Introduction

The Islamic tradition teaches that the Prophet Muḥammad received revelations and recited them to his scribes, who memorized them and then wrote them down. The third caliph, ʿUthmān, who ruled from 23 to 35 ah/644 to 656 ce, charged a committee led by Zayd b. Thābit to produce a complete codex of the Qurʾān. Copies of this codex, known as muṣḥaf ʿUthmān, were sent to the main centers of the emerging Muslim state and other “unauthorized” copies were destroyed. The ʿUthmānic codex “established the consonantal rasm, i.e. the writing of the consonantal structure but without the diacritics and vowel signs added at a later stage”. ¹ These diacritics and vowel signs were added over a period of two centuries following the establishment of the consonantal codex. ²