Since When Have Diacritics and Dots Been in the Qur'an?

Question

Were there kasra, fatha, damma (the vowel-signs) and dots in the Holy Qur'an in the era of the Prophetic mission and the era of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs, or not? If they were not, is placing these dots and vowel-signs now a bid'a (innovation) or not?

Answer

In the blessed generations attested to for good (qurun mashhud laha bi-l-khayr), all this was done for the preservation of the Holy Qur'an, so that people would not read it incorrectly and so that no distortion (tahrif) would occur. This is not bid'a.

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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