The Quranic Preservation Debate: Manuscript Evidence, Historical Critique, and the Promise-Plan of Divine Revelation

ARTICLE GUIDE

At a Glance

This essay offers a historical-critical examination of the traditional claim that the Qurʾan has been preserved letter for letter from the seventh century to the present. Drawing on paleography, codicology, and the history of the qirāʾāt, it argues that the available evidence does not sustain a doctrine of pristine, physically unaltered transmission.