…and because he had learnt it directly from the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, it was difficult for him to abandon a recitation he had performed before the Prophet and adopt the reading of Zayd or anyone else. He therefore clung to his own mushaf (codex) and his personal mode of recitation, unaware of the consideration that was clear to the rest of the Companions—namely, the overriding benefit by which Allah preserved the Qur’an from disruptive divergence and from alteration by addition or omission. What weighed especially heavily on Ibn Masud was that, when the Companions resolved to write the mushaf in the dialect of Quraysh, they appointed four men for the task, and he was not among them; the codex was thus written in the Quraysh dialect. They did not turn to Ibn Masud because he belonged to the tribe of Hudhayl and his recitation followed their dialect, which differed markedly from that of Quraysh; for this reason they did not include him. The hadith scholar Ahmad Shakir, may Allah have mercy on him, said: Ibn Masud reacted in this way when Uthman ordered the people to unite around the imam mushaf for fear of their disagreement. Ibn Masud became angry, and although that was his own judgement, may Allah be pleased with him, he made a serious mistake in the way he interpreted the verse, for al-ghulul means betrayal. The verse is explicit in threatening anyone who betrays or steals from the spoils of war. Ibn al-Arabi wrote in Ahkam al-Qur’an (4/1942) after quoting this report: “This deserves no attention whatsoever; what counts is what is found in the mushaf, and it is unlawful for anyone to deviate from it. One may then examine those readings whose vocalisation is not decisively established and that are in harmony with its consonantal script, as we have explained elsewhere. The Qur’an is not proven by the report of a single individual, even if he is upright; it is proven only by tawatur—mass transmission that yields certainty, removes all excuse, and constitutes a binding proof against humanity.” Al-Qurtubi, citing Abu Bakr al-Anbari after reproducing this report and the narration in which Ibn Masud recites “inni ana al-razaqu dhu al-quwati al-matin”, states: “Both of these reports are rejected because they oppose the consensus, even though Hamza and Asim transmit from Ibn Masud what agrees with the position of the Muslim community. Acting on two chains that conform to the consensus is preferable to relying on one that contradicts it; whenever a solitary narration is confronted by a collective narration that differs from it, the collective narration is adopted and the solitary one is set aside, for the lone transmitter is liable to forgetfulness and oversight.” He continues: “Even if the report from Abu al-Darda were sound, with an accepted and well-known chain, yet Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Ali and the rest of the Companions, may Allah be pleased with them all, disagreed with it, the ruling would be to follow what the group transmitted and to reject the lone report, for the individual narrator is prone to forgetfulness in a way that does not affect a group or the entire community.” (1) All its transmitters are trustworthy. Al-Bukhari also recorded a similar version (no. 5000) through Umar ibn Hafs, from his father, from al-Amash…