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I
Following is a narrative of Sahīh Bukhari which mentions
the collection of the Qur’ān by Abū Bakr (rta):
Mūsā Ibn Isma‘īl narrates from Ibrāhīm Ibn Sa‘ad who
narrates from Ibn Shihāb Zuhrī who narrates from ‘Ubayd Ibn Sabbāq who narrates
from Zayd Ibn Thābit Al-Ansārī, one of the scribes of the revelation: ‘Abū Bakr
sent for me after the casualties among the warriors [of the battle] of Yamāmah.
‘Umar was present with Abū Bakr who said: “‘‘Umar has come to me and said, the
people have suffered heavy casualties on the day of [the battle of] Yamāmah, and
I am afraid that there will be some casualties among the Qurrā’ at other places,
whereby a large part of the Qur’ān may be lost, unless you collect it. And I am
of the opinion that you should collect the Qur’ān.” Abū Bakr added: “I said to
‘Umar: “How can I do something which Allah’s Apostle has not done?” ‘Umar said:
[to me]: “By Allah, it is [really] a good thing”. So ‘Umar kept on pressing
trying to persuade me to accept his proposal till Allah opened my bosom for it
and I had the same opinion as ‘Umar’s.” Abū Bakr said [to me]: “You are a wise
young man and we do not suspect you [of telling lies or of forgetfulness]; and
you used to write the Divine Revelation for Allah’s Apostle. Therefore, look for
the Qur’ān and collect it.” By Allah, if he [Abū Bakr] had ordered me to shift
one of the mountains [from its place], it would not have been harder for me than
what he had ordered me concerning the collection of the Qur’ān. I said to both
of them: “How dare you do a thing which the Prophet has not done?” Abū Bakr
said: “By Allah, it is [really] a good thing.” So I kept on arguing with him
about it till Allah opened my bosom for that for which He had opened the bosoms
of Abū Bakr and ‘Umar. So I started locating the Qur’ānic material and
collecting it from parchments, scapula bones, leafstalks of date palms and from
the memories of men. I found with Khuzaymah two verses of Sūrah Tawbah which I
had not found with anybody else [and they were]: ‘Verily there has come to you
an Apostle [Muhammad] from among yourselves. It grieves him that you should
receive any injury or difficulty. He [Muhammad] is ardently anxious over you [to
be rightly guided]’ (9:128). (Bukhārī: Bāb Jam ‘u’l-Qur’ān)
This report cannot be accepted on the following grounds:
1. It is against the Qur’ān and some other Ahādīth which
state that the Qur’ān was compiled in the time of the Prophet (sws). This
narrative clearly says that it was the companions of the Prophet (sws) who
collected it after he died. This is evident from the fact that, according to
this narrative, the collection took place only after the battle of Yamāmah.
Also, Abū Bakr’s remark to ‘Umar (rta): ‘How can I do something which Allah’s
Apostle has not done?’ and the declaration of Zayd (rta) to both Abū Bakr (rta)
and ‘Umar (rta): ‘How dare you do a thing which the Prophet (sws) has not done?’
point to this conclusion.
2. An astonishing thing which strikes any person who reads
this report is that the companions of the Prophet (sws) were apparently not
fully alive to the importance of the collection of the Qur’ān. If the Qur’ān had
not been collected in one place in the time of the Prophet (sws) as alleged, it
seems very befitting that the very first task they should have set before
themselves after the Prophet’s death was to collect and collate their divine
book. Instead, they, as this narrative says, only embarked upon this job after
the battle of Yamāmah, which was fought almost a year after the Prophet’s death.
Moreover, it is evident from the narrative that had ‘Umar (rta) not insisted on
this collection, it might never have taken place. Abū Bakr (rta) and Zayd Ibn
Thābit (rta) both were reluctant and ‘Umar (rta) had to really assert himself
many times before the point could be driven home. All this of course is against
common sense and very difficult to believe. Moreover, it questions the integrity
of the companions, which is beyond doubt.
3. The report mentions that the real reason which induced
the companions to collect the Qur’ān was the death of many reciters of the
Qur’ān in the battle of Yamāmah. It is historically known that out of those
killed, there were just 40 companions of the Prophet (sws), which of course
should be no cause of any alarm. The historian Ibn Athīr
(d: 690 AH) has recorded these names. Among these also, the only famous compiler
of the Qur’ān to be killed was Sālim (rta).
4. According to this report, such a monumental task was
entrusted just to one companion: Zayd Ibn Thābit (rta). Many other companions
senior to him in age and companionship like the wives of the Prophet (sws),
‘Abdullah Ibn Mas‘ūd (rta), Ubayyi Ibn Ka‘ab (rta), Mu‘adh Ibn Jabal (rta), most
of whom had witnessed the whole of the revelation period, were quite strangely
not even consulted. Zayd (rta) was just eleven years old at the time of
migration, and it is well known that he did not even belong to the Quraysh in
whose tongue the Qur’ān was revealed and written.
5. The last part of the narrative is quite
incomprehensible: the closing verses of Sūrah Tawbah were only found with
Khuzaymah Ansārī (rta). Notwithstanding the fact that in various other texts of
the narrative, the name Abū Khuzaymah (rta) is found, and while some texts
mention that only one verse was found with him while others say that two verses
were found, this last part is against the Qur’ān and established history even if
its following interpretation offered by Ibn Hajar (d:1372 AD), the famous
scholar of Hadīth, is accepted:
The correct interpretation of Zayd’s remark that he had
failed to find the verse with anyone else is that he had failed to find it in
writing, not that he had failed to find those who bore it in their memories. (Fathu’l-Bārī,
1st ed., vol. 9, [Lahore: Dāru’l-Nashr Al-Kutub al-Islāmiyyah, 1981], p. 12)
The written Qur’ān existed in its complete form in the
time of the Prophet (sws), as has been shown in the main text of this article.
It could not have been without these verses.
6. If this collection by Abū Bakr (rta) was a personal
endeavour, then of course it loses its real importance, and if it was done at
the official level, then we are confronted with another nagging question: Why
did not the first caliph make arrangements to implement this as the official
script? Apparently, he did not even order to make copies of it. Not even ‘Umar (rta),
the second caliph, undertook this task.
7. Another question which arises pertains to the custody
of the collected text. If it is accepted that the collection of Abū Bakr (rta)
was done at the state level then the question arises: Why was the collected
Qur’ān not transferred to ‘Uthmān (rta) after the death of ‘Umar (rta) ?
Instead, we find that it was given into the custody of Hafsah (rta), one of the
Prophet’s wives. Furthermore, ‘Uthman (rta) not even demanded it from Hafsah (rta)
until after the against the people of Armenia and Azerbaijan.
8. Narratives which describe the Uthmānic recension (see
below) tell us that this collection done by Zayd Ibn Thābit (rta) was faulty and
incomplete since certain verses of Sūrah Ahzāb were not found in it, as was
known later. In other words, even if it is accepted that Zayd (rta) was given
some assignment of collection, what comes to light is that the written text of
Zayd (rta), was quite unbelievably, not even checked for mistakes!
9. If the chain of narrators of this report is considered,
it comes to light that it is a weak report. In the science of Hadīth, such a
narrative is called Gharīb.
There is only one narrator in each of its first three links. Only Zayd Ibn
Thābit (rta) narrates it. From Zayd (rta), only ‘Ubayd Ibn Sabbāq narrates it,
and from ‘Ubayd Ibn Sabbāq, only Ibn Shihāb Zuhrī narrates it. In other words, for almost three generations this report was only known to
very few people. This is quite strange keeping in view the gravity of its
contents.
10. No text of this report is without the controversial
personality of Ibn Shihāb Zuhrī (See Appendix D) in its chain of narrators. This
of course makes the very origin of this report as suspect and questionable.
11. Two of the earliest books on Muslim history ‘The
Tabaqāt’ of Ibn Sa‘ad (d: 230 AH)
, and Tārīkhu’l-Umam wa Al-Malūk of Ibn Jarīr Tabarī (d: 310 AH)
contain no reference to the events reported in this report. Ibn Sa‘ad
gives an elaborate treatment to the life and times of Abū Bakr (rta). Tabarī
mentions the revolt of Musayalamah with considerable detail. However, nowhere do these two historians mention any collection of the
Qur’ān under Abū Bakr (rta). The absence of any reference to the events reported
in this narrative in these two earliest books of Islamic history is indeed very
strange. The collection of the Qur’an by Abū Bakr (rta) was by no means an
insignificant event and deserved mention if it ever took place.
12. The earliest book on Hadīth, the Mu’attā of Imam Mālik
(d: 179 AH) also is devoid of any
such report. Even the Sahīh of Imam Muslim (d: 261 AH), the celebrated scholar of Hadīth and a student of Imam Bukhārī himself
does not mention this report.
II
Following is another report recorded in Sahīh Bukhārī
about the recension of ‘Uthmān (rta):
Mūsā narrates from Ibrāhīm Ibn Sa‘ad who narrates from Ibn
Shihāb Zuhrī who narrates from Anas Ibn Mālik: Hudhayfah Ibn Al-Yamān came to
‘Uthmān at the time when the people of Syria and the people of Iraq were waging
war to conquer Arminya and Adharbaijān. Hudhayfah was afraid of their [the
people of Syria and Iraq] differences in the recitation of the Qur’ān; so he
said to ‘Uthmān: ‘O chief of the believers! Save this nation before they differ
about the Book [the Qur’ān], as Jews and the Christians did before’. So ‘Uthmān
sent a message to Hafsah saying: “Send us the manuscripts of the Qur’ān so that
we may compile the Qur’ānic materials in perfect copies and return the
manuscripts to you”. Hafsah sent it to ‘Uthmān. ‘Uthmān then ordered Zayd Ibn
Thābit, ‘Abdullāh Ibn Zubayr, Sa‘īd Ibn Al-‘Ās and ‘Abdu’l Rahmān Ibn Hārith to
rewrite the manuscripts in perfect copies. ‘Uthmān said to the three Quraysh
men: ‘In case you disagree with Zayd Ibn Thābit on any point in the Qur’ān,
write it in the dialect of the Quraysh as the Qur’ān was revealed in their
tongue’. They did so, and when they had written many copies, ‘Uthmān returned
the original manuscripts to Hafsah. ‘Uthmān sent to every Muslim province one
copy of what they had copied, and ordered that all the other Qur’ānic materials
whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt. Zayd Ibn
Thābit added: “A verse from Sūrah Ahzāb was missed by me when we made copies of
Qur’ān and I used to hear Allah’s Apostle reciting it. So we searched for it and
found it with Khuzaymah Ibn Thābit Ansārī. [That verse was]: Among the believers
are men who have been true in their covenant with Allah (33:23).’”
The following observations and questions merit serious
consideration, and unless sound answers are given to them, this report also
cannot be accepted:
1. After the death of the Prophet (sws), sense and reason
demand that the written and oral transmission of the Qur’ān would have received
a great push at the hands of his successors. With more and more people entering
in the folds of Islam, there would have been a great demand to read and learn
the Qur’ān. The caliphs must have been alive to this demand and would have
arranged to make thousands of written copies to be distributed all over their
empire. Such would be the scale of this availability of the Qur’ānic text
together with its true vocalization through its thousands of readers that any
one who would read the consonantal text of the Qur’ān in a different manner
would have stood corrected immediately. In fact, there was hardly any chance
that such cases would even have arisen in view of the large scale dissemination
of the Qur’ān. Ibn Hazam writes:
When the Prophet (sws) died, all of the Arabian peninsula
had embraced Islam from the Red Sea in the west passing through the shores of
Yemen to the Persian Gulf in the east and from the Persian Gulf passing through
Euphrates along the borders of Syria back to the Red Sea. There are so many
cities and places in the Arabia that only the Almighty knows their true number.
For example, there is Yemen, Bahrain, Amman, Najd, the two peaks of the Tay
tribe, the lands of Mudar, Rabi‘ah, Qudā‘ah, Tā’if, Makkah. In short, all these
areas had embraced Islam and there was no city, town or settlement without a
mosque. In all these mosques, the Qur’ān was read in the five prayers and the
Qur’ān was taught to men, women and children. It was also written. At the death
of the Prophet (sws), there was no difference of any sort between the Muslims.
All the Muslims were united and were on the same set of beliefs. Then Abū Bakr
became the caliph and remained in office for two and a half years. He waged wars
against Rome and Persia. He conquered Yamāmah and thereby the number of people
who knew the Qur’ān increased. Many people like Ubayyi, ‘Uthmān, ‘Umar, ‘Ali,
Zayd, Abū Zayd and Ibn Mas‘ūd besides a host of others had already compiled the
Qur’ān. Not a single city was without written copies of the Qur’ān …. Then Abū
Bakr died and ‘Umar became the caliph. He conquered Persia, Syria, Egypt and the
Arabian peninsula. In all these Muslim territories, mosques were built and
copies of the Qur’ān written. The Qur’ān continued to be read and taught to the
younger generation in the schools of religious instruction. This state of
affairs continued for ten years and some months. There were no differences
between the Muslims and they were united on one faith. There were not less than
one hundred thousand copies of the Qur’ān in areas like Egypt, Iraq, Syria,
Yemen and in other areas between them. Then ‘Uthmān became the caliph and many
new territories were conquered and everything received a further impetus. Such
was the quantity of the copies of the Qur’ān, that no one could have counted
them. This state of unity continued till the death of ‘Uthmān which is 12 years
from the time Abū Bakr became the Caliph. (Ibn Hazam,
Al-Fasal fi’l-Milal wa al-Ahwā wa al-Nahal, 1st ed., vol. 1, [Maktabah
al-Salām], pp. 66-7)
In the light of this, it is difficult to imagine that any
difference such as the one referred to in this report would have arisen and
become a cause of such great alarm.
2. Even if it is accepted that some differences had arisen
in reading the Qur’ān at one place, the only step needed was to send written
copies of the Qur’ān to that place. With the Qur’ān already found in great
numbers all over the empire, what was the need to send its copies to other
places like Basrah, Makkah Bahrain and Yemen? Can it be believed that officially
written copies were only sent in the various territories of the empire after
people in one small part had begun to differ? Can it be accepted that ‘Uthmān (rta)
and his predecessors never thought of this all important task prior to this?
3. It is known that the Qur’ān was revealed and written in
the dialect of the Quraysh. In this report, quite strangely, ‘Uthmān (rta) is
seen instructing Zayd (rta) (who himself did not belong to the Quraysh) and the
others to make copies in the dialect of the Quraysh in case of any difference.
If the version from which the Qur’ān was to be copied was already written in the
dialect of the Quraysh, no difference could have arisen. Even if any difference
would have arisen, how could the view of Zayd (rta) be forsaken since it was his
script which the first two Caliphs had already accepted. Moreover, what was the
need of forming a committee to correct Zayd (rta), since the original was
already written by him and he was just required to make its copies?
4. Once again we are confronted with some missing verses
in this narrative. This time it is some verses of Sūrah Ahzāb. At this second instance of writing, Zayd (rta) is reported to have
remembered them. One can only wonder what more could be attributed to him had he
been given a third chance of writing down the Qur’ān.
5. If the chain of narrators of this narrative is
considered, it comes to light that this report is also Gharīb. There is only one
narrator in each of its first two steps. Only Anas Ibn Mālik (rta) narrates this
report. From Anas (rta), only Ibn Shihāb Zuhrī narrates it. This means that for
almost half a century, this report was confined to very few people.
6. Here again, no text of this report is without the
controversial personality of Ibn Shihāb Zuhrī (See Appendix D), in its chain of
narrators. Like the previous one, the very origin of this report becomes dubious
owing to his presence.
7. What further compounds the unreliability of this
narrative is the fact that the narration of Ibrahīm Ibn Sa‘ad from Ibn Shihāb
Zuhrī is doubtful since at the time of Zuhri’s death he was only sixteen years
old and residing in Madīnah – a city far off from Aylah near the borders of
Egypt where Zuhrī lived.
Consequently, Ibn Hajr records:
Sālih Jazarah says: His Ahādīth narrated from Zuhrī are
not [as secure as] those from Ibn Ishāq since he was very young when he heard
Ahādīth from Zuhrī. (Ibn Hajar, Tahdhību’l-Tahdhīb, 1st ed., vol. 1, [Beirut:
Dāru’l-Ma‘rifah, 1996], p. 142)
8. Like the previous one, the events reported in this
report find no mention in the two earliest works on Muslim history ‘The Tabaqāt’
of Ibn Sa‘ad (d: 230 AH), and Tārīkhu’l-Umam wa Al-Malūk of Ibn Jarīr Tabarī (d:
310 AH). Consequently, while Ibn Sa‘ad records in detail the life and
achievements of Zayd Ibn Thābit (rta), nowhere in it does he mention that Zayd (rta)
was instrumental in making the copies of the Qur’ān at the behest of Abū Bakr
(rta). Similarly, Tabarī
mentions the battle at the fronts of Armenia and Azerbaijan with some detail but
does not recount that any difference in reading the Qur’ān had arisen; he also
does not give any reference to the ‘Uthmānic redaction. The absence of any
reference to the events reported in this narrative in these two earliest books
of Islamic history is indeed very strange. These were by no means insignificant
events and deserved mention if they ever occurred.
9. Again, the Mu’attā of Imam Mālik (d: 179 AH) and the
Sahīh of Imam Muslim (d: 261 AH), also are devoid of any such report.
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