Thus, the Muslims possess an uninterrupted, mass-transmitted record from their Prophet—of the very words of the Qur’an with their unanimously accepted meanings and of the equally well-attested Sunnah—affirming, for example:
• that the Ẓuhr, ʿAṣr, and ʿIshāʾ prayers each consist of four rakʿahs;
• that Maghrib is three rakʿahs and Fajr two;
• that the recitation is aloud in the two evening prayers and in Fajr, and silent in Ẓuhr and ʿAṣr;
• that every rakʿah contains two prostrations;
• that circumambulating the Kaʿbah and traversing between Ṣafā and Marwah are seven circuits each;
• and that each of the jamarāt is pelted with seven pebbles—along with similar matters.

Furthermore, Muslims commit the Qur’an to memory so thoroughly that they can dispense with written copies. This is confirmed by the authentic report recorded by Muslim, in which the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—said:

“My Lord said to me, ‘I am sending down to you a Book that water will not wash away; you will recite it while asleep and while awake.’”

In other words, even if water were to erase it from the muṣḥafs, it would still remain indelibly preserved in hearts—unlike the earlier scriptures, for if their copies disappeared no one could transmit them through an unbroken, mass-narrated chain committed to memory.

The Qur’an, however, has always been safeguarded in men’s breasts by such mutawātir transmission: were someone to alter a single word in the written codices and then present it to the Muslim children