For all Muslims the QurE3/4an is the word of God. In the first centuries of Islam, however, many individuals and groups, and some ShiEis, believed that the generally accepted text of the QurE3/4an is corrupt. The ShiEis asserted that redactors had altered or deleted among other things all passages that supported the rights of EAli and his successors or that condemned his enemies. One of the fullest lists of these alleged changes and of other variant readings is to be found in the work of al-SayyArA (3rd/9th century), which is indeed among the earliest ShiEi books to have survived. In many cases the alternative readings that al-SayyArA presents substantially contribute to our understanding of early ShiEi doctrine and of the early and numerous debates about the QurE3/4an in general.

Etan Kohlberg, D.Phil. (1971) in Oriental Studies, Oxford University, is Emeritus Professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has published extensively on Imami Shiʿi history, doctrine and literature including A Medieval Muslim Scholar at Work (Brill, 1992). Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi D.Phil. (1991) in Oriental and Religious Studies, Sorbonne (Paris), is Professor of Classical Islamic Theology at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Sorbonne. He has published mainly on Imami Shiʿi Islam, including La religion discrete: croyances et pratiques spirituelles en islam shiʿite (Vrin, 2006).