World’s oldest Koran fragments could predate Muhammad

 

Fragments from the world’s oldest known Quran, the central spiritual text of Islam, may predate the accepted founding date of the religion itself and could be written on parchment older than the Muslim prophet Muhammad, various media outlets have reported.

According to Fox News and the Daily Mail, radiocarbon dating conducted by a team of experts from the University of Oxford has concluded that the fragments, which were found last month in Birmingham, were originally produced between the years of 568 AD and 645 AD.

Muhammad, on the other hand, is generally believed to have lived between 570 AD and 632 AD. The Islamic prophet is believed to have founded the religion sometime after 610 AD and the first formal text of the Quran was completed in 653, the published reports indicate.

The pages, which were bound within a second Quran from the late seventh century found within the library at the University of Birmingham, were written in ink in an early form of Arabic script on parchment made from animal skin. They contain portions of the Suras (chapters) 18 to 20 and could possibly have been written by someone who actually knew Muhammad.

Opinions differ on the significance of this discovery

Some experts believe that these Quran fragments could predate the prophet and completely alter the early history of the religion. One historian, Tom Holland, told The Times of London that this discovery “destabilizes… the idea that we can know anything with certainty about how the Koran emerged – and that in turn has implications for the history of Muhammad and the Companions.”

“This gives more ground to what have been peripheral views of the Koran’s genesis, like that Muhammad and his early followers used a text that was already in existence and shaped it to fit their own political and theological agenda, rather than Muhammad receiving a revelation from heaven,” added Keith Small from the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford.

Muslim scholars dispute those claims. Mustafa Shah of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies told the Times, “If anything, the manuscript has consolidated traditional accounts of the Koran’s origins,” which was first assembled as a formal text by Uthman, the third caliph (leader) of the Muslim community, following Muhammad’s death.

Prior to that time, portions of the religious text had been passed along through oral tradition, although some parts had been written on stones, leaves, parchment, and bones. The pieces of the Birmingham Quran were reportedly written on either sheepskin or goatskin, and the researchers cautioned that only the parchment was dated, not the ink used to write the actual words.

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Feature image: University of Birmingham/YouTube