robert spencer-did muhammad exist__ an inquiry into islams obscure origins-intercollegiate studies institute (2012) (1)

Uthman approved did not survive, even according to Islamic tradition. A hadith holds that when Hajjaj's
mushaf arrived in Medina, Uthman's family indignantly asked that it be compared with the Qur'an of their
illustrious forbear, saying, “Get out the mushaf of Uthman b. Affan, so that we may read it.” 35 Someone
asked Malik ibn Anas what had happened to it; Malik answered, “It has disappeared.” 36 It was said to
have been destroyed on the same day Uthman was assassinated. 37
Coming from hadiths, the information about Hajjaj and the collection of the Qur'an has no more
presumption of authenticity than the reports in any other hadith. But it is easy to understand why Hajjaj
and Abd al-Malik, if they were collecting and editing the Qur'an, would have ascribed their work to
Uthman, so as to give it a patina of authority and authenticity. It is much harder to understand why any
Muslim would have invented hadiths saying that Abd al-Malik and Hajjaj did this work if Uthman had
already done it decades earlier and the standardized Qur'an had been available throughout the Islamic
world all that time.
In any case, hadiths are not the only sources for the claim that Abd al-Malik and Hajjaj collected the
Qur'an. Another indication appears in polemical letters that the iconoclastic Byzantine emperor Leo III the
Isaurian (717–741) purportedly wrote to the caliph Umar II (717–720). No text of these letters survives
that goes back earlier than the late eighth century, so it cannot be said with certainty that Leo III actually
wrote them, at least in the form in which they have come down to us. 38 Nonetheless, the letters offer
evidence that the Qur'an was widely believed to be Hajjaj's work:
It was ‘Umar, Abu Turab and Salman the Persian who composed that (“your P'ourkan” [or Furqan]), even though the rumour
has got around among you that God sent it down from the heavens…. As for your [Book], you have already given us examples of such
falsifications and one knows among others of a certain Hajjaj, named by you as governor of Persia, who had men gather your ancient
books, which he replaced by others composed by himself according to his taste and which he disseminated everywhere in your nation,
because it was easier by far to undertake such a task among a people speaking a single language. From this destruction, nonetheless,
there escaped a few of the works of Abu Turab, for Hajjaj could not make them disappear completely. 39
Abu Turab, “Father of the Soil,” was a title of Ali ibn Abi Talib—earned by his many prayers, which
involved prostrations that resulted in a permanent mark on his forehead.
The Christian al-Kindi, who wrote between 813 and 833—well before the most authoritative Hadith
collections came together—asserted that Hajjaj “gathered together every single copy” of the Qur'an he
could find “and caused to be omitted from the text a great many passages. Among these, they say, were
verses revealed concerning the House of Umayyah with names of certain persons, and concerning the
House of Abbas also with names.” Then Hajjaj “called in and destroyed all the preceding copies, even as
Uthman had done before him.” 40
Al-Kindi contended that the text of the Qur'an had been altered, noting that “the enmity subsisting
between Ali and Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman is well known; now each of these entered in the text
whatever favored his own claims, and left out what was otherwise. How, then, can we distinguish
between the genuine and the counterfeit?” 41 He continued: “And what about the losses caused by Hajjaj?
…How can we make an arbiter as to the Book of God a man who never ceased to play into the hands of
the Umayyads whenever he found opportunity?” 42