Birmingham Quran manuscript

"That fragment was “among the earliest written textual evidence of the Islamic holy book known to survive.”"

"We have now in our collection what must be one of the oldest Qurans in the world. It might not be the oldest. But if the dating we’ve been given is at all reliable then we’ve got fragments from a Quran that will have been copied by somebody who either knew the Prophet Mohammed himself, or knew somebody who had known him."

"These portions must have been in a form that is very close to the form of the Qur’an 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."

"It provided tantalizing clues to help settle a scholarly dispute about whether the holy text was actually written down at the time of the prophet, or compiled years later after being passed down by word of mouth. The discovery also offered a joyful moment for a faith that has struggled with internal divisions and external pressures."

"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."

"He doubted that the manuscript found in Birmingham was as old as the researchers claimed, noting that its Arabic script included dots and separated chapters—features that were introduced later. He also said that dating the skin on which the text was written did not prove when it was written. Manuscript skins were sometimes washed clean and reused later."

"You’re dating the parchment. You’re not dating the ink. You’re making the assumption that the parchment or vellum was used within years of it being made, which is probably a reasonable assumption, but it’s not watertight."

"It is not possible to ascertain that the parchments were written close to the time of the Prophet….The university should have examined the ink not the hide on which it was written."

"The manuscript might possibly be from the time of Othman Bin Affan who became Caliph many years after the death of the Prophet”... “During the time of the Prophet (pbuh), the Quran was not organised or put in its present day form. Also, there were no colours used.” But there are colors in the Birmingham fragments. Al Sharif explains: “One of these is the red-colour separation between the Bismillah and the two Surahs of Mariam and Taha. It was not customary during the Prophet’s time to separate between the Surahs. This copy seems to be organised in [an] order which was not so during the time of the Prophet."

"Radiocarbon analysis has dated the parchment on which the text is written to the period between AD 568 and 645 with 95.4 percent accuracy."

"As the Prophet Mohammed lived from AD 570 to 632, this means that at the very latest the fragment was produced no more than 13 years after his death."

"The early dating “gives more ground to what have been peripheral views of the Quran’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."