“In support of this position, the following arguments may be adduced. First: When Othmân’s edition was prepared, no open breach had yet taken place between the Omeyads and the Alyites. The unity of Islâm was still complete and unthreatened. Ali’s pretensions were as yet undeveloped. No sufficient object can, therefore, be assigned for the perpetration by Othmân of an offence which Moslems regard as one of the blackest dye. Second: On the other hand, Ali, from the very commencement of Othmân’s reign, had an influential party of adherents, strong enough in the end to depose the Caliph, to storm his palace in the heart of Medîna, and to put an end to his life. Can we conceive that these men would have remained quiet, when the very evidence of their leader’s superior claims was being openly expunged from the book of God. Third: At the time of the recension, there were still multitudes alive who had the Corân, as originally delivered, by heart; and of the supposed passages favouring Ali—had any ever existed—there would have been numerous transcripts in the hands of his family and followers. Both of these sources must have proved an effectual check upon any attempt at suppression. Fourth: The party of Ali shortly after assumed an independent attitude, and he himself succeeded to the Caliphate. Is it possible that either Ali, or his party, when thus arrived at power, would have tolerated a mutilated Corân—mutilated expressly to destroy his claims. Yet we find that they used the same Corân as their opponents, and raised no shadow of an objection against it.
“The insurgents are indeed said to have made it one of their complaints against Othmân that he had caused a new edition to be made of the Corân, and had committed all the old copies to the flames; but these proceedings were objected to simply as unauthorised and sacrilegious. No hint was dropped of any alteration or omission. Such a supposition, palpably absurd at the time, is altogether an after-thought of the modern Sheeas.
“We may, then, safely conclude that Othmân’s recension was, what it professed to be, a reproduction of Abu Bakr’s edition, with a more perfect conformity to the dialect of Mecca, and possibly a more uniform arrangement of its parts,—but still a faithful reproduction.
“The most important question yet remains, viz. Whether Abu Bakr’s edition was itself an authentic and complete collection of Mahomet’s Revelations. The following considerations warrant the belief that it was authentic and, in the main, as complete as at the time was possible.
“First.—We have no reason to doubt that Abu Bakr was a sincere follower of Mahomet, and an earnest believer in the divine origin of the Corân. His faithful attachment to the Prophet’s person, conspicuous for the last twenty years of his life, and his simple, consistent, and unambitious deportment as Caliph, admit no other supposition. Firmly believing the revelations of his friend to be the revelations of God himself, his first object would be to secure a pure and complete transcript of them. A similar argument applies with almost equal force to Omar, and the other agents in the revision. The great mass of Mussulmans were undoubtedly sincere in their belief. From the scribes themselves, employed in the compilation, down to the humblest believer who brought his little store of writing on stones or palm-leaves, all would be influenced by the same earnest desire to reproduce the very words which their Prophet had declared as his message from the Lord. And a similar guarantee existed in the feelings of the people at large, in whose soul no principle was more deeply rooted than an awful reverence for the supposed word of God. The Corân itself contains frequent denunciations against those who should presume to ‘fabricate anything in the name of the Lord,’ or conceal any part of that which He had revealed. Such an action, represented as the very worst description of crime, we cannot believe that the first Moslems, in the early ardour of their faith and love, would have dared to contemplate.
“Second.—The compilation was made within two years of Mahomet’s death. We have seen that several of his followers had the entire revelation (excepting, perhaps, some obsolete fragments) by heart; that every Moslem treasured up more or less some portions in his memory; and that there were official Reciters of it, for public worship and tuition, in all countries to which Islâm extended. These formed an unbroken link between the Revelation fresh from Mahomet’s lips, and the edition of it by Zeid. Thus the people were not only sincere and fervent in wishing for a faithful copy of the Corân; they were also in possession of ample means for realising their desire, and for testing the accuracy and completeness of the volume placed in their hands by Abu Bakr.
“Third.—A still greater security would be obtained from the fragmentary transcripts which existed in Mahomet’s life-time, and which must have greatly multiplied before the Corân was compiled. These were in the possession, probably, of all who could read. And as we know that the compilation of Abu Bakr came into immediate and unquestioned use, it is reasonable to conclude that it embraced and corresponded with every extant fragment, and therefore by common consent, superseded them. We hear of no fragments, sentences, or words, intentionally omitted by the compilers, nor of any that differed from the received edition. Had any such been discoverable, they would undoubtedly have been preserved and noticed in those traditional repositories which treasured up the minutest and most trivial acts and sayings of the Prophet.
“Fourth.—The contents and the arrangement of the Corân speak forcibly for its authenticity. All the fragments that could possibly be obtained have with artless simplicity been joined together. The patchwork bears no marks of a designing genius or a moulding hand. It testifies to the faith and reverence of the compilers, and proves that they dared no more than simply collect the sacred fragments and place them in juxtaposition. Hence the interminable repetitions; the palling reiteration of the same ideas, truths, and doctrines; hence, scriptural stories and Arab legends, told over and over again with little verbal variation; hence the pervading want of connection, and the startling chasms between adjacent passages. Again, the frailties of Mahomet, supposed to have been noticed by the Deity, are all with evident faithfulness entered in the Corân. Not less undisguised are the frequent verses which are contradicted or abrogated by later revelations. The editor plainly contented himself with compiling and copying out in a continuous form, but with scrupulous accuracy, the fragmentary materials within his reach. He neither ventured to select from repeated versions of the same incident, nor to reconcile differences, nor by the alteration of a single letter to connect abrupt transitions of context, nor by tampering with the text to soften discreditable appearances. Thus we possess every internal guarantee of confidence.
“But it may be objected,—if the text of Abu Bakr’s Corân was pure and universally received, how came it to be so soon corrupted, and to require, in consequence of its variations, an extensive recension? Tradition does not afford sufficient light to determine the cause of these discrepancies. They may have been owing to various readings in the older fragmentary transcripts which remained in the possession of the people; they may have originated in the diverse dialects of Arabia, and the different modes of pronunciation and orthography; or they may have sprung up naturally in the already vast domains of Islâm, before strict uniformity was officially enforced. It is sufficient for us to know that in Othmân’s revision recourse was had to the original exemplar of the first compilation, and that there is otherwise every security, internal and external, that we possess a text the same as that which Mahomet himself gave forth and used.” (Life of Mahomet, new ed., p. 557 et seqq.)
The various readings (qirāʾah) in the Qurʾān are not such as are usually understood by the term in English authors, but different dialects of the Arabic language. Ibn ʿAbbās says the Prophet said, “Gabriel taught me to read the Qurʾān in one dialect, and when I recited it he taught me to recite it in another dialect, and so on until the number of dialects increased to seven.” (Mishkāt, book ii. ch. ii.)