Daring to Compare

German scholars are going to produce a critical study of the text of the Qur'an.

What this means is that the research team is in the process of analysing and transcribing some 12,000 slides of Qur’an mansucripts from the first six centuries of the text’s existence. Once that is complete, the way is open to producing a text that annotates and, presumably, provides some sort of exegesis on the differences found in the early manuscripts.

I'm not sure how much variation there is. I gather there is some. You can see how it might creep in, especially if at first the text was memorized, then written down by different people, and later standardized.

Variations in a sacred text
can leave believers vexed.