How do Sunni and Shia historical accounts of the Quran’s compilation differ in primary early sources?

1. Sunni canonical narrative: Abu Bakr, Zayd and Uthman’s recension

The dominant Sunni account in early historical writings portrays the first caliph Abu Bakr commissioning Zayd ibn Thabit to assemble the Prophet’s revelations from written fragments and the memory of qurrā’ (memorizers), producing a compilation that was later standardized under Uthman into the rasm commonly accepted today — the Uthmanic codex — and this framework is repeated across Sunni reference works ^{[2] [1]}.

2. Shia variant traditions: Ali’s codex and an Imamic chain

Shia early reports frequently preserve a competing strand: traditions that ascribe an authoritative compilation to Ali or to the Ahl al‑Bayt, sometimes describing a codex kept within the line of Imams and transmitted esoterically until the occultation of the twelfth Imam in Twelver belief ^{[3] [2]}. Some Shia narrations treat Ali’s compilation as differing in order or including exegetical glosses tied to the Imams’ interpretive authority, which Shia sources sometimes distinguish from the textual rasm of Uthman ^{[6] [2]}.

3. Disputed reports of “distortion” and how sectarian polemic shaped memory

Both Sunni and Shia primary-era hadith and historiographical strands contain reports that were later read as allegations of variations or losses — Sunni polemicists accused Shia of alleging omissions, while some early Shia texts record narrations implying that parts linked to Ahl al‑Bayt were downplayed or removed; scholarly surveys show that explicit claims of large‑scale textual corruption were never uniform among Shia and declined in prominence in later Twelver orthodoxy ^{[4] [2] [7]}. Modern overviews stress that sectarian polemics amplified and transformed these early reports into sharper binary claims than the sources uniformly support ^{[8] [2]}.

4. Nature of the differences in primary materials: order, commentary, and authority

Primary-material differences often hinge less on distinct surāhs being present or absent and more on questions of order, supplementary exegetical material, and claims of who possessed an “authoritative” codex: Sunni sources emphasize communal compilation and a centralized recension under Uthman, while Shia traditions preserve claims about Ali’s unique compilation and the Imams’ custodianship or esoteric commentary, with some Shia texts treating Ali’s work as a hermeneutical key rather than an alternative text to be read publicly ^{[2] [6] [5]}.

5. How hadith traditions and later canonization shaped each memory

Differences in hadith evaluation and chains of transmission explain much of the divergence: Sunni and Shia hadith corpora privilege distinct transmitters (companions vs. Ahl al‑Bayt) and therefore diverge on which compilation accounts are treated as credible; moreover, the crystallization of hadith disciplines in later centuries helped fix the Sunni narrative of Uthmanic standardization while Shia scholasticism increasingly emphasized interpretive continuity with the Imams even as it largely accepted the received Uthmanic text ^{[9] [5]}.

Conclusion: overlapping practices, contested memories

Primary early sources do not paint a simple, monolithic divergence; both communities preserved narratives of collection, both record reports of variant manuscripts, and both developed norms that would either emphasize or marginalize those reports for doctrinal reasons — Sunnis foregrounded communal recension under Uthman, Shia sources preserved Ali‑centered traditions and sometimes early allegations about variants, yet many later Shia authorities repudiated wholesale claims of textual loss and affirmed the integrity of the Uthmanic codex ^{[2] [4] [5]}. The surviving picture, as represented in the available secondary summaries of primary materials, is therefore one of overlapping practices shaped by competing political and interpretive agendas rather than a simple “two Qurans” narrative ^{[8] [6]}.