Muslims strongly deny the existence of any versions of
the Koran other than the one they consider to be the one
true version in classical Arabic. However, the facts of the
case are not quite so simple. Islamic apologists point to the
almost complete lack of textual variants in early manuscripts
of the Koran as evidence that Allah is, indeed, preserving
the book, in contrast to the many variations one finds in
biblical manuscripts.
However, this situation is artificial. Muhammad never
gathered together all his revelations, which his followers had
written not only on paper but on whatever they could find:
bark, skin, rock, and bone. After his death in 632, several
Muslim communities had their own copies of the Koran,
each collected by different followers of Muhammad. But the
Caliph Uthman, who ruled Islam from 644 to 656, found
himself presiding over a fractious community whose
squabbles were fueled by Koranic variants. Consequently,
he ordered a single canonical copy of the Koran made and
all others destroyed.[20]
Most scholars believe that Uthman’s act was the chief
agent of the miraculous integrity of the Koranic text.[21] In
any case, despite Uthman’s best efforts, textual variants
continued to exist. One version of the Koran collected by
Abdullah ibn Mas’ud, one of Muhammad’s servants,
contains a number of variant readings and omits three Suras
that appear in the canonical text; another version adds two
short Suras that are not in the canonical version. Shi’ite
Muslims, one of Islam’s chief sects, have a version of the
Koran with variations from that used by the Sunni.