, Jibril went over the whole Quran revealed so far with the Prophet ﷺ, and in the year he died he went over it twice (Sahih al-Bukhari 4998). Many Companions knew the whole Quran by heart; among those named in the hadith are Ubayy ibn Ka'b, Mu'adh ibn Jabal, Zayd ibn Thabit and Abu Zayd (Sahih al-Bukhari 5003), and the Prophet ﷺ told people to learn it from Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, Salim, Mu'adh and Ubayy (Sahih al-Bukhari 4999).

Written down in the Prophet's ﷺ lifetime

The Prophet ﷺ could not read or write, so he had scribes. When a passage came, he called one of them and told him where it belonged. Zayd ibn Thabit, a young man from Madinah, was the best known; others included Ubayy ibn Ka'b, the four caliphs, Mu'awiyah and Abdullah ibn Sa'd. When the verse about those who stay behind from fighting was revealed (4:95), the Prophet ﷺ said, "Call Zayd, and let him bring the board, the inkpot and the shoulder bone" (Sahih al-Bukhari). Writing materials were whatever was available: pieces of parchment and leather, the stalks of palm leaves, thin white stones and the flat shoulder bones of camels.

So when the Prophet ﷺ died, the whole Quran existed in writing, but on separate pieces held by different people, and in the memories of many Companions. It was not yet bound as one book, partly because revelation could still come until his death.

The first compilation: Abu Bakr

In 12 AH (633 CE), at the Battle of Yamamah against the false prophet Musaylimah, many Companions who knew the Quran by heart were killed. Umar ibn al-Khattab went to the caliph Abu Bakr and urged him to gather the Quran into one copy before more of its reciters died. Abu Bakr hesitated, because the Prophet ﷺ had not done it, then agreed, and gave the task to Zayd ibn Thabit. Zayd later said that moving a mountain would have been easier for him (Sahih al-Bukhari 4986).

Zayd knew the whole Quran by heart, yet he did not rely on memory alone. He collected the written pieces from "palm stalks, thin white stones and the chests of men", and the scholars report that he accepted a written piece only when it was confirmed by witnesses that it had been written in the Prophet's ﷺ presence. He found the last verses of Surah At-Tawbah written with only one man, Abu Khuzaymah al-Ansari, though they were well known by heart (Sahih al-Bukhari 4986). The sheets he produced were kept by Abu Bakr, then by Umar, then by Umar's daughter Hafsah, a widow of the Prophet ﷺ.

The standard copies: Uthman

As Islam spread, people in different lands learned the Quran from different Companions, and some recited it in slightly different ways. Around 25 AH, the Companion Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman came back from a campaign in Armenia and Azerbaijan alarmed by arguments over recitation, and said to Uthman: "Save this nation before they differ about the Book as the Jews and Christians did" (Sahih al-Bukhari 4987).

Uthman borrowed Hafsah's sheets and appointed Zayd ibn Thabit, Abdullah ibn az-Zubayr, Sa'id ibn al-As and Abd ar-Rahman ibn al-Harith to make copies. He told them that where they differed on how to write something, they should write it in the dialect of Quraysh, the Prophet's ﷺ tribe, "because the Quran was revealed in their tongue". Copies were sent to the main cities, reports name Kufah, Basrah, Damascus and Makkah besides the one kept in Madinah, each sent with a teacher, and Uthman ordered other personal copies to be burned so that only the agreed text remained (Sahih al-Bukhari 4987). Ali ibn Abi Talib later said that Uthman did this only after consulting the Companions, and that he would have done the same.

Dots, vowels and the script

The early copies were written in a script without dots on the letters and without vowel marks. Native Arabic speakers who had learned the Quran by ear did not need them. As more non-Arabs became Muslim, scholars added them in stages: first red dots for vowels, credited to Abu al-Aswad ad-Du'ali (died 69 AH), then dots to tell apart letters of the same shape, credited to his students Nasr ibn Asim and Yahya ibn Ya'mur, and finally the vowel signs used today, developed by al-Khalil ibn Ahmad (died about 170 AH). None of these changed the words; they fixed in writing the pronunciation that had been passed down by recitation.

The original language

The Quran was revealed in Arabic, in the language of the Quraysh of Makkah, and its text has never existed in any other language as the Quran. The Prophet ﷺ also taught that the Quran was revealed in "seven ahruf", allowing some variation in recitation, after Umar heard Hisham ibn Hakim recite Surah Al-Furqan differently from the way he had learned it and both were told they were right (Sahih al-Bukhari 4992). From this come the recognised readings (qira'at), all passed down through chains of teachers. The reading of Hafs from Asim is the most widespread today; the reading of Warsh from Nafi' is common in North and West Africa. To recite it well, learn the rules of tajweed.

The earliest manuscripts

Several very early Quran manuscripts survive. In 2015 the University of Birmingham announced that radiocarbon testing dated the parchment of two of its Quran leaves to between 568 and 645 CE, with 95% probability. In 2014 the University of Tübingen dated a Quran fragment in its library to between 649 and 675 CE. Radiocarbon dates the animal skin rather than the ink, so the writing could be a little later, but these and other early manuscripts, such as the lower text of the Sana'a palimpsest, show a text that matches the Quran recited today in its words, with small differences mainly in spelling. Large old copies kept in Istanbul and Tashkent are traditionally linked to Uthman; scholars generally date them somewhat later, though still very early.

"We will be its guardian"

Muslims see the history above as the fulfilment of this promise: a text that was memorised by many from the first day, written down as it came, checked by the angel Jibril every year, gathered with witnesses, copied with the agreement of the Companions, and recited the same way by millions of memorisers in every generation since. You can explore the text itself on AmalKit's Quran and read more in What is the Quran?

FAQ

Sources

1. Quran 12:2, 15:9, 17:106, 75:16-19, 96:1-5 and 97:1, translation by Sahih International.
2. Sahih al-Bukhari 2 and 3 (the start of revelation); 4986 (Abu Bakr's compilation); 4987 (Uthman's copies); 4992 (the seven ahruf); 4998, 4999 and 5003 (the reciters); Kitab Fada'il al-Qur'an on the scribes.
3. On the witnesses Zayd required and on Ali's words about Uthman: Ibn Abi Dawud, Kitab al-Masahif; Ibn Hajar, Fath al-Bari, commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari 4986 and 4987.
4. On the dots and vowel marks: ad-Dani, al-Muhkam fi Naqt al-Masahif.
5. University of Birmingham, press release on the Birmingham Quran manuscript, July 2015; University of Tübingen, press release on the Ma VI 165 fragment, November 2014.
6. On the last verse revealed: as-Suyuti, al-Itqan fi Ulum al-Qur'an.

Quran: Arabic from the Tanzil Uthmani text, English translation by Sahih International. Hadith gradings are those of the hadith scholars named; where a hadith number is not given, the collection and narrator are cited instead.