There may have been certain revelations in which an optional reading was permitted. Readings belonging to this class can only be accepted on the most unimpeachable evidence, and the trustworthiness of the Ḥadīth containing such reading must be established beyond all doubt. But even these readings do not find their way into the written text, which remains permanently one and the same. Their value is only explanatory: they only show what significance is to be attached to the word used in the text; they are never at variance with the text. They are known to very few even of the learned, to say nothing of the general readers of the Holy Book, and are considered to have the value of an authentic Ḥadīth in explaining the meaning of a certain word occurring in the text. Thus, the so-called different readings were either dialectic variations, which were never meant to be permanent, and intended only to facilitate the reading of the Holy Qur’ān in individual cases, or explanatory variations meant to throw light on the text. The former ceased to exist with the spread of education in Arabia, and the latter have still the same explanatory value as they originally had.
Random reports that a certain verse or chapter, not to be met with in the Holy Qur’ān, was part of the text, have no value at all as against the conclusive and collective testimony which establishes the purity of the text of the Holy Qur’ān. These reports were in some cases fabricated by enemies who sought to undermine the authority of the religion of Islām.20 In other cases, they may have been the mistaken conception of some narrator. However that may be, it is necessary to weigh the evidence as to whether or not a certain verse formed part of the Quranic text. It is a fact that every verse of the Holy Qur’ān was, when revealed, promulgated and made public; it became a part of the public prayer and was repeated day and night to be listened to by an audience of hundreds. When the written manuscripts of the Holy Qur’ān were first collected into one volume in the time of the first caliph, and later on when copies were made from the original in the time of the third caliph, there was the unanimous testimony of all the Companions that every verse that
20 For instance, Muslim mentions a report ascribing to Abū Mūsā the statement that there was a certain chapter of the Holy Qur’ān, similar in length and force to the 9th chapter, of which only a single passage was all that he remembered. Now the Mizān al-I‘tidāl, a critical inquiry about the narrators of the reports, shows that Suwaid, the immediate informer of Muslim, was a Zindeeq (i.e. one who conceals unbelief and makes an outward show of belief), and, therefore, the report, as its very subject-matter shows, is a clear invention. The four other reports speaking of similar passages, not met with in the text of the Holy Qur’ān, may be relegated to the same class.