Quora Answer: Is There a Difference between the Qur’an Revealed to the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.) & the Qur’an Today?

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Is there a difference between the Qur’an Revealed by Allah (s.w.t.) to the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.), versus the Qur’an of today?” 

I assume you are asking about the text of the Qur’an Itself.  The Qur’an was not simply written down.  At each instance of Revelation, the Prophet (s.a.w.), and the swahabah, memorised the verses.  They were from a culture that prized good memory skills, so feats such as this were not uncommon.  The number of huffazh, memorisers of the Qur’an, and the manner of recitation, preserved that authenticity.  They also wrote it down, and these writings were eventually compiled into seven copies during the Sayyidina Abu ‘Amr ‘Utsman ibn ‘Affan (r.a.).  However, this compilation was not for authentication.  The authentication was based on the mutawatir, mass-transmitted, narrations of the huffazh.  That tradition of memorising the Qur’an, with a chain of teachers, the ijazat, has continued to this day.  This is how we are certain that there has been no alteration of the words of Revelation. 

There have been claims about extra words found in some sheaves of scrolls or books owned by the swahabah.  These maswahif had extra words, but they were annotations by the swahabah, and not part of the Qur’anic text, and treated as commentary and exegesis, tafasir, of the Qur’an.  Therefore, we do not pay any consideration to any parchments discovered from the time of the Salaf, even if they were written by a swahabi of the Prophet (s.a.w.), if they have different or extra words. 

That being said, the diacritic marks were eventually added when Islam spread beyond the Arab heartland, and more new converts were not Arab by culture, and did not speak Arabic as a mother tongue.  It is said that the first such marks were added by the companion of Sayyidina ‘Ali ibn Abu Thalib (k.w.), Imam Abu al-Aswad Zhalim ibn ‘Amr ad-Du’ali (r.a.).  That, however, is not a change of text, but the evolution of the script.  The substance of the words remain exactly the same.