‘Oldest’ Qur’an found in Britain

BIRMINGHAM: A Qur’an manuscript has been carbon dated to close to the time of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), making it one of the oldest in the world, a British university said Wednesday.
The two leaves of parchment, filled with “surprisingly legible” text from the holy book, have been dated to around the early seventh century, the University of Birmingham said.
“The tests carried out on the parchment of the Birmingham folios yield the strong probability that the animal from which it was taken was alive during the lifetime of the Prophet or shortly afterwards,” said David Thomas, professor of Christianity and Islam.
Describing it as a “startling result,” he added that the text is “very similar indeed to the Qur’an as we have it today.”
“This tends to support the view that the Qur’an that we now have is... very close indeed to the Qur’an as it was brought together in the early years of Islam,” he said.
The leaves, held in the university’s Mingana Collection, contain parts of chapters 18 to 20, written with ink in an early form of Arabic script known as Hijazi.
“This is indeed an exciting discovery,” said Muhammad Isa Waley, lead curator for Persian and Turkish manuscripts at the British Library in London.
“We know now that these two folios, in a beautiful and surprisingly legible Hijazi hand, almost certainly date from the time of the first three Caliphs.
“According to the classic accounts, it was under the third Caliph, Uthman ibn Affan, that the Qur’anic text was compiled and edited in the order of Surahs (chapters) familiar today.”
For many years the leaves were misbound with similar manuscripts dating from the late seventh century.
They were spotted by an Italian academic, Alba Fedeli, while conducting research for her Ph.D.
Radiocarbon analysis of the Birmingham documents dates them to between 568 AD and 645 AD, with 95.4 percent accuracy.
The Qur’an manuscript will be placed on public display at the university between Oct. 2 and Oct. 25.