Koran discovery could rewrite Islamic history

“We already know from our sources that the Koran was a closed text very early on in Islam, and these discoveries only attest to the accuracy of these sources”, said Shady Hekmat Nasser from the University of Cambridge, according to onilsam.net.

Keith Small from the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, said, “The discovery could force scholars to give more attention to outlier theories that Muhammad appropriated texts already in existence and claimed that he received them as revelations from Angel Gabriel”.

It was only in 653 AD that a format text of the first known Koran was assembled on orders of Uthman, the 3rd caliph, or Muslim community leader after the death of Muhammad.

“Finding out we had one of the oldest fragments of the Quran in the whole world has been fantastically exciting”, Worrall said, according to BBC News.

Followers believe the words in the Quran were revealed by the archangel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad over 22 years, from 610 AD.

According to Thomas, at that time, the spiritual message was not compiled into form of the book, in which it is read today.

The pages contain parts of the Suras, or chapters, 18 to 20.

“It is not possible to ascertain that the parchments were written close to the time of the Prophet”.

Mohammed himself was said not to be a scholar or a scribe, but it is possible he knew the person who wrote down this section of the Quran. He would have seen him probably, he would maybe have heard him preach.

Muslims scholars have disputed the idea that the Birmingham Koran predates Muhammad, with Mustafa Shah of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies telling the Times: “If anything, the manuscript has consolidated traditional accounts of the Koran’s origins”.

Professor Thomas said the concept of a Koran that predates Mohamed would require “a radical revision of Islamic history”, adding: “I think there are substantial obstacles in the way of that”.

Yet others may challenge radiocarbon dating itself as a tool of evidence, as it creates a range of possible ages, not definitive dates. The carbon dating was reported in the September 1, 2015, edition of the Birmingham News.

The fragments are part of the Mingana Collection of more than 3,000 Middle Eastern documents gathered in the 1920s by a Chaldean priest from Iraq.

Manuscript of the Quran in the Brooklyn Museum, USA.

A Qur’an manuscript held by the University of Birmingham’s Cadbury Research Library has been placed among the oldest in the world thanks to modern scientific methods.