Write briefly about the tasks carried out by the Scribes of the revelation at the time of the Prophet.

Mark scheme

Marking points from the official mark scheme (May/June 2014). The mark or mark type is shown in brackets.

1. [10] (a) Candidates are required to write about the way in which the scribes wrote down the Qur'an whilst the Prophet was still alive and so details about the gathering of the Qur'an and collecting it into a book, at the time of the Caliphs, are not relevant here. The Qur'an was written in its entirety during the Prophet's time even though it was not compiled in one text. There were various scribes who had different roles as companions, who wrote the verses down on a number of materials. They wrote on parchments, bone, dried leaves, amongst other things. Some of them were official scribes who wrote letters for him (for example Ubayy ibn Ka'ab) whilst some became scribes because they kept their own personal copies of the revelations (for example '‘Abdullah ibn 'Amr ibn al-'As. He sought the Messenger's specific permission asking, 'May I write down everything I hear from you in the states of contentment and anger?' He replied, 'Yes, for I speak nothing but the truth.'). A number of companions had their own personal copies of the words of the revelations, which were later used to verify the one copy in the time of Abu Bakr. Companions who kept a private record of the text of the Qur'an satisfied themselves as to the purity of their record by reading it out to the Prophet. The Prophet used to instruct the scribes about the sequence in which a revealed message was to be placed in a particular Sura (chapter). In this manner, the Prophet arranged the text of the Qur'an in a systematic order till the end of the chain of revelations. Zayd ibn Thabit reported, "We used to record the Qur'an from parchments in the presence of the Messenger of God." Zayd bin Thabit, one of the chief scribes relates: "I used to write down the revelation for the Holy Prophet, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him. When the revelation came to him he felt intense heat and drops of perspiration used to roll down his body like pearls. When this state was over I used to fetch a shoulder bone or a piece of something else. He used to go on dictating and I used to write it down. When I finished writing the sheer weight of transcription gave me the feeling that my leg would break and I would not be able to walk anymore. When I finished writing, he would say, 'Read!' and I would read it back to him. If there was an omission or error he used to correct it and then let it be brought before the people." Some companions, who did not write down the revelations, had memorized them instead and their versions were used to verify the written copies after the Prophet's death.
2. [4] (b) After the Prophet's death there was deemed a need to compile to Qur'an into a book form. Various principles were employed, all of them to ensure authenticity to the original message. The Qur'an was compiled in the dialect of Quraysh because it was the Prophet's dialect - other dialects could have been fabricated or distorted. Zayd bin Thabit gathered written materials from various companions, and checked all these versions with those who had committed the Qur'an to memory – this was to ensure that none of the written copies had anything added or omitted and so that the Qur'an remained authentic to the way the Prophet had received it. The order of the suras was not complied in the order that the Prophet had received revelation, but generally in order of descending length – this was due to the belief that the order of the suras was divinely ordained and the main scribes would have known this. Candidates can offer other reasons or principles, but they should explain the significance of their answers.