The Qur’an An Abiding Wonder
The Preservation of the Qur’an
~ 127 ~
It is said that during the caliphate of Umar Faruq
there were more than one lakh copies of the Qur’an
in circulation in Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, etc.
In later times the written Qur’an became the main
source of Islamic learning. But one danger was still
lurking. In sacred books even very minor
differences can become a source of great
controversy. It was feared that if people wrote the
Qur’an on their own, differences in transcribing
(kitabat)
e.g. writing ‘eether’ for ‘either’ and in
recitation would create widespread dissension and
there would be no way of putting an end to it. For
instance, just one word in the first chapter of the
Qur’an was written in different ways according to
the pronunciation of different dialects:
maalik-e-
yaumuddin,
malik-e-yaumuddin
and
maleek-e-
yaumuddin,
etc.; with the passing of time and
changes in the style of writing, the differences in the
manuscript would have become a source of great
contention. Therefore, on the advice of Umar, Abu
Bakr decided to have an authentic copy of the
Qur’an prepared under state patronage and thus
put an end forever to the possibility of phonetic
differences obscuring the true meaning of the text.
