Nebil Husayn reviews Seyfuddin Kara, In Search of 'Ali Ibn Abi Talib's Codex. Kara has endorsed it on academia.edu, so I assume it a fair summary of Kara's text.
Husayn and Kara before him share the same problem of most literature since Behnam Sadeghi first published the Sanaa 1, aka 27.1 DAM. It is commonly assumed that the Sanaa 1 is just about the archangel Gabriel's own autograph, and that radiocarbon proves its ancient date.
The grey-eminence behind Kara is modern Shi'i scholar Ma'rifat on Shi'i doctrine concerning Quran. The Shi'a today hold to the same rasm as do the Sunnis. In fact they make something of a point of that. They believe, also, however, in a parallel interpretation vouchsafed to the Imams, accessible mainly to the initiated. Every now and again a text has come out into scholars' attention collecting these interpretations, most dramatically that of Sayyari although 'Ayyashi also shares a lot of these.
Pace Ma'rifat, suppose that these "interpretations" were early. If early enough, they may have preserved qirâât from before the great Umayyad standardisation(s). Literally "recitation", qirâa incorporates "reading", "interpretation", "vocalisation", and - at the extreme - "alternative". You will find "'Ali read -" across all the books which Arthur Jeffery cites in Materials, that magisterial collection of variants against the text. Usually, in al-Kufa, it was Ibn Mas'ûd held responsible for these changes; when Shi'ites waxed in al-Kufa, and where they debated Sunnis, these preferred to ascribe 'Ali readings to him. It seems that Marandi over in Spain tended to foist such upon Ibn Khuthaym.
Etan Kohlberg and Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi argue for a difference between modern Shi'ite dogma and the Shi'ites of the latest first century, when Shi'ism was first being formed (per Najam Haider). The first Shi'ism was a sectarian cult. As such, the full range of its dogmas were opaque to outsiders. Sayyari and 'Ayyashi, then, were not "extremists" but insiders holding to the dogmas of their time. Husayn and (I think) Kara are fair enough to note this perspective.
Kara's main aim was to trace some Imami ahadith about 'Ali's codex. He does so to the late Umayyad era. This shouldn't surprise, because that's when the sect started shuttering its windows.
Overall I am unsure that any of the scholars noted here have made their case for a Quran earlier than, oh, 'Abd al-Rahman's seizure of al-Kufa circa AD 701. I don't think they need to, given that their isnad-chains peter out a decade or more after that.
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