What do you say about the claim that there is a copy of the Quran that is the oldest and different from the present ones?

Dear Brother / Sister,

News like this consists of groundless claims that are made to confuse people. Do not believe them. Do not trust the groundless news circulating on the internet. The copy of the Quran, which was reproduced during the caliphate of Uthman (ra), has survived to the present day. There is no older copy of the Quran than it.

The copies sent to different province centers by Uthman (r.a.) disappeared as centuries passed. Today, one of them is still in the Topkapı Museum in Istanbul; another incomplete copy is in Tashkent. The tsarist Russian government published its facsimile reproduction (exact copy with photo or photocopy). There is a complete similarity and sameness between the Quran currently being read all over the world and the copy of the Quran in Tashkent. (Muhammed Hamidullah, İslam’a Giriş, Ankara, n.d., p. 41; M. Hamidullah, İslâm Peygamberi, II, p. 763).

The Historical Mushafs (copies of the Quran) in Turkey:

There are Mushafs with the following dates in the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts in Istanbul:

No: 457. The Mushaf with the signature of Uthman (r.a.) and the year 30 H

No: 557. The Mushaf with the signature of Ali (r.a.)

No:458. The Mushaf, which is indicated to be the handwriting of Ali (ra).

Other Official Ali Mushafs:

There is a Mushaf written in ancient Kufi calligraphy by Ali ibn Abi Talib’s own handwriting in the “Sayyiduna Husayin” Mosque in Cairo, Egypt.

Abdulwahhab Azzam, an Egyptian Turcophile, writes in his Shahadatnama that he saw a part of a Mushaf written in Kufi in Mashhad; the following phrase was written at the end of it: “Ali ibn Abu Talib wrote it.”

Again, there is another complete Mushaf there with the following writing in Kufi Calligraphy: “Hasan ibn Ali ibn Abu Talib wrote it.”

Abdullah Zijani, a Shia scholar, states in the History of the Qu’an in Najaful-Ashraf that there is a Mushaf with Ali’s handwriting.

Various old copies and Mushafs from the time of the Companions are still available today. There is no difference among those mushafs. (1)

“Institut für Koran Forschung”, which was established at the University of Munich, brought together about 42,000 complete and incomplete copies of the Quran collected from all over the world and classified them; after 50 years of checking and research, there was no difference among the copies except for one or two mistakes of calligraphers. It showed it to the world with a report. This Institute, together with the documents in it, was destroyed during the bombardments of American planes during World War II.” (2)

References:
1. Keskioğlu,Osman, Kur’an’ı Kerim Bilgileri
2. Hamidullah, M., Rasulullah Muhammed p.198

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