LONDON, July 22 — Researchers at Birmingham University in the UK have reportedly discovered that fragments of a Quran manuscript in its library are among the oldest in the world.
According to a Times of India report today, radiocarbon analysis, conducted at the University of Oxford, has placed the parchment on which the text is written to the period between AD 568 and 645, with 95.4 per cent accuracy.
This dates it close to the time of Prophet Muhammad, who is generally thought to have lived between AD 570 and 632.
The Quran manuscript is understood to consist of two parchment leaves, containing parts of Suras 18 to 20, written with ink in an early form of Arabic script known as Hijazi, the newspaper added.
Professor David Thomas, Professor of Christianity and Islam and Nadir Dinshaw Professor of Interreligious Relations at the University of Birmingham, was quoted as saying, “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 or shortly afterwards.
“This means that the parts of the Quran that are written on this parchment can, with a degree of confidence, be dated to less than two decades after Muhammad’s death.
“These portions must have been in a form that is very close to the form of the Quran read today, supporting the view that the text has undergone little or no alteration and that it can be dated to a point very close to the time it was believed to be revealed.”
For many years, the manuscript had gone unnoticed because it was misbound with leaves of a similar Quran manuscript, which is datable to the late seventh century.
