, for it was revealed in their dialect alone.” They did so, and when they had transcribed the sheets into copies of the Quran, ‘Uthmān returned the sheets to Hafsah. He sent one of the copies they had transcribed to each region and ordered that all other Quranic material, whether on individual sheets or in bound copies, be burned.

The manuscript he obtained from Hafsah was the one in which Abū Bakr and ‘Umar had instructed Zayd ibn Thābit to compile the Quran. The account of this is well known and is recorded in the two Sahīh collections and elsewhere. It was in Zayd’s handwriting, which is why ‘Uthmān instructed that he be among those transcribing copies of the Quran from those sheets. However, he appointed three men from Quraysh to work with him so that it would be written in their dialect. The dialects of Quraysh and the Ansār differed only over the forms (al-tābūh) and (al-tābūt), meaning “the Ark”; they wrote (al-tābūt), in the dialect of Quraysh.

This shows that multiple copies of the Quran were transcribed, as is well known and widely acknowledged. It further demonstrates the error of claiming that certain words are scribal errors, or attributing such a claim to ‘Uthmān. This is impossible for several reasons.

Among them are the multiplicity of copies, the collaboration of a group on each copy, and the subsequent arrival of each copy in a large town containing many Companions and Successors who recited the Quran and checked the text against what they had memorized. When someone transcribes a copy of the Quran and makes an error in part of it, his error is recognized because it conflicts with his memorization of the Quran and with the other copies. Thus, if it were supposed that