The 'Oldest' Koran Fragments Found In Birmingham University

Some fragments of the world's oldest fragments from the Koran, written in Hijazi script, have been found by the University of Birmingham. Through radiocarbon dating, it was discovered to be at least 1,370 years old, which labeled it the earliest, according to bbc.

Most of the Muslim holy text had been in a library, almost undiscovered for a century.

The British Library's expert, Dr Muhammad Isa Waley, said this "exciting discovery" would make Muslims "rejoice".

They were part of a collection that was brought back to Britain from Iraq in the 1920s, yet had never been recognized for their antiquity or value, according to time.

It had been kept with a collection of other Middle Eastern books and documents, not identified as among the oldest fragments of the Koran. But when a PhD researcher, Alba Fedeli, examined it carefully, he finally decided to conduct a radiocarbon dating test, finding some "startling" results.

Susan Worrall, the university's director of special collections, explained that researchers had not expected "in our wildest dreams" that it would date back to so long ago.

"Finding out we had one of the oldest fragments of the Koran in the whole world has been fantastically exciting," she said. It had been found in a collection that had been brought back from the Middle East

The Oxford University Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit conducted the tests showing the fragments, written on sheep or goat skin, as some of the "oldest surviving texts of the Koran". They did show a range of dates, explaining that 95% the parchment was from between 568 and 645.

"They could well take us back to within a few years of the actual founding of Islam," said David Thomas, the university's professor of Christianity and Islam. "According to Muslim tradition, the Prophet Muhammad received the revelations that form the Koran, the scripture of Islam, between the years 610 and 632, the year of his death."

The writer of the manuscript was probably the man who may have heard the words from Prophet Muhammad. The dating of the Birmingham folios shows that the writer would have been alive during the Prophet's lifetime.

Experts believe that the parchment was probably taken from an animal that had been alive during Prophet Mohammed's life, or shortly afterwards, according to belfasttelegraph.

"The person who actually wrote it could well have known the Prophet Muhammad. He would have seen him probably, he would maybe have heard him preach. He may have known him personally - and that really is quite a thought to conjure with," he says.

Prof Thomas explained that some of the passages were written down on parchment, stone, palm leaves and the shoulder blades of camels. The final version in a book got completed 650.

He said, "The parts of the Koran 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 Koran 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."