Preservation and authenticity of Qur'an (1)

Question:
I have a question about the Qur’anic preservation and authenticity. It was mentioned in Books that Quran was revealed and there were no Zer, Zabar or pesh, as it was not necessary for the its immediate addressees, as they were native speakers. However, later, much later, when Quran was spread with the Muslims, people thought to put such things, in order to standardize the sounds and meaning of Quran. Who was responsible for this exercise? And how they knew that where to put a Nukta or Zer or Zabar, because it could change the meanings of words. For example, if I write Jawab in Urdu and I put Nukta above Jim, then it will become Khawab, which is a totally different thing. I hope you understand my question.

Response:
Qur’an was recited and memorized. Indeed it was written too, and its dots and vowels (nukat and a’rab) were inserted later. However, as you have rightly illustrated through example of Jawab and Khawab, if I know through my memory that a certain word has a certain sound (like Jawab) and I will put it into writing, I will do it correctly. Even if I don’t do it correctly, the fact that the word was being correctly pronounced because it was memorized would ensure that my mistake of writing would be corrected by somebody else.

In other words, preservation of the Qur’anic text was done first and foremost by the process of memorizing it. All Muslims memorized the very same Qur’anic text. There couldn’t have been even a slight difference in the memorized text, because Muslims used to recite Qur’an before each other, in particular in prayers wherein even a slight inadvertent mistake used to get corrected.

Thus all mention of the possibility of Qur’anic text getting any different from what it might have been originally is based on an incorrect understanding of how Qur’an was preserved: It was preserved through memorizing and not through writing

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