Introduction to the Study of The Holy Quran — Page 260
260 which other copies were made and thereafter in each generation hundreds of thousands of people have been in the habit of committing the entire text of the Quran to memory. Even the bitterest enemies of Islam do not allege that any interference with the text of the Quran has taken place since the time of ‘Uthman. Those who seek to raise doubts regarding the purity of the text of the Quran direct their criticism to the period between the death of the Holy Prophet and the Caliphate of ‘Uthman. Whenever any portion of the Quran was revealed to the Holy Prophet, he used to commit it to memory and, as he continuously recited the Quran from one end to the other, he always carried the whole of the revealed Quran at all times in his memory. In addition to this the following devices were adopted for safeguarding and preserving intact the text of the Quran: Devices Adopted To Safeguard the Text of the Quran (1) As soon as a revelation was received by the Holy Prophet it was recorded in writing from his dictation. A number of persons are known to have been employed by the Holy Prophet for this purpose. Of these the names of the following fifteen have been mentioned in the traditions: 335 1. Zayd bin Thabit. 2. Ubayy bin Ka‘b. 3. ‘Abdullah bin Sa‘d bin Abi Sarah. 4. Zubayr bin al-‘Awwam. 5. Khalid bin Sa‘id bin al-‘As. 6. Aban bin Sa‘id bin al-‘As. 7. Hanzalah bin ar-Rabi‘ al-Asadi. 8. Mu‘ayqib bin Abi Fatimah. 9. ‘Abdullah bin Arqam az-Zuhri. 10. Shurahbil bin Hasanah. 11. ‘Abdullah bin Rawahah. 12. Abu Bakr. 13. ‘Umar. 14. ‘Uthman. 15. ‘Ali Whenever the Holy Prophet received a revelation, he would send for one of these persons and dictate to him the text of the revelation he had received. (2) As is well-known, the five daily congregational prayers are obligatory upon every Muslim and a portion of the Quran must be recited in each of them so that every Muslim knows some portion of the Quran by heart. If every hundred out of the Prophet’s Companions who numbered more than one hundred thousand had between them learnt the whole of the Quran by heart the entire Quran must have been preserved in the memory of his Companions a thousand times over.