The account of this collection of the Koran has reached us in several substantially identical forms, and goes back to Zaid himself. According to it, he collected the revelations from copies written on flat stones, pieces of leather, ribs of palm-leaves (not palm-leaves themselves), and such-like material, ,but chiefly from the breasts of men, i.e. from their memory. From these he wrote a fair copy, which he gave to Abu Bekr, from whom it came to his successor Omar, who again bequeathed it to his daughter IJaf~a, one of the widows of the Prophet. This redaction, commonly called al-~oizof ( the leaves ), had from the first no canonical authority; and its internal arrangement can only be conjectured.
The Moslems were as far as ever from possessing a uniform text of the Koran. The bravest of their warriors sometimes knew deplorably little about it; distinction on that field they cheerfully accorded to pious men like Ibn Masud. It was inevitable, however, that discrepancies should emerge between the texts of professed scholars, and as these men in their several localities were authorities on the reading of the Koran, quarrels began to break out between the levies from different districts about the true form of the sacred book. During a campaign in A.H. 30 (A.D. 65o651), Ijodhaifa, the victor in the great and decisive battle of Nehäveand (see CALIPHATE; and PERSIA: History) perceived that such disputes might become dangerous, and therefore urged on the caliph Othmgn the necessity for a universally binding text. The matter was entrusted to Zaid, who had made the former collection, with three leading Koreishi*t*es. These brought together as many copies as they could lay their hands on, and prepared an edition which was to be canonical for all Moslems. To prevent any further disputes, they burned all the other codices except that of ljaf~a, which, however, was soon afterwards destroyed by Merwgn the governor of Medina. The destruction of the earlier codices was an irreparable loss to criticism; but, for the essentially political object of putting an end to controversies by admitting only one form of the common book of religion and of law, this measure was necessary.
The result of these labours is in our hands; as to how they were conducted we have no trustworthy information, tradition being here too much under the influence of dogmatic presuppositions. The critical methods of a modern scientific commission will not be expected of an age when the highest literary education for an Arab consisted in ability to read and write. It now appears highly probable that this second redaction took this simple form:
Zaid read off from the codex which he had previously written, and his associates, simultaneously or successively, wrote one ~opy each to his dictation. These three manuscripts will therefore be those which the caliph, according to trustworthy tradition, sent in the first instance as standard copies to Damascus, Basra and Kufa to the warriors of the provinces of which these were the capitals, while he retained one at Medina. Be that as it may, it is impossible now to distinguish in the present form of the book what belongs to the first redaction from what is due to the second.