The Standard Copies under 'Uthman

As Islam spread, the Muslims in different lands were learning the Qur'an from different teachers, and some began to argue about whose recitation was correct. Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman, returning from the campaigns in Armenia and Azerbaijan, saw it with alarm and urged 'Uthman to act before the community disagreed over its Book as Jews and Christians had.

'Uthman asked Hafsah for the sheets kept in her care, and appointed Zayd, 'Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr, Sa'id ibn al-'As and 'Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Harith to copy them into volumes. He told the three Qurayshi men that where they and Zayd disagreed on anything, they should write it in the speech of Quraysh, since the Qur'an was revealed in it (Sahih al-Bukhari 4987).

Copies were sent to the main cities, the sheets were returned to Hafsah, and the other individual manuscripts were destroyed to prevent dispute. Zayd mentioned that one verse in Surat al-Ahzab, ﴿مِنَ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ رِجَالٌ صَدَقُوا مَا عَاهَدُوا اللَّهَ عَلَيْهِ﴾ (“Among the believers are men who were true to what they pledged to Allah”), was missing from his copy and was found with Khuzaymah ibn Thabit (Sahih al-Bukhari 4988).