"Surely, We have revealed the Qur'an and we will most surely be its guardian." (Qur'an, 15:9)

The Qur'an was revealed over 23 years starting from 610 CE. The majority of the Qur'an was revealed in response to questions, incidents and important events. For example, the whole chapter of Joseph was revealed in response the inquiries of a group of Jews.

The revelation process was like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle put together over a long period of time. Yet, the reader of the Qur'an gets the impression that it was revealed as a whole.

There are a number of benefits of this gradual revelation process. The association of revelation to real events greatly simplified the memorisation of the Qur'an. It would also have been too much for the Muslims, at the time, to absorb the whole Qur'an if it was revealed as a whole all at the same time. Moreover, the complete transformation of a society could only have been achieved progressively over time.

There is absolute consensus in the Muslim world that the Qur'an we currently have is the authentic one that Muhammad passed on to the immediate Muslims during his lifetime. This is because of the meticulous attention Prophet himself gave to its preservation. The Qur'an was preserved in three different ways during the lifetime of the prophet Muhammad.

• Written records
• Systematic memorisation
• A control mechanism

The Prophet Muhammad had official scribes numbering up to forty. Since the Qur'an was revealed gradually over 23 years and the Prophet did not know when he would receive new revelation, he would always have a scribe ready by his side. When a new revelation was received, he would recite it to the scribe, who would write it on a parchment or whatever material they could find suitable for writing.¹² He would then ask the scribe to read it back to him in order to check and correct possible mistakes in the transcription. Later, the written and checked passage of the Qur'an would be taken to the mosque for others to memorise or copy. Muhammad himself would also convey the revelation to public on most occations. In this way, the entire unbound copy of the Qur'an was in written form in the lifetime of the Prophet.

Since the very beginning of his prophethood, he asked his companions to memorise passages of the Qur'an that had been revealed to date. As a result, hundreds of people knew the whole Qur'an by heart and thousands more memorised large parts of it. The learning and memorisation of the Qur'an was accelerated by an educational campaign in the whole community and the establishment of a school next to the mosque.

Still, there was the possibility that people may make mistakes in the memorisation and copying process. This possibility was eliminated by the control mechanism of the public checking of the Qur'an. Every year in the month of Ramadan, Prophet Muhammad would recite the whole Qur'an in the audience of all Muslims who in turn would check their written copies and what they knew by heart. In the last Ramadan before his death, this control recitation was done twice.

Within the first year of the demise of the Prophet, an official committee was established under the chairmanship of the chief scribe of the Prophet, Zayd bin Sabit, to collect the Qur'an into a bound volume. Although many people knew the whole Qur'an by heart, including Zayd, objective criteria were applied. These criteria were such that for every verse at least two witnesses posessing a written copy of the verse had to be found and each witness had to publicly testify and prove that the written passages were checked by the Prophet. This process took place transparently in public within the compound of the main mosque in Medina. Thus, the complete Qur'an was collected into a book form at this critical early period. Later, during the time of the third Caliph, Othman, about twenty years after the Prophet, seven copies of the Qur'an were produced from this original volume and sent to major Muslim capitals. This copying was done by a committee again led by Zayd bin Sabit. The text of the Qur'an was also written more strictly to allow only the Meccan dialect so as to standardise its pronounciation and dialect in order to prevent difficulties and misunderstandings faced by non-Arabic speaking Muslims. Two copies of the seven survive today.

The tradition of reciting the whole Qur'an in Ramadan and memorisation of the Qur'an continues to date with hundreds of thousands of Muslims knowing the whole Qur'an by heart.

[12] Paper was not available in the seventh century. However, the need to produce copies of the Qur'an and a wealth of other books quickly necessitated the innovation of paper and its numerous applications in the Muslim world. Paper was introduced to Europe through Muslims.