Critique of the Hadith of Zandiq Questions from Amir al-Mu'mininon the Subject of Distorting the Qur'an

Ahmad Ibn Ali Tabresi (D.588AH), in his book Al-Ihtijaj, has narrated a long hadith about the questions of a Zandiq(heretic) from the Amir al-Mu'mininAli (pbuh)regarding the alleged contradictions of the Qur'an. Among the answers attributed to the Amir al-Mu'minin(pbuh), Has been claimed the big distortion of the Qur'an, including the omission of more than one third of the Qur'an from the third verse of Surah An-Nisa'and the forging in Qur'an. Before Tabresi, Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Babawayh (D.381AH) and Muhammad ibn Mas'udAyyashi narrated a shorter versionof thishadith which did not mention the distortion of the Qur'an. Mirza Hussein Nouri (D.1320AH) has considered the reason for this difference as the selectionof Ibn Babawayh. In this article, by examining the structure and text of the three versionof Tabresi, Ibn Babawayhand Ayyashi, this view has been rejected. The heterogeneous structure, textual anxieties, late words and literature, theological and historical errors, and other evidences show that the additions inTabresi'sversionare the result of late forgery. Furthermore, an examination of the text and isnads of the older versionof thishadithreveals its processing in the sunni sphere.