Question

To begin with may Allah reward you for your answers to our questions.  I have read about the different ways of reading in your Q&As; is the Qur'an written in different ways also?  Or are the different readings only in the way it is read and in the written form it is always the same?

Answer

And May Allah reward you for your questions that benefit many. 

At the advent of Islam, the Arabic writing did not have the dots and vowelization it now has.  This is because there was no need for it.  Those who could read were able to look at the little “teeth” and know immediately which letter it was, and know what vowels were to be used. The scribes wrote down the revelation using this way of writing.  An example of a copy of part of surah An-Naas between the 2^nd and 3^rd century is:

You may notice there are no “dots” over the letters, so the  and  look the same.  Khalifah ‘Uthman, may Allah be pleased with him, found the need to collect all copies of the Qur’an when Islam spread to other lands, and confusion occurred as to what was the word of Allah, and what was explanation of the meaning.  The companions and those that followed them in the early days of Islam would write explanations of the meaning next to the aayaat for their own benefit, and some Muslims copied these copies of the Qur’an with these comments, and recited with the tafseer instead of the words of Allah.  Caliph ‘Uthman ordered all copied of the Qur’an be sent to him, and he made a new mus-haf that included all the different ways of recitation in one writing.  Remember, the advent of dots and vowels on the little “teeth” of letters was not yet a reality, so there was no need for different copies, when it came to that factor.  There is no way of recitation that violates the writing in the ‘Uthmani copy of the Qur’an.  All authentic ways of recitation with different recitation of the same word have the same number of “teeth” or shape of the letter.  All copies of the Qur’an that were in difference with the ‘Uthmani copy of the Qur’an were burned. 

In later years, the need for vowelization and diacritics (dot system) became evident.  The diacritics were different from place to place, but all could read the copy of the Qur’an once they understood the particular diatric and vowelization system. 

This present day, there are two different diacritic systems for two different ways of recitation.  The Warsh ‘an Naafi' copy of the Qur’an uses a slightly different system than the copies of the Qur’an used for the way of Hafs ‘an ‘Aasim.  For example in the copy of the Qur’an used for the way of Warsh, the  and the  are written with the circle, of course, since this is how it was written at the time of the Prophet, , but the dots are different.  The dot for the  is underneath the circle, and there is only one dot for the , placed above the circle.  The following is  the Warsh copy of the Qur'an for Surah Al-Falaq. 

 

Of course the voweling and diacritics for each way of reading, corresponds to the recitation of that particular way.