Denial of Judeo-Christian Influence on the Qur’an

Western scholars have paid very little attention to the Shiʿi point of view on the history of the compilation of the Qur’an. In their limited works on Shiʿism, the main focus of Western academia has been the claims of some peripheral Shiʿi groups and scholars regarding the distortion (taḥrīf) of the Qur’an. Aside from this almost nothing has been mentioned about the Shi’ite perspective on the issue. The only notable attempt to study Shiʿi sources was made by Friedrich Schwally in the second edition of Geschichte des Qorāns by Theodor Noldeke, published in 1919. The work was translated into the English language in 2012 under the title The History of the Qur’an. Schwally presents his point of view regarding the Shiʿi claim about ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib's collection of the Qur’an by referring to three sources: Ibn Saʿd's Ṭabaqāt, Ibn al-Nadīm's al-Fihrist and al-Suyūṭī's al-Itqān. Based on the information provided in these works, he divides the Shiʿi claim about ʿAlī's codex into two groups: According to the first group ʿAlī undertook the collection of the Qur’an during the lifetime of Muḥammad and according to the second group he collected the Qur’an after the demise of the Prophet. After his brief study of these traditions, without quoting the original traditions, he passes a rather quick judgement about ʿAlī's collection of the Qur’an:

Schwally's conclusion is based on three arguments: First, the unreliability of the Shiʿi sources; second, the reports are not mentioned in the Sunni traditions that Schwally believes to be the ‘sound facts of history’; and third, even ʿAlī himself did not refer to his codex even after he had become the Caliph.