among the Companions.

Abū Yaʿlā al-Mawṣilī reports: “Saʿīd ibn Ashʿath narrated to us; al-Haytham ibn Shaddākh narrated to us; I heard al-Aʿmash relate from Yaḥyā ibn Waththāb, from ʿAlqamah, from ʿAbd Allāh (Ibn Masʿūd), who said:

‘How astonishing it is that people abandon my mode of recitation and follow Zayd’s, when I received seventy surahs straight from the mouth of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, while Zayd was just a youngster with a single forelock, wandering about Medina!’ (1)

Saʿdawayh relates: “Abū Shihāb narrated to us, from al-Aʿmash, from Abū Wāʾil, who said:

Ibn Masʿūd once ascended the pulpit and declared, ‘Fasten your codices! How can you instruct me to recite according to Zayd’s reading when I myself recited a little over seventy surahs directly from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ? Yet Zayd would come along with the boys, sporting two forelocks!’ (2)

I say: What pained Ibn Masʿūd was that ʿUthmān did not place him in charge of writing the muṣḥaf, preferring instead someone young enough to be his son. ʿUthmān only set him aside because he was away in Kūfah, while Zayd had served as one of the Prophet’s scribes of revelation—making him an authority on the written form—whereas Ibn Masʿūd was an authority on oral performance. Besides, it was Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq who had first commissioned Zayd to compile the muṣḥaf and collect the Qur’an, so why did Ibn Masʿūd not object to Abū Bakr?

Reports indicate that Ibn Masʿūd eventually accepted and supported ʿUthmān’s decision—praise be to Allah.

Ibn Masʿūd’s personal codex contained passages that, in my estimation, had been abrogated, whereas Zayd was the Companion most current with the final recension that the Prophet ﷺ reviewed with Gabriel in the year of his passing.