Birmingham: A Holy Quran manuscript has been carbon dated to close to the time of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), making it one of the oldest in the world, a British university said yesterday.
The two leaves of parchment, filled with “surprisingly legible” text from Islam’s 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 Muhammad (PBUH) or shortly afterwards,” said David Thomas, professor of Christianity and Islam.
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 Quranic text was compiled and edited in the order of Suras (chapters) familiar today.”
AFP
