Today there are 30 Arabic versions of the Quran available, which were created from 10 basic versions.

Why is today’s official Quran (version of Hafs) recited in a dialect (Nabataean dialect) that Muhammad and his people (Quraishite dialect) did not speak?

According to Muslim tradition, Muhammad received the content of the heavenly Quran orally from the angel Gabriel (Jibril) from 610 until his death in 632. The Qur’an was given to him in 7 dialects (versions, readings) (Sahih Bukhari Volume 6, Book 61, No. 513). Muhammad taught it to four people: Ibn Masud, Salim, the ransomed slave of Abu Hudhaifa, Ubi ibn Ka’s and Muadh bin Jabal (Bukhari, Volume 5, Book 58, Number 150).

The third caliph ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān (574-656) then compiled the Qur’an in the Qurayshite dialect and burnt all other versions, as Al Bukhari (d. 870) tells us (Al Bukhari vol. 6, book 61,510).

Since the diacritical signs and vowels were not recorded in writing until around 786 with the dictionary of al-Farahidi, ʿUthmān thus burnt different consonant scripts (Rasm).

The scholar Abu Bakr Ibn Mujāhid (860-936) selected 7 versions from the existing variants as authentic. Imām Muhammad Ibn al-Jazari (1350-1429) added three more. Thus there were 10 basic versions. Students of these schools used them to create the 20 other types of recitation.

There were problems at the University of Cairo because students were quoting from 30 different versions of the Koran. As a result, Al-Azahar University asked 1924 Muḥammad Ḫalaf al-Ḥusainī to choose a version for their school. He chose the version of Hafs, which is written in an Iraqi dialect. This text was very popular in the Ottoman period (1299 to 1922).

One problem is that the recognised Hafs version is not written in the Qurayshite dialect used by Muhammad.