When did the consonantal skeleton of the Quran reach closure? Part II

The Islamic tradition credits the promulgation of a uniform consonantal skeleton (rasm) of the Quran to the third caliph Uthman (r. 644–656). However, in recent years various scholars have espoused a conjectural dating of the Quran's codification to the time of Abd al-Malik, or have at least taken the view that the Islamic scripture was open to significant revision up until c. 700 ce. The second instalment of this two-part article surveys arguments against this hypothesis. It concludes that as long as no Quranic passages with a distinct stylistic and terminological profile have been compellingly placed in a late seventh-century context, the traditional dating of the standard rasm (excepting certain orthographical features) to 650 or earlier ought to be our default view.