Talk:Sanaa manuscript

message: This is straightout of the page the Historicity of Muhammad
Basically I don't know anything about this find and I am hoping that others can fill in the blanks.
BernardZ 04:39, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Created 

message: The years given in YOUR Hillenbrand cite, 790 -835, do not match those at Historicity of Muhammad, 645-690, for exactly the same article. This should be checked in the original article by Hillenbrand and corrected at whichever page has it wrong. ThuranX 12:46, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: They also don't match the dates given at page linked on the Islamic Awareness site,  -- Jheald 14:37, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

text: The change was made in this anonymous edit. .  I've checked on Google books,  and it looks like it's vandalism. The book does indeed say 645-690, so I'm restoring it.  Jheald 14:49, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hillenbrand cite 

message: Back in July 2007 User:Azate slapped a mergetemplate to this article to Gerd R. Puin . There has been no discussion so I have removed it. Puin is clearly notable, therefore needs to have his own article. This subject is also notable therefore etc etc. Stroika 08:00, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Merge 

message: http://www.geocities.com/mutmainaa/Dhikr/quran_history.html
examination done by non muslims found the verses of Quran is the same since the Prophits life (Saas)
The History of the Qur'an
In this Book, the Holy Prophet's life, the history of the Arabs and the events which occurred during the period of the revelation of the Qur'an have not been mingled with the Divine Verses, as is the case with the Bible. The Qur'an is the pure word of God. Not one word therein is not divine. Not a single word has been deleted from its text. The Book has been handed down to our age in its complete and original form since the time of Prophet Muhammad.
From the time the Book began to be revealed, the Holy Prophet had dictated its text to the scribes. Whenever some Divine Message was revealed, the Holy Prophet would call a scribe and dictate its words to him. The written text was then read out to the Holy Prophet, who, having satisfied himself that the scribe has committed no error of recording, would put the manuscript in safe custody. 
The Blessed Prophet used to instruct the scribe about the sequence in which a revealed message was to be placed in a particular Surah (chapter). In this manner, the Holy Prophet continued to arrange the text of the Quran in systematic order till the end of the chain of revelations. Again, it was ordained from the beginning of Islam that a recitation of the Qur'an must be an integral part of worship. Hence the illustrious Companions would commit the Divine verses to memory as soon as they were revealed. Many of them learned the whole text and a far larger number had memorized different portions of it. 
Method of preservations of the Qur'an during the Prophet's time
Besides, those of the Companions (radiAllahu anhum) who were literate used to keep a written record of several portions of the Holy Qur'an. In this manner, the text of the Holy Qur'an had been preserved in four different ways during the lifetime of the Holy Prophet (Peace be upon him): 
a) The Prophet (salAllahu alayhi wasalam) had the whole text of the Divine Messages from the beginning to the end committed to writing by the scribes of revelations. 
b) Many of the Companions learned the whole text of the Quran, every syllable of it, by heart. 
c) All the illustrious Companions, without an exception, had memorized at least some portions of the Holy Qur'an, for the simple reason that it was obligatory for them to recite it during worship. An estimate of the number of the illustrious Companions may be obtained from the fact that one hundred and forty thousands Companions had participated in the Last Pilgrimage performed by the Holy Prophet (salAllahu alayhi wasalam). 
d) A considerable number of the literate Companions kept a private record of the text of the Qur'an and satisfied themselves as to the purity of their record by reading it out to the Holy Prophet (salAllahu alayhi wasalam). 
Method of preservations of the Quran after the demise of the Prophet
It is an incontrovertible historical truth that the text of the Holy Qur'an extant today is, syllable for syllable, exactly the same as the Holy Prophet (salAllahu alayhi wasalam) had offered to the world as the Word of God. 
After the demise of the Holy Prophet, the first Caliph Abu Bakr (radiAllahu anhu) assembled all the Huffaz and the written records of the Holy Qur'an and with their help had the whole text written in Book form. 
In the time of Uthman (radiAllahu anhu) copies of this original version were made and officially dispatched to the Capitals of the Islamic World. Two Of these copies exist in the world today, one in Istanbul and the other in Tashkent. Whosoever is so inclined may compare any printed text of the Holy Qur'an with those two copies, he shall find no variation. And how can one expect any discrepancy, when there have existed several million Huffaz in every generation since the time of the Holy Prophet (salAllahu alayhi wasalam) and in our own time? Should anyone alter a syllable of the original text of the Qur'an, these Huffaz would at once expose the mistake. 
[[In the last century, an Institute of Munich University in Germany collected FORTY-TWO THOUSAND copies of the Holy Qur'an including manuscripts and printed texts produced in each period in the various parts of the Islamic World. 
Research work was carried out on these texts for half a century, at the end of which the researchers concluded that apart from copying mistakes, there was no discrepancy in the text of these forty-two thousand copies, even though they belonged to the period between the 1st Century Hijra to 14th Century Hijrah and had been procured from all parts of the world. This Institute, alas! perished in the bombing attacks on Germany during World War II, but the findings of its research project survived.]] 
Another point that must be kept in view is that the word in which the Qur'an was revealed is a living language in our own time. It is still current as the mother tongue of about a hundred million people from Iraq to Morocco. In the non-Arab world too, hundreds of thousands of people study and teach this language. 
The grammar of the Arabic language, its lexicon, its phonetic system and its phraseology, have remained intact for fourteen hundred years. 
A modern Arabic-speaking person can comprehend the Holy Qur'an with as much proficiency as did the Arabs of fourteen centuries ago. This, then, is an important attribute of Muhammad (salAllahu alayhi wasalam), which is shared by no other Prophet or Leader of Religion. The Book which God revealed to Him for the guidance of mankind is today's in its original language without the slightest alteration in its vocabulary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.24.224.18 (talk • contribs) 20:29, 15 December 2007
That's a bunch of nonsense. That "Institute of Munich University" episode is just hilarious because you are referring to a photo archive of 450 rolls of film assembled by the "Bavarian Academy of Sciences" to study the evolution of the Koran. There was never a study of the archive because of the war and also because the archive disappeared, presumably destroyed. One researcher named Spitaler was writing in 1970 that the destruction of the archive made the project "outright impossible", but the funny thing is that recently it was found that he actually had the archive in his possession all along, but he kept it hidden for 60 years to please oil rich Muslim patrons funding his academic career. The current custodian of the archive, prof. Angelika Neuwirth is also very keen to please her Muslim sponsors, so she is making sure to deny access to the archive to any scholars who don't follow the traditional interpretation.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.121.18.134 (talk) 07:32, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Read the Truth 

message: About this revision. The reference for Puin's letter as well as al-Azami's quote is the same book viz. al-Azami, Muhammad Mustafa. The History of The Qur’ānic Text from Revelation to Compilation: A Comparative Study with the Old and New Testaments, Leicester, England: UK Islamic Academy, 2003. pgs. 3-13. Somehow I haven't cited it for Puin's letter and only used it for al-Azami's quote. User:Azate has done a good job of reverting a suspicious revision http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sana%27a_manuscripts&diff=217273465&oldid=217260292 however now that I've clarified his doubt (here, as well as on his talk page) I'm reverting the latest revision to mine. Please comment here in case anyone wants to undo that one again. Oh yes, and there is no conspiracy theory anywhere here.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Elazeez (talk • contribs) 12:43, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Please do not make unverifiable claims, if you have a point well worth consideration, please bring forth reliable sources to support it. WP is not a place for any original research. 'Abd el 'Azeez (talk) 12:34, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The only reference I can find of an article allegedly suggesting this is from the website 'answering-christianity.com'. The fact that both this article and the original are identical has lead me to conclude that it is nothing more than a copy/paste job by an overzealous wikipedia editor.--Ali M Saad (talk) 08:11, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Second quote removed as it is as unverifiable as above and it does not address Puin's original quote. It is a fallacious response.--Ali M Saad (talk) 08:13, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: More bad news about that site where the quotes were sourced from: They have been caught out fabricating sources before to the extent of faking a science journal article where the journal, organisations and people listed within the article do not actually exist.--Ali M Saad (talk) 08:36, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Actually, it's in page 12 in the book. Wiqi(55) 05:23, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed it is, but the journal does not attribute it to Puin, but to another researcher who came to opposite conclusions. For argument's sake, why would Puin write "Thank God they're identical to modern Korans, vindicating the pure textual history," etc.? Even the uninformed, without the source, can see the second claimed excerpt is written by a different person (obviously a Muslim: neutral observers let the facts guide them, instead of thanking God that their conclusions back up dogma) than the first. With the source, it is even more obvious, as it is not attributed to Puin, but as a response. This is phrased poorly so as to confuse readers, to make it ambiguous. St John Chrysostom Δόξατω Θεώ 06:38, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  First, it's a book not a journal. Second, here is how al-Azami introduces Puin's letter (pp.11-12): "Dr. Puin himself has in fact denied all the findings that Lester ascribes to him, with the exception of occasional differences in the spelling of some words. Here is a part of Puin's original letter -- which he wrote to al-Qadi Ismai'il al-Akwa' shortly after Lester's article -- with its translation." Later in his book, al-Azami quotes other parts of the letter to refute other points raised by Puin (not related to the San'a manuscripts, though). This unequivocally affirms that the letter is written by Puin. Third, your argument about stylistic is not convincing and based on original research. Wiqi(55) 11:13, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revision http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sana%27a_manuscripts&oldid=217273465 

message: "Aisha Geissinger, a notable writer on Islam ..."
Who is Aisha Geissinger? And if she's such a "notable writer on Islam", why is there so little information about her on the web and why can't we find a better source for her?
If it can't be established that she is a "notable writer on Islam", I'd suggest that her quote be replaced with something from Dr. Tarif Khalidi (from Cambridge Uni) from his interview with The Guardian (which the wiki article links to). Calypygian (talk) 21:23, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: In my experience Aisha Geissinger is not a notable writer on Islam. She has produced some works which people from all sides of the spectrum look on more as religious apologetics as opposed to academic work.--Ali M Saad (talk) 08:05, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, Ali. Given yours was the only response, I've eliminated the comment from Aisha Geissinger and, instead, sourced statements by a number of academics from the Guardian article. It would be great if there were some other electronic sources for academic responses other than the Guardian article. Are there any other responses by senior academics of which you know? Calypygian (talk) 21:47, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I have been interested in the Sana'a manuscripts for a while but it seems a lot of people are hesitant about releasing much information about it until they have a firm basis. So, until Professor Puin releases his findings speculation from both sides of the argument will be, well, mere speculation. Based on what I can gather from Puin so far his work will greatly challenge the Muslim assertion that the text is unaltered and emerged simultaneously with Muhammad's revelations. His work will provide a large deal of evidence to backup the hypothesis and evidence of academics such as Christoph Luxenberg, Yehuda Nevo, Patricia Crone, Michael Cook and Suliman Bashear. 
I will be scouring a lot of academic journals in regard to these manuscripts but it seems Puin is holding his cards close for the time being. If only people could so openly publish their work like in regard to New Testament manuscripts.
--Ari89 (talk) 13:39, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aisha Geissinger??? 

message: Publishers notes on Puin's new book "The Hidden Origins of Islam: New Research Into It's Early History" (Gerd R. Puin & Karl-Heinz Ohlig)
“The standard histories of Muhammad and the early development of Islam are based on Islamic literature that dates to the ninth and tenth centuries--some two centuries or more after the death of Muhammad in 632. Islamic literary sources do not exist for the seventh and eighth centuries, when, according to tradition, Muhammad and his immediate followers lived. All that is preserved from this time period are a few commemorative building inscriptions and assorted coins.
Based on the premise that reliable history can only be written on the basis of sources that are contemporary with the events described, the contributors to this in-depth investigation present research that reveals the obscure origins of Islam in a completely new light. As the authors meticulously show, the name "Muhammad" first appears on coins in Syria bearing Christian iconography. In this context the name is used as an honorific meaning "revered" or "praiseworthy" and can only refer to Jesus Christ, as Christianity was the predominant religion of the area at this time. This same reference exists in the building inscription of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, built by the caliph `Abd al-Malik.
The implication of these and other findings here presented is that the early Arab rulers adhered to a sect of Christianity. Indeed, evidence from the Koran, finalized at a much later time, shows that its central theological tenets were influenced by a pre-Nicean, Syrian Christianity. Linguistic analysis also indicates that Aramaic, the common language throughout the Near East for many centuries and the language of Syrian Christianity, significantly influenced the Arabic script and vocabulary used in the Koran. Finally, it was not until the end of the eighth and ninth centuries that Islam formed as a separate religion, and the Koran underwent a period of historical development of at least 200 years.”
 
Having just seen this now it seems I was right in my speculation of where he was heading. He picks up on - the evidence by Yehuda Nevo regarding the inscriptions; Crone and Cook's thesis that Islam originated from the Judeo-Christian context and their scepticism in regard to the authenticity of the Hadith's; Luxenberg's Syriac sources and thesis regarding the heavy Christian influence.
I will examine what this book has to say in regard to the Sana'a manuscripts as soon as I get a chance.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ari89 (talk • contribs) 14:37, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: What are you on about? There are numerous errors in the Quran. Prime example being it's erroneous cosmology. If it really had been revealed by Allah via Gabriel, then surely Allah, being Almighty would not have taken his cosmology from the ancient Greek Ptolomaic view of the universe! Or did Gabriel just get its/his facts wrong.1812ahill (talk) 18:21, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  No the Qur'an doesn't taken its cosmology from the ancient Greek Ptolomaic view of the universe. Besides the name "Mohammed" first appears in a Christian document calling the Arabs as "the Arabs of Muhammed". The book dismisses all archaeological and historical facts discovered. See Seeing Islam as Others Saw It--BelalSaid (talk) 18:15, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Hidden Origins of Islam (2008) 

message: I found the first line of this section seems to have been copy and pasted from Toby Lester's What is the Koran, which is itself quoted in a blog here. Could someone rewrite this so that it isn't take word for word from the source? Hewinsj (talk) 16:13, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. --Jonund (talk) 18:20, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discovery and assessment 

message: The article says "Radiocarbon testing indicates that the parchment, and hence the lower text, most likely dates from within fifteen years of the death of the Prophet Mohammed."  Why the "hence"?  It seems to me all it sets is the terminus post quem. --Richardson mcphillips (talk) 13:50, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why does the age of the material determine the age of the lower text? 

message: I am surprised this is used as evidence that the Qur'an changed. The San'a' Manuscript differs from the current Qur'an in word style, chapter order, and verse count. When writing the Qur'an Muslims debated on the surah order and verse count. Today Qur'an is ordered by chapter's size, other Qur'an are arranged when Muhammed recited them. So it is not an issue. As for verse count, Some writers considered two verses to be one, others considered one verse to be separate two. So it is also not an issue. The manuscript also has a different style from today's Arabic, such as writing "in ma" as two words while in Modern Arabic, it is written as "inma", as one word, also writing "l[a]kn" as "la kn". These variations do not exist in today due to the evolution of the Arabic language.--BelalSaid (talk) 00:51, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Differences between Sana'a manuscript and current Qur'an 

message: There's absolutely NO evidence of any radiocarbon dating in the main scientific databases. It's just an hoax.   — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.251.248.99 (talk) 01:33, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Dating

message: Decades ago I made a copy of The Atlantic article describing the original discovery. I assumed that over the years much had happened with related scholarship, but I was disappointed with the Wiki follow-up. I was also concerned that two primary, recent article references are not available at the URL given for Sadeghi. I tracked down "The Codex of a Companion of the Prophet...", at https://www.scribd.com/doc/234880230/The-Codex-of-a-Companion-of-the-Prophet-SAW-Benham-Sadeghi-Bergmann
To avoid misplacing that source again, perhaps, here are two important paras:
"Early Muslim reports assert that diﬀerent Companions of the Prophet had diﬀerent versions of the Qurʾān, and some reports give the purported variants of their codices. The diﬀerences among these codices appear to have motivated an attempt at standardization. According to the collective memory of early Muslims, the CompanionʿUtmān, after becoming caliph, disseminated a version of the holy book, declaring it the standard. The date of this event is uncertain, but it appears to have taken place sometime during AH 24-30,
i.e AD 644-650.
It is to the textual tradition identifed with this version that almost all extant Qurʾānic manuscripts belong. The main signifcance of the Sanʿāʾ manuscript is that its lower text does not belong to this ʿUt-mānic textual tradition. In this sense, it is “non-ʿUt-manic.” It belongs to some other textual tradition which is designated here as C-1. The C-1 textual tradition is distinct not only from that ofʿUt ̠mān, which is known from both literary sources and manuscripts, but also from those of Companions Ibn Masʿūd and Ubayy b. Kaʿb, whose recensions of the Qurʾān are not attested in manuscripts, being known only from descriptions in literary sources. I will argue that C-1 and these others formed parallel textual traditions. Comparing them can thus illuminate the state of the text prior to the branching oﬀ of these various traditions. It can shed light on the progenitor of all textual traditions, the Qurʾānic prototype." 2601:9:2B80:136:C84A:4E19:F0CF:B85E (talk) 04:19, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comfort level with sources 

message: A table is recently uploaded showing a number of variants to the Qur'an. Firstly, the source is an article by Sadeghi, etal about San'a manuscripts and the article is copy-righted. We don't need to copy the whole article into this wikipedia page, we can simply give a few examples and refer readers to the source for further reading.
Secondly, these differences may not be true variants. A great number of variants can be found in various sources but only a few are considered factual by scholars.Kiatdd (talk) 20:28, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  San'a variants? 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 14:58, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I understand that the language  in this version is Syro-Aramaic? Not arabic? Ronmar24 (talk) 21:07, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Nothing in the article about it. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 21:48, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Ronmar24, do you have a citation that mentions the language as Syro-Aramaic and not Arabic or specifically one of the several Arabian language dialects of that time? -- HafizHanif (talk) 21:51, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  The language of the scriptures? No Arabic? 

message: Throughout the article, there has been mentions of the "1924 Cairo Edition" Quran. There are no references or links; what is this about? I couldn't find a reliable source on it. Also, within Quranic studies, an "edition" of the Quran doesn't make much sense. Should this be edited?
2600:1700:17F0:C30:E485:5D2E:B4E6:44B0 (talk) 12:08, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  In 1924, the Egyptian government sponsored a printed edition of the Qur'an from the Al-Azhar university - see "The Cambridge Companion to the Qur'an"; CUP 2005; Jane McAuliffe ed.; page 152.  This represented a major achievement of scholarly textual reconstruction (and of printing technology, as it was the first scholarly Qur'an to be typeset). Bergstrasser ('Koranlesung in Kairo'; Der Islam (20) 1932) declared that no Western textual scholar or publsher could have produced a more exact or critically scrupulous printed edition.  Almost all subsequent printed editions of the Qur'an present this Cairo text with very few alterations. Previously, the Ottoman sultanate - in reasserting its dormant claim to the caliphate - had published a series of 'official' printed Qur'ans, which aimed to reproduce readings and orthography from classic caligraphic qur'anic manuscripts by means of photolithography; the Egyptian scholars, motivated both by religious principles and Arabic nationalism, rejected this, very different, late Ottoman text absolutely. See: https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/1296/D_Wilson_Michael_a_200908.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y  Hence all subsequent scholarship of the Qur'an routinely regards this Cairo printed edition as normative for the 'written' (as distinct from 'recited') qur'anic text. TomHennell (talk) 12:58, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  Providing an English Wikipedia reference for an edition of the Qur'an entirely in Arabic (and lacking any 'western-style' publication apparatus) is a tad tricky.  Asma Hilali (in 'The Sanaa Palimsest', OUP 2017 p. 25; gives a reference as: "Wizarat al-Awqaf, 'Al-Azhar, tarikhuh wa tatawwuruh' (Cairo 1964)", for the reprinted edition she used. TomHennell (talk) 14:11, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  1924 Cairo Edition Quran 

message: There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:2012 Sanaʽa bombing which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you.  —RMCD bot 18:50, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move discussion in progress 

message: Muslims tend to claim that there always has been just one, perfectly preserved Quran throughout islamic history. The differences between this Sanaa manuscript and the current standard Hafs Quran debunks this claim. 80.131.61.141 (talk) 22:19, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Importance of this manuscript should be mentioned 

message: It seems there has been an update in the scholarship regarding the reliability of the carbon dating of the Stanford folio. I have been reading chapter 3 of Stephen J. Shoemaker's Creating the Qur’an: A Historical-Critical Study and he makes the case that the 95% accuracy of the carbon dating asserted in the opening paragraph of this article appears to be more open to question than is currently conveyed.     
The main problem appears to be that other attempts to radio carbon date the same and other parts of the manuscript have yielded very different results, for example:  
'Other samples from the same manuscript were obtained in Yemen by Christian Robin, who sent them for analysis to the Centre de datation par le Radiocarbone at the University of Lyon (Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1). In this instance, the French laboratory’s radiocarbon analysis of samples taken from the same manuscript that originally contained Sadeghi and Bergmann’s Stanford 2007 study yielded radically different datings for its parchment leaves'
...
'Indeed, to make matters only worse, samples from the third folio in the table above, 01–27–1 fol. 13, were subsequently tested at the Research Laboratory for Archeology and the History of Art at the University of Oxford (OxA-29409), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH 52910), and at the Labor für Altersbestimmung und Isotopenforschung at Christian- Albrecht-Universität Kiel (KIA50087). The results from these labs for this same artifact, which the Lyon lab dated to between 388–535 CE (now 406–543 CE using the new IntCal 20 calibration curve), are 565–660 CE from Zürich (575–655 CE with IntCal 20) and 430–95 CE or 530–610 CE from Kiel (441–636 CE with IntCal 20), and 595–658 CE from Oxford (599–655 CE with IntCal 20).17 Thus, these assays have yielded significantly different results for the very same parchment leaf!'
Rather than making the case that any of the above date estimates are any more reliable than the 2007 dating, Shoemaker argues that there is either some difficulty with dating manuscripts from this part of the world and period, or that there has been some contamination of the Sanaa manuscript. Potential problems include:
'According to Fedeli, who was on site in Sanaa with the French expedition in 2008... the folios from the House of Manuscripts [which potentially includes the Stanford folio - my addition], however, “were stored in the false ceiling of the Great Mosque of Ṣan‘ā’ for centuries, thus exposed to hot conditions and heavy rain.” These ancient manuscripts were only discovered on account of restorations necessitated by damage from heavy rains and floods to the structure housing them. For this reason, Fedeli suggests, the margins of a manuscript, the location from which samples are ordinarily taken, may have been more susceptible to environmental damage, and so samples should instead be taken from a different part of the manuscript... Other factors that can possibly affect the measurable amount of 14C in an artifact, including, but not limited to, “in situ production of 14C in plant structures (particularly wood) at relatively high altitudes by the direct action of cosmic-ray-produced neutrons” (Sanna is at 2,300 m) and “the presence of high organic content materials such as peats, . . . and the proximity of petroleum products such as asphalt or tar or fossil organics such as lignite or coal.'
Textual evidence also points to the fact that the manuscript may be dated later:
'Sadeghi and Bergmann claim to have identified short vowel marks in the text, which, if accurate, as  notes, would further indicate a later dating of this Qur’anic text. Éléonore Cellard has recently compared the original text of this palimpsest with another manuscript from the Sanaa collection, DAM 01–29–1, and she concludes, based on their similarities, that a dating to the early eighth century seems to be indicated for the palimpsest.'
I wonder if some of this should be conveyed in the opening paragraph, as at the moment a reader will have the impression that the 95%  accuracy claim is a scientific fact, rather than challenged elswhere. A potential addition could perhaps be:
A radiocarbon analysis has dated the parchment of one of the detached leaves sold at auction, and hence its lower text, to between 578 CE (44 BH) and 669 CE (49 AH) with a 95% accuracy. Other radiocarbon analyses of this folio and other parts of the Sanaa manuscript have produced different dates (including periods before Mohammed's prophetic revelation), with some scholars suggesting that radiocarbon dating from this period and location may be unreliable, or that the samples may have been contaminated.
With some of the above made more clear in the 'Dating of the lower text' section below. 
Lackingcaff (talk) 11:55, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reliability of carbon dating of Stanford folio