12-26-2012, 07:55 AM
Bismillah
Praise be to Allah, King of the Kings and Creator of all creations, prayer and peace be upon His Messenger Mohamed Ibn Abdullah.
To continue on the Ayah:" "Verily We: It is We Who have sent down the Reminder (i.e. the Qur'an) and surely, We will guard it (from corruption)." (Quran 15:9)
Although the Ayahs of Quran were revealed separately throughout 23 years to serve on certain occasions or respond to questions raised to the Messenger salla Allah a`lyhee wa sallam, yet Allah Sobhanuh preserved His noble book in His Messenger's chest ordered in terms of the Surahs and Ayahs as we recite it in the present time.
Then Allah Assigned Abu Bakr, Omar and Zaid Ibn Thabet may Allah be Pleased with all of them to serve with the protection of His book. They managed to compile the parts of Quran which were documented in writing individually from the scribes of revelation and other Muslims who are proficient in Quran recitation in one Mushaf. Their effort, though, didn’t exceed that this Mushaf was kept with Abi Bakr, then Omar which ended up with the mother of the believers Hafsa may Allah be pleased with all of them.
However, this was only a preliminary step from Allah for the consequent efforts. At the time of Othman’s Khilafa may Allah be pleased with him, Hudhayfa Bin Alyaman participated with Iraqis and Sham people in the invasion of Erminia and Azərbaycan.
As soon as he returned to Medina, he went to meet Othman may Allah be pleased with him and told him: O Emir of the believers, try to extend help to this Ummah just before they corrupt the book as the Jews and Nasarah did with their books. Actually, his warning came after mixing with the people of Iraq and Sham during the time of the opening. Hudhayfa listened to their recitation, he observed that they use various recitations containing much differences among them which raised his utmost concern. That motivated him to ask Othman during their conversation to hasten and put an end to this fitnah (crisis).
Othman consequently became even more concerned and immediately sent for the mother of the believers Hafsa to hand in the Suhuf (sheets) she had in order to copy them and return them back. She did. Othman selected four of the companions of the Messenger salla Allah a`lyhee wa sallam, namely; Zaid Ibn Thabet Alansary who was already assigned by the Sedeeq to compile the Mushaf, Abdullah Ibn Azobair Bin Ala`wam AlQorashy Alassady who is one of the companions' best scholars in terms of knowledge, attitude, lineage and righteousness.
Among those who were assigned by Abu Bakr was Said Bin Ala`s Bin Umayah Alqorashy Alumaway who was known to be generous, he also spoke in a dialect that was closest to the Messenger’s salla Allah a`lyhee wa sallam as well as Abdur Rahaman Alqorashy Almakhzoumy.
He commanded them to take on a collective effort in writing down a copy of the Quran.
To this effect, he gave clear instructions to the three men from Quraish saying: in case you differ with Zaid about the style of recitation (spelling), write it down using the Quraishi dialect for it is the one on which the Quran was revealed with.
From this we understand that Othman ordered them to use Quraish’s spelling style which is for example the pronunciation of the Hamza and other letters for Quran originally was revealed in the Quraish dialect which was the Messenger’s as well as the most eloquent among other Arab dialects.
Jebreel only taught the Messenger salla Allah a`lyhee wa sallam to recite in other dialects just as a permission from Allah to facilitate the recitation and help people lay more emphasis on the meaning of the content without struggling to use a different way of pronunciation than what they are used to.
In order to give an example regarding the difference we are indicating here, when they wanted to write down the word ‘Tabut” which is casket Zaid saw to write it as ”Tabuh” using a ta marbouta (the letter in Arabic) but the other three decided it must be written using a ta maftouha (Tabut) which how it was written.
As soon as they completed the mission of writing the Mushaf, Othman gave back the sheets to Hafsah the mother of the believers and kept a copy in Medina, sent one to Mecca, another to Bassrah, one to Kufa, one to Sham, one to Yemen, and one to Bahrain according to Ibn Katheer.
However, I know that Egypt has one of those Othmani Mushaf. May be this copy was delivered to Egypt on a later time. For example, the Cesarean Russia had one of the Othmani copies, which the government, upon the eruption of the communist revolution gave it away as a gift to one of the Islamic countries. However, it was lost during transportation. May be this is the one which ended up in Egypt.
From this, we can safely conclude that what Othman may Allah be pleased with him actually achieved was to bring Muslims together on using the authentic recitations taken after the Messenger salla Alah a`lyhee wa sallam as well as a unified spelling for the words contained in the Mushaf.
As such the Muslim Ummah became consensus on the necessity to abide by it when producing Mushafs for worship and recitation.
Othman, after that, invalidated any other written Quran except what was produced under his supervision which may have been originally written using other Arab dialects. Regarding those other Arab dialect, Allah Made it permissible to facilitate the matter at the beginning of Quran revelation.
After that people memorized the Quran using Quraish dialect when it didn’t become necessary any more to benefit of the permission originally Given by Allah at the wake of Islam.
Othman made and implemented this decision during the life of all the great companions of the Messenger including Muhajereen and Ansar (immigrants and supporters) who all agreed with him.
Ali may Allah be pleased with him said never mention Othman with any comment except a good one, Wallahi (In the name of Allah), he did what he did with the Musahaef with agreement of all of us. He asked us: what is your opinion about this recitation? I was notified that there are some people who would comment saying my recitation is better than yours which is nearly Kufr. We asked him back, what do you think? He said: I see that people must be united to one Mushaf in order to avoid splitting and differences. We said: we agree with your opinion (Source: Swaida Bin ghafla, Abu Daouod, Itqan fee Oloum AlQuran)
Ali may Allah be pleased with him added: If Othman didn’t take this initiative I would have.
However, in the present time people are not really strict about using the same font and spelling applied in Mushaf when it comes to inserting Ayahs of Quran in texts of books and articles. It is rather allowed to using the modern writing style in order to make it easier for the reader.
Till the Umayed era, words written in Quran were missing the dots and signs of pronunciation (Tashkeel). Abdullah Ibn Marwan ordered to distinguish the letters of which Hajjaj Ibn Yusuf took the responsibility.
For this, he ordered Alhassan Albasry and Yahia Bin Omar to carry out the task which they did.
With this mission, the writing of Quran words came to us in the style we see today and Allah Fulfilled His promise saying:
“It is for Us to collect it and to give you (O Muhammad) the ability to recite it (the Qur'an), * And when We have recited it to you [O Muhammad through Gabriel], then follow you its (the Qur'an's) recital.” (Quran 75:17-18)
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Narrated under the authority of Ibn Abbass may Allah be pleased with both of them that the Messenger of Allah salla Allah a`lyhee wa sallam said:
I was commanded to prostrate on seven bones on the forehead and he indicated with his hand to the nose, hands, knees, tips of feet and we should not to prevent clothes and hair from falling down to the floor during prostration but rather to let them go.
(reported by Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Daoud, Termdhi and Nasaai
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