Jam' al-Quran — Rawzat

The Quran’s Revelation over 23 Years

The Quran was not revealed as a single book. It descended in portions (nuzul munajjaman) over the entire 23 years of the Prophet’s mission — from the first revelation in the Cave of Hira (Iqra — 96:1) in 610 CE to the final verses revealed in the year of the Prophet’s farewell pilgrimage (632 CE).

The sequence of revelation (tartib al-nuzul) differs significantly from the sequence of the compiled Quran (tartib al-mushaf). The earliest revealed surahs are the short ones at the Quran’s end — Surah al-‘Alaq, al-Muddaththir, al-Muzzammil — while the longest surah (al-Baqarah) is early in the mushaf but was revealed over several years in Madinah.

Each revelation came through the angel Jibrail (AS), who:

Brought the words directly to the Prophet’s heart
Specified the placement of each new verse within the existing text (“Place this after verse X of Surah Y”)
Reviewed the entire Quran with the Prophet (SAW) once annually during Ramadan, and twice in the Prophet’s final year

This annual review (al-‘ard al-akhir) meant that the Prophet himself confirmed the Quran’s arrangement before his death.

Preservation During the Prophet’s Lifetime

During the prophetic mission itself, the Quran was preserved through two simultaneous channels:

1. Oral Preservation (Hifz)

The Arab culture of the 7th century was an oral culture of extraordinary memory. Thousands of Companions memorized the Quran in full during the Prophet’s lifetime — they were called Huffaz (those who preserve by heart). The Prophet said: “Whoever reads the Quran and memorizes it, reciting it as it is, will be with the noble scribes (the angels).”

Significant Huffaz among the Companions included: ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (AS), ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan, Ubayy ibn Ka’b, ‘Abdallah ibn Mas’ud, Zayd ibn Thabit, Abu Darda’, Mu’adh ibn Jabal, and hundreds of the Ansar and Muhajirin. The Quran spread to new Muslim communities through these living repositories, not through manuscripts.

2. Written Preservation (Kitabah)

The Prophet (SAW) appointed kuttab al-wahy (scribes of revelation) — Companions who wrote down each new revelation as it came. The primary scribes included: Zayd ibn Thabit, ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (AS), Ubayy ibn Ka’b, Mu’awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, and others. The materials used were diverse: flat stones (lijhar), palm leaves (khasaf), pieces of leather, shoulder bones (aktaf), and papyrus — whatever writing material was available.

These written fragments (suhuf) were held by various Companions and not yet gathered into a single codex (mushaf).

The First Compilation: Abu Bakr’s Mushaf (12 AH / 633 CE)

The impetus for the first full compilation was the Battle of Yamama (12 AH), in which seventy Huffaz were killed while fighting the apostasy of Musaylima al-Kadhdhab. ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab approached Abu Bakr with concern: “If the Companions who memorized the Quran continue to fall in battle, large portions of the Quran may be lost.”

Abu Bakr was initially reluctant — “How can I do something the Prophet (SAW) did not do?” — but was eventually persuaded. He entrusted the task to Zayd ibn Thabit, the foremost Quran scribe of the Prophet’s time, who himself recalled the Prophet (SAW) specifying the placement of each verse.

Zayd’s methodology was rigorous:

Accepted only material that was both memorized (by Companions) and written (on physical material)
Required two witnesses to attest that a given verse had been dictated by the Prophet (SAW) in their presence
Personally cross-referenced his memory with every piece of written material submitted

The result was a single manuscript (suhuf) — not yet a standardized codex, but the first complete written Quran. This suhuf was kept first with Abu Bakr, then ‘Umar, then became part of the inheritance of ‘Umar’s daughter Hafsa (one of the Prophet’s wives).

The Second Compilation: Uthman’s Mushaf (25 AH / 646 CE)

Fourteen years later, the Muslim world had expanded enormously — Syria, Iraq, Persia, Egypt. Different Muslim communities were using their own regional Quran manuscripts, which preserved variant readings (qira’at) and different written forms. When Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman noticed Muslims in different regions arguing about the “correct” reading of the Quran, he approached ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan with urgency: “Catch this community before it differs about the Book the way the Jews and Christians differed.”

‘Uthman acted. He:

Retrieved Hafsa’s official manuscript (Abu Bakr’s suhuf)
Formed a commission of four primary scholars: Zayd ibn Thabit (chairman), ‘Abdallah ibn al-Zubayr, Sa’id ibn al-‘As, and ‘Abdurrahman ibn al-Harith
Instructed the commission to follow Qurayshi pronunciation where there was disagreement (since the Quran was revealed in the Qurayshi dialect)
Produced multiple copies of the standardized mushaf
Distributed one copy each to the main centres of the Muslim world: Mecca, Madinah, Kufa, Basra, Damascus, and one copy remaining with Hafsa
Ordered all other manuscripts to be destroyed

This standardization is what produced the al-mushaf al-‘Uthmani — the Quran that all Muslims use today, in every language and every denomination.

The Quranic Consonantal Skeleton and the Diacritics

The original Uthmanic mushaf was written in the Arabic script of its time: consonants only (rasm), without the vowel diacritics (tashkil) or dotting (i’jam) that distinguish similar-looking letters (like ب / ت / ث / ن / ي). These additions came later:

Dotting of consonants: attributed to Abu al-Aswad al-Du’ali in the late 7th century (under Ziyad ibn Abihi’s patronage)
Full vocalization system: developed through the 8th century, reaching its complete form under al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (d. 786 CE)

This meant that for the first century of Islam, reading the Quran correctly required either personal instruction from a teacher or independent memorization — the written text alone was insufficient without the oral tradition (isnad). This reality strongly supports the Dawat’s insistence that the Quran cannot be understood without the living chain of teachers (silsila) that transmits its correct reading and true meaning.

The Variant Readings (Qira’at)

The Uthmanic mushaf’s consonantal skeleton can, in some places, support more than one valid reading — these are the sab’at ahruf (seven modes) the Prophet (SAW) mentioned: “The Quran was revealed in seven modes — each of them is sufficient and healing.”

The ten recognized qira’at systems (of which Hafs ‘an ‘Asim is by far the most widely used globally) are all considered authentic transmissions of the prophetic recitation through chains of narrators. The Bohra Dawat follows the Hafs ‘an ‘Asim reading in recitation.

The Ismaili-Tayyibi Perspective on the Quran

The Bohra Dawat, following the Fatimid tradition, holds a distinctive understanding of the Quran’s nature and proper interpretation:

The Quran is Complete and Authentic

The Ismaili-Tayyibi tradition affirms the authenticity of the Uthmanic mushaf. Unlike some Twelver polemical positions that alleged textual alteration (tahrif), the Ismaili da’is — particularly Qadi al-Nu’man — affirmed the text’s completeness. The Dawat’s position: the text is preserved; what has been concealed is not any verse but the meaning.

The Quran’s Zahir and Batin

The Dawat’s foundational insight: every Quranic verse has a zahir (outward meaning) and a batin (inner meaning). The zahir is what the words say on their surface; the batin is the divine intention behind them — the Imam’s ‘ilm encoded within the divine word.

This is not the Dawat’s innovation — it is the Quran’s own declaration:

وَمَا يَعلَمُ تَأوِيلَهُ إِلَّا اللَّهُ ۗ وَالرَّاسِخُونَ فِي العِلمِ “And no one knows its ta’wil except Allah and those firmly grounded in knowledge.” (3:7)

The Dawat teaches: al-rasikhun fi’l-‘ilm (those firmly grounded in knowledge) are the Imams of the Ahl al-Bayt, and their authorized representatives (the Duat). The Imam — and during satr, the Da’i — holds the key to the Quran’s inner meaning.

The Imam as the Living Quran

The hadith tradition contains a famous statement: “I leave among you two heavy things: the Book of Allah and my family, the Ahl al-Bayt. If you hold fast to both, you will never go astray.” The Dawat’s reading: the Quran and the Imam are two complementary channels of divine guidance — the Quran is the natiq (speaking) text, and the Imam’s ‘ilm is its samit (silent) complement. Neither is complete without the other.

The compiler who compiled the Quran preserved its letters and words. But it is the Imam who preserved — and continues to transmit — its living meaning.

Ta’wil of the Quran’s Compilation

The zahir of Jam’ al-Quran is the historical process: scribes, manuscripts, formal compilation, standardized codex. A remarkable act of scholarly preservation that ensured the divine text’s integrity.

The batin of Jam’ al-Quran is the perpetual gathering (jam’) of divine wisdom in every age. Just as the first compilation gathered the dispersed fragments of revelation into a single complete text, the Imam in every age gathers the dispersed seekers — the scattered hearts that carry partial understanding — and brings them to wholeness through walayah.

The mushaf that Uthman distributed to the Muslim world was letters on a page. The mushaf that the Imam writes on the soul’s tablet — verse by verse, through the ‘ilm transmitted in the silence of walayah — is the living Quran. And this inner Quran cannot be burned, cannot be censored, cannot be lost: “Indeed, it is We who sent down the dhikr, and indeed, We will be its guardian.” (15:9)

Jam' al-Quran — The Compilation and Preservation of the Quran