Birmingham Quran manuscript - wikipedia Birmingham Quran manuscript Birmingham Quran manuscript Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham folio 1 verso ( right ) and folio 2 recto ( left ) Date Between c. 568 and 645 Language ( s ) Arabic Scribe ( s ) Unknown Material Parchment ink Format vertical Script Hijazi Contents Parts of Surahs 18 to 20 Accession 1572a Quran Text Chapter List Meccan Medinan Verse Section Muqatta'at Content Animals Eschatology Female figures God Legends Miracles Parables Prophets Science Reading Elocution Memorized Reciter School Speed Translations List English translations by Ahmadis History Samarkand Kufic Quran Sana'a manuscript Topkapi manuscript Birmingham manuscript Exegesis Abrogation Biblical narratives Esoteric interpretation Hermeneutics Persons related to verses mentioned by name Revelation Related Createdness Criticism Inimitability Quran and tradition Quranism Shi'a view Category Islam portal Wikipedia book Comparison of a 21st - century Quran ( left ) and the Birmingham Quran manuscript The Birmingham Quran manuscript is a parchment on which two leaves of an early Quranic manuscript are written. In 2015 the manuscript, which is held by the University of Birmingham, was radiocarbon dated to between 568 and 645 AD. It is part of the Mingana Collection of Middle Eastern manuscripts, held by the university 's Cadbury Research Library. The manuscript is written in ink on parchment, using an Arabic Hijazi script and is still clearly legible. The leaves preserve parts of Surahs 19 ( Maryam ) to 20 ( Taha ). It was on display at the University of Birmingham in 2015 and then at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery until 5 August 2016. The Cadbury Research Library has carried out multispectral analysis of the manuscript. The ink has yet to have its constituents tested. Contents 1 Background 2 Description 3 Identification 4 Significance 5 See also 6 References 7 External links Background The Mingana Collection, comprising over 3,000 documents, was compiled by Alphonse Mingana, in the 1920s, and was funded by Edward Cadbury, a philanthropist and businessman of the Birmingham - based chocolate - making Cadbury family. Description Close up of part of folio 2 recto, showing chapter division and verse - end markings The two leaves have been recognized as belonging with the 16 leaves catalogued as BnF Arabe 328 ( c ) in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, now bound with the Codex Parisino - petropolitanus ; and witness verses corresponding to a lacuna in that text. The Birmingham leaves, now catalogued as Mingana 1572a, are folio size ( 343 mm by 258 mm at the widest point ), and are written on both sides in a generously - scaled and legible script. One two - page leaf contains verses 17 -- 31 of Surah 18 ( Al - Kahf ) while the other leaf the final eight verses 91 -- 98 of Surah 19 ( Maryam ) and the first 40 verses of Surah 20 ( Ta - Ha ), all in their present day sequence and conforming to the standard text. The two surviving leaves were separated in the original codex by a number of missing folios containing the intervening verses of surahs 18 and 19. There are no diacritical marks to indicate short vowels, but consonants are occasionally differentiated with oblique dashes. The text is laid out in the format that was to become standard for complete Quran manuscripts, with chapter divisions indicated by a decorated line, and verse endings by intertextual clustered dots. Although the Quran text witnessed in the two Birmingham leaves largely conforms to the standard text their orthography differs, especially in respect of the writing ( or omission ) of the letter alif. Equally, the application of intermittent dashes to differentiate consonants varies from the counterpart pointing in the standard text at four places. Otherwise, the aspect in which the Birmingham Quran differs most substantially from the standard text is in its verse divisions ; of the four surahs partially witnessed in these leaves, three have a verse division omitted in at least one place. Subsequent ultraviolet testing of the leaves has confirmed no underwriting, and excludes the possibility of there being a palimpsest. Identification Alba Fedeli, who was studying items in the Mingana Collection of Middle Eastern Manuscripts for her PhD thesis Early Qur'ānic manuscripts, their text, and the Alphonse Mingana papers held in the Department of Special Collections of the University of Birmingham, found the two leaves misidentified and bound with those of another seventh century Quranic manuscript also written in Hijazi script ( now catalogued as Mingana 1572b ). Following an approach by the Berlin - Brandenburg Academy in 2013 to contribute a sample from Islamic Arabic 1572 to the Corpus Coranicum project to investigate textual history of the Quran, which coincided with Fedeli 's research into the handwriting, the Cadbury Research Library arranged for the manuscript to be radiocarbon dated at the University of Oxford 's Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit. They dated the parchment to between AD 568 and 645, within a 95.4 % ( 2σ ) confidence interval, with a sample reference OxA - 29418. The results will be published in `` Radiocarbon Dates from the Oxford AMS System : Datelist 36 '' of the journal Archaeometry. Significance The proposed radiocarbon date for the manuscript is significant, as the Islamic prophet Muhammad lived from c. 570 to 632. According to Sunni Muslim tradition it was Uthman ( r. 644 -- 656 ), the third caliph, who compiled and canonized the version of Quran since accepted and used by all Muslims worldwide ; then he commanded that all previous versions be burned. In the University announcement, Dr Muhammad Isa Waley, Lead Curator for Persian and Turkish Manuscripts at the British Library, is quoted as saying : The Muslim community was not wealthy enough to stockpile animal skins for decades, and to produce a complete Mushaf, or copy, of the Holy Qur'an required a great many of them. The carbon dating evidence, then, indicates that Birmingham 's Cadbury Research Library is home to some precious survivors that -- in view of the Suras included -- would once have been at the centre of a Mushaf from that period. And it seems to leave open the possibility that the Uthmanic redaction took place earlier than had been thought -- or even, conceivably, that these folios predate that process. In any case, this -- along with the sheer beauty of the content and the surprisingly clear Hijazi script -- is news to rejoice Muslim hearts. David Thomas, professor of Christianity and Islam at the University of Birmingham is 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 Qur'an 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 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. Dr Saud al - Sarhan, Director of Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh, has been more sceptical ; questioning whether the parchment might have been reused as a palimpsest, and also noting that the writing had chapter separators and dotted verse endings -- features in Arabic scripts which are believed not to have been introduced to the Qur'an until later. Dr Saud 's criticisms have been backed by a number of Saudi - based experts in Quranic history who strongly rebut any speculation that the Birmingham / Paris Quran could have been written during the lifetime of the prophet Muhammad. They emphasize that while the prophet Muhammad was alive, Quranic texts were written without any chapter decoration, marked verse endings or use of coloured inks ; and did not follow any standard sequence of surahs. They maintain that those features were introduced into Quranic practice in the time of the Caliph Uthman, and so it would be entirely possible that the Birmingham leaves could have been written then, but not earlier. Professor Süleyman Berk of the faculty of Islamic studies at Yalova University has noted the strong similarity between the script of the Birmingham leaves and those of a number of Hijazi Qurans in the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum ; which were brought to Istanbul from the Great Mosque of Damascus following a fire in 1893. Professor Berk recalls that these manuscripts had been intensively researched in association with an exhibition on the history of the Quran, The Quran in its 1,400 th Year held in Istanbul in 2010, and the findings published by François Déroche as Qur'ans of the Umayyads in 2013. In that study, the Paris Quran, BnF Arabe 328 ( c ), is compared with Qurans in Istanbul, and concluded as having been written `` around the end of the seventh century and the beginning of the eighth century. '' Professor Joseph E.B. Lumbard of Brandeis University has written in the Huffington Post in support of the dates proposed by the Birmingham scholars. Professor Lumbard notes that the discovery of a Quranic text that may be confirmed by radiocarbon dating as having been written in the first decades of the Islamic era, while presenting a text substantially in conformity with that traditionally accepted, reinforces a growing academic consensus that many Western sceptical and ' revisionist ' theories of Quranic origins are now untenable in the light of empirical findings. Whereas, on the other hand, counterpart accounts of Quranic origins within classical Islamic traditions stand up well in the light of ongoing scientific discoveries. In December 2015 Professor François Déroche of the Collège de France confirmed the identification of the two Birmingham leaves with those of the Paris Qur'an BnF Arabe 328 ( c ), as had been proposed by Dr Alba Fedeli. Prof. Deroche, however, expressed reservations about the reliability of the radiocarbon dates proposed for the Birmingham leaves, noting instances elsewhere in which radiocarbon dating had proved inaccurate in testing Qur'ans with an explicit endowment date ; and also that none of the counterpart Paris leaves had yet been carbon - dated. Dr Mustaf Shah, Senior Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, has suggested that the grammatical marks and verse separators in the Birmingham leaves are inconsistent with the proposed early radiocarbon dates. Jamal bin Huwareib, managing director of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation, has proposed that, were the radiocarbon dates to be confirmed, the Birmingham / Paris Qur'an might be identified with the text known to have been assembled by the first Caliph Abu Bakr, between 632 CE and 634 CE. See also Sana'a manuscript -- another Quranic manuscript written on parchment that was most likely produced in the 7th century Criticism of the Quran Historicity of Muhammad References Jump up ^ `` Virtual Manuscript Room ''. University of Birmingham. Retrieved 25 July 2015. ^ Jump up to : `` Birmingham Qur'an manuscript dated among the oldest in the world ''. University of Birmingham. 22 July 2015. Retrieved 22 July 2015. ^ Jump up to : `` ' Oldest ' Koran fragments found in Birmingham University ''. BBC. 22 July 2015. Retrieved 22 July 2015. Jump up ^ `` Tests show UK Quran manuscript is among world 's oldest ''. CNN. 22 July 2015. Retrieved 22 July 2015. Jump up ^ Authi, Jasbir ( 22 July 2015 ). `` Worldwide media frenzy as ' oldest Koran ' found lying forgotten at University of Birmingham ''. Birmingham Mail. Retrieved 23 July 2015. Jump up ^ Kennedy, Maev ( 22 July 2015 ). `` Oldest Quran fragments found at Birmingham University ''. The Guardian. Retrieved 23 July 2015. Jump up ^ `` ' The Qur'anic Manuscripts of the Mingana Collection and their Electronic Edition ' ''. Quranic Studies Association Blog. 18 March 2013. Retrieved 23 July 2015. Jump up ^ Déroche, François ( 2009 ). La transmission écrite du Coran dans les débuts de l'islam : le codex Parisino - petropolitanus. Brill Publishers. p. 121. ISBN 9004172726. Jump up ^ `` Ms. Paris BnF Arabe 328 ( c ) ''. Corpus Coranicum. Retrieved 25 July 2015. Jump up ^ http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/facilities/cadbury/TheBirminghamQuranManuscript.aspx Jump up ^ http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/facilities/cadbury/TheBirminghamQuranManuscript.aspx Jump up ^ Reynolds, Gabriel Said ( 7 August 2015 ). `` Variant Readings : The Birmingham Qur'an in the Context of the Debate on Islamic Origins ''. Times Literary Supplement. pp. 14 -- 15. Retrieved 3 March 2017. Jump up ^ Huff, Wesley. `` ' The Birmingham Quran Folios and a Brief Synopsis of its Impact on Islam ''. p. 10. Retrieved 3 March 2017. Jump up ^ http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/facilities/cadbury/quran-manuscript/faqs.aspx Jump up ^ `` Congratulations to Dr Alba Fedeli ''. University of Birmingham. 10 July 2015. Retrieved 25 July 2015. Jump up ^ `` FAQs : About the Birmingham Qur'an manuscript ''. University of Birmingham. Archived from the original on 26 September 2015. Retrieved 10 October 2015. Jump up ^ Elizabeth Goldman ( 1995 ), p. 63, gives 8 June 632, the dominant Islamic tradition. Many earlier ( mainly non-Islamic ) traditions refer to him as still alive at the time of the invasion of Palestine. See Stephen J. Shoemaker, The Death of a Prophet : The End of Muhammad 's Life and the Beginnings of Islam, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. Jump up ^ Leaman, Oliver ( 2006 ). `` Canon ''. The Qur'an : an Encyclopedia. New York, NY : Routledge. pp. 136 -- 139. ISBN 0 - 415 - 32639 - 7. Jump up ^ Dan Bilefsky ( 22 July 2015 ), `` A Find in Britain : Quran Fragments Perhaps as Old as Islam '', The New York Times Jump up ^ `` Experts doubt oldest Quran claim ''. Saudi Gazette. 27 July 2015. Archived from the original on 6 September 2015. Retrieved 27 July 2015. Jump up ^ Déroche, François ( 2013 ). Qur'ans of the Umayyads : a first overview. Brill Publishers. pp. 67 -- 69. Jump up ^ `` Oldest Quran still a matter of controversy ''. Daily Sabah. 27 July 2015. Retrieved 27 July 2015. Jump up ^ `` New Light on the History of the Quranic Text ? ''. The Huffington Post. 24 July 2015. Retrieved 27 July 2015. Jump up ^ `` Birmingham 's ancient Koran history revealed ''. BBC. 23 December 2015. Retrieved 4 February 2016. External links Wikimedia Commons has media related to Birmingham Quran manuscript. The Birmingham Qur'an manuscript public display The Birmingham Qur'an manuscript images Fedeli 's thesis The Birmingham Qur'an University of Birmingham FAQ University of Birmingham History Edgbaston Campus Mason Science College Queen 's College Selly Oak Colleges People Lord Karan Bilimoria ( Chancellor ) David Eastwood ( Vice-Chancellor ) List of University of Birmingham people List of University of Birmingham academics List of University of Birmingham alumni Colleges Arts and Law Engineering and Physical Sciences Life and Environmental Sciences Medical and Dental Sciences Social Sciences Buildings Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust Ironbridge Institute Joseph Chamberlain Memorial Clock Tower Lapworth Museum of Geology Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham Shakespeare Institute University House University Station University of Birmingham School Winterbourne Botanic Garden Facilities Barber Institute of Fine Arts Birmingham Archaeology Birmingham Business School Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies Centre for International Education and Research Centre of West African Studies Inlogov International Development Department Subject Network for Sociology, Anthropology, Politics Student life Guild of Students Astronomical Society Birmingham Financial Forum BurnFM.com InterVol ( International Volunteering Project ) Redbrick ValeFest Related Mingana Collection Birmingham Quran manuscript Category Commons Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Birmingham_Quran_manuscript&oldid=805635244 '' Categories : Quranic manuscripts University of Birmingham Cadbury Hidden categories : Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from August 2014 Articles containing French - language text All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from October 2015 Articles with hCards Talk Contents About Wikipedia فارسی Français Bahasa Indonesia മലയാളം Bahasa Melayu Polski اردو Zazaki 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 16 October 2017, at 17 : 33. 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Question: where is the oldest copy of the holy quran preserved
Answer: Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum