I looked through the FAQ for this topic and while there are similar questions asked and information related to this question written, there doesn't seem to be anything about this question specifically.
The religious interpretation of the writing of the Quran is that God, through an angel, revealed the text word-for-word to a man who could neither read nor write, who then transmitted the words to his companions, who then wrote down the words.
It is my (very limited) understanding that the texts were not actually written down until some 50 years (?) after the death of Muhammad.
So I would like to hear what historians have to say about this topic.
As the traditional religious origin for the Quran is dubious at best, what really happened?
As the story goes, Muhammad first received communication from the Angel Gabriel in 610. He then did not receive another communication for quite some time, then he started receiving Qur'anic verses on a regular basis until his death.
Verses were recited to his Companions (or followers) and memorized verbatim and passed down until they were compiled and committed to paper by the Third Caliph, Uthman, between the years 653 and 656.
This puts compilation of the Qur'an at around 20 years after the death of Muhammad in 632.
An interesting side note: a Qur'an has recently been carbon dated to several years before Uthman's compilation, with some suggesting it predates Muhammad's supposed date of revelation. Although this appears to throw a wrench into traditional dating of revelation, I believe there will still have to be quite a bit of peer review before any new dates are accepted by both the scientific and Islamic communities.
The Quran was written during the time of the prophet by different people, on different materials such as camel shoulder blades, rocks, bones, wood, palm leaves, animal skin, etc.
There were many scribes - one of these was Abdullah b. Sad, brother of the B. `Amir b. Lu'ayy. "he had been a Muslim and used to write down revelation." There were other scribes - some were tasked with writing down revelation and some with accounting/diplomacy/foreign policy/etc.
Source: A Guillaume's translation of Ibn Hisham's "Sirat Rasul Allah", p. 550: