Qur'an · a Light

Seventy reciters died and the Qur'an was gathered

At Yamama in 633, in the fighting against Musaylima, a large number of the men who had memorised the Qur'an were killed. The figure usually given is about seventy. Umar went to the caliph Abu Bakr and argued that if this kept happening, parts of the text would be lost with the men who carried them, and that it should be written into one collection. Abu Bakr hesitated, on the ground that the Prophet ﷺ had not done it. Then he agreed, and gave the work to Zayd ibn Thabit, who said that moving a mountain would have been lighter. He gathered it from written pieces and from the memories of the men who had it, and the sheets stayed with Abu Bakr, then Umar, then Umar's daughter Hafsa.

Yamama and Madinah · 633 CE