The concept of Qurʾānic variants and readings (ḥarf, pl. aḥruf, qirāʾa pl. qirāʾāt) encompasses by itself the history of the Qurʾān. Qurʾānic variants are mentioned in narratives dating from the first Islamic centuries and in different literary genres such as ḥadīth, and asbāb al-nuzūl (the circumstances of the revelation). Letters, words, expressions and sometimes entire passages of the Qurʾān were transmitted and refer to specific readings of the same passages attributed to a region or to an individual. However, later, in the 10th century, Ibn Mujāhid (d. 324/936) uses the same phrase to denotes lists of ‘Qurʾānic variants and readings’. Within the canonization of the variants and readings, the concept of Qurʾānic variants acquires its specific meaning of the different versions in which passages of the Qurʾān have been transmitted or kept in written form by the readers and the entourage of the Prophet. The same variants are considered from the Sunnī perspective of the mediaeval Qurʾān scholars as part of the non-ʿUthmānic codices reported to have been destroyed, according to the Sunnī accounts, after the third caliph ʿUthmān had collected the Qurʾān in 670 CE. However, even within the Islamic accounts there are many versions that discuss the Qurʾānic variant readings: for example, the Shīʿī approach to the issue of differences between some Qurʾānic fragments extends the concept of the Qurʾānic variant and reading by adding the concept of falsification (taḥrīf).

In this paper, I explore the issue of Qurʾānic variants focusing on the dynamic link between the variant as a textual fragment and the Qurʾān as a whole. The Qurʾānic variants are extracted and quoted in the early narratives and listed in the later collections; at the same time, they are inserted in the Qurʾānic passages as variants of readings. I call the double dynamic of extraction and insertion, the mobility of the fragment. This paper attempts to shed light on the fragmentary aspect of the Qurʾānic variants as well as on the peculiarities of the wholeness of the Qurʾānic text. The Qurʾānic variant as a fragment and the Qurʾān as a whole are both analysed from the joint perspective of the history of the concept and the history of the text.