The Qur'anand `Uthman sent copies out to other provinces (cities) commanding that all
other Qur'an codices be destroyed. (There are also other ve^23 rsions of
traditions concerning this collection.)^24
Even other hadith hint that there was some disunity about which version of
the Qur'an was to be recited in early Islam, and it appears th^25 at the Qur'an
probably was collected and standardized in the time of Uthman's caliphate. Problems with this tradition, however, are that th^26 e instructions about using the dialect of the Quraysh do not seem to have been accurate,^27 the Qur'an codex of Hafsa was later destroyed by Marwan, and^28 discrepancies between theUthmanic text and the codices of Hafsa and
Zayd are given in later Islamic works.^29
Some of the pre-Uthmanic Qur'an codices seem to have escaped the systematic destruction ordered byUthman, and copies based on the
manuscripts of Ibn Masud and Ubayy b. Kab were reportedly see^3031 n
centuries later. Various Islamic traditions claim that many verses which
once existed were no longer found in the text standardized under
Uthman, and some hadith contend that whole suras had disapp^32 eared from the Qur'an. Although some problems may have been solved b^33 yUthman's
standardization, others were not, as even his text of the Qur'an is said to
have contained errors.^34
As the earliest extant manuscripts of the Qur'an clearly show, the old texts^35
were deficient of vowel pointings and diacritical marks (so some characters
represented more than one consonant). In Arabic, a purely co^36 nsonantal
text not only means that some verbs could have been read as either actives
or passives, but in the absence of diacritical marks, masculine or feminine
readings could have also been made. Thus, those who read the o^37 ldest texts
of the Qur'an should have first been made familiar with the text from oral
sources.
Most traditions seem to agree that `Uthman had four copies of the
standardized text of the Qur'an made. It is reported that one^38 was kept at
Medina, and the others were sent to Mecca, Syria and Kufa. Neve^39 rtheless,
owing apparently to the ambiguities of the early Arabic scripts, a number of
variant readings began to evolve in the cities of Medina, Mecca, Damascus,
Kufa and Basra.^40