A manuscript analysis of the Qur’an does present us with unique problems not encountered with the Bible. While we can find multiple manuscripts for the Bible written 700-900 years earlier, at a time when durable paper was not even used, the manuscripts for the Qur’an within the century in which it was purported to have been compiled, the seventh century, simply do not exist. Prior to 750 A.D. (thus for 100 years after Muhammad’s death) we have no verifiable Muslim documents which can give us a window into this formative period of Islam. 1. In fact the primary sources which we possess are from 150-300 years after the events which they describe, and therefore are quite distant from those events. 2. For that reason they are, for all practical purposes, secondary sources, as they rely on other material, much of which no longer exists.