What Do You Know About The Oldest Quran Manuscripts in History ?

The time in which the Qur’an was written and the subject of its frequent transmission over many centuries have been subjected to skepticism by some atheists, but the temporal references to the history of some manuscripts that were recently uncovered may open the door to a direction to the time of the revelation of the Noble Qur’an according to scientific criteria.

A 1,370-year-old Manuscript

Researchers at the University of Birmingham said that they had found manuscripts from the Holy Qur’an, which, when examined with radiocarbon technology, showed that they were about 1,370 years old, dating back between 568 and 645 AD, which would make them one of the oldest copies of the Qur’an that have been discovered in the world.

However, this discovery was not the first of its kind in this regard, as several manuscripts were found, in differing periods, that scientific research has proven that their history dates back to the period of early Islam, and it was remarkable that most of them were found by chance and in a diversity of places geographically located between the Arab and Western countries.

In this report, we highlight 5 of the oldest Qur’an manuscripts that have been found in the modern era.

First: The Manuscript of The University of Birmingham, UK

The British University of “Birmingham” announced on July 22 that it had found in its library a Quranic manuscript that is considered the oldest in the whole world, and the results of the examinations on the manuscript using radiocarbon isotopes revealed that it is at least 1,370 years old.

This makes it more likely that one of the companions or the first generation of followers was the one who wrote it. This examination determines the age of the manuscript with an accuracy rate of 95% indicates that the text on these leathers dates back to the period between 568 and 645 AD.

The Manuscript Was Written in The Hijazi Script

The manuscript consists of two parchment papers, and included parts from Suras No. 18 to No. 20, and was written using one of the oldest Arabic calligraphy, the Hijaz calligraphy, and this manuscript is part of the university’s holdings that include 3000 documents from the Middle East that was bought by Alfonso Mingana, a Chaldean priest who was born near Mosul, Iraq.

The Manuscript Remained in The University’s Library For a Century

The papers remained in the university library for a century, and no one paid any attention to them, and they were preserved with another group of books and documents on the Middle East, without anyone knowing that they were among the oldest copies of the Qur’an in the world.

A university professor noted, explaining that this manuscript indicates that the existing Qur’an has carried no difference from back the time it was collected, while the Director of the Collections of the University of Birmingham stated that this manuscript is very important and that it is a global treasure for the Islamic studies.

For a Manuscript from the time of the Prophet

Professor Thomas adds that “the rated age of the Birmingham manuscript means that it is very likely that its writer lived during the time of the Prophet Muhammad,” stressing that “the person who wrote these pages must have known the Prophet Muhammad, and perhaps he had seen him and listened to his hadith, and perhaps he was close to him. An this is what this manuscript evokes ”.

Professor Thomas said that some of the texts of the “revelation” were written on “sheets of fronds, rocks, skins and the shoulders of camels,” and that a final copy of the Qur’an has collected in the year 650 AD, indicating that “these parts of the Qur’an that were written on these scraps can be, to a degree and with a trust that it dates back to less than two decades after the death of the Prophet Muhammad”.

Second: the manuscript of the German state of Baden

In mid-December 2014 researchers at the University of “Tübingen” in the state of Baden-Württemberg, Germany, found a hand-written copy of the Holy Quran in the university library dating back to the seventh century AD, and the details surrounding that discovery are similar to that of Birmingham’s last discovery with some slight changes in the period to which the manuscript and calligraphy were used.

Michael Marks, head of the German “Corbis Kourani Com” studies center, explained that the results of the samples taken from the Qur’anic manuscript to trace the date of its writing through the radiocarbon dating method, a process used to determine the age of ancient things by measuring its radiocarbon content. And it showed that it dates back to a period between AD 649-675.

There are over 20-30 older versions

Marx asserted that “94% of our belief indicates that the history of the Qur’an dates back to the period between 649-675 AD, so we cannot be certain of its exact date,” indicating that the manuscript was written in Kufic script, which is one of the oldest scripts of the Arabic language, indicating that it is not The oldest in the history, but there are more than 20-30 older copies.

The manuscript reached the university library in 1864 when the university bought part of the book collection of Prussian Consul Johan Gottfried Witz Stein.

Third: The Andalusian Manuscript, Thailand

In November 2014, Spanish media reported that researchers from the Universities of Malaga and Granada were studying the possibility that a copy of the Noble Qur’an was preserved in the Qur’anic school in Narathiwat, southern Thailand, of Andalusian origin and may belong to Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi, Prince of Andalusia.

The copy is owned by Muhammad Lotfi, head of the Qur’anic school in the Muslim-majority city of Narathiwat. He had mentioned that he had obtained it from a Moroccan friend.

He added, “We do not have experience preserving the ancient copies of the Qur’an, nor do we have enough money to protect them. Before that, I used to keep manuscripts in my house, but now we have a place to keep them in the school.” Lotfi explains that the manuscript copy was originally from the Andalusian leader Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi.

Fourth: The manuscript of the Caves of Dhali’, Yemen

In October 2012, a Yemeni young man from the city of Al-Dhali ‘found one of the oldest copies of the Holy Qur’an in a mountain cave south of the city. A rare waxy substance was placed inside it and wrapped with a leather cover.

News agencies reported at the time that the letters of the Qur’anic copy were devoid of points and vowelization, and on its front page there was written (it was copied by the hand of the poor to God in the year 200 AH), which confirms, according to press reports, that it is one of the oldest copies of the Holy Qur’an in the world. And the correctness of the data recorded on it.

Imam Ali’s sword

A sword with a polished copper handle was found next to the Noble Qur’an and written on it in clear Arabic script the name “Dhu al-Fiqar”, which is the famous name for the sword of Imam Ali bin Abi Talib, may God grace his face.

Press reports stated that tempting offers were made to the young man to push him to sell the Holy Quran, the last of which was 12 million Yemeni riyals, but he refused, preferring to keep the copy.

Fifthly: the manuscript of the Great Mosque of Yemen

During the restoration work of the Grand Mosque in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, coming after heavy rain in 1972, workers found a secret hideout between the inner and outer ceiling of the mosque. And it was a surprise to everyone when the workers pulled out of this hideout thousands of scraps, notebooks, and worn books we’re found and huge quantities of leather parchment written on them in ancient Arabic calligraphy.

The workers collected the papers they found and arranged them in twenty “Zakiba”, and kept it under the ladder of the mosque’s minaret. After that, it became clear that what they found represented an ancient Quranic library, and Yemeni archaeologists confirmed that the discovered manuscripts contain Quranic verses that date back to the first centuries of the Hijra.

Al-Zakeeb remained forgotten under the minaret, with the scraps it contained, until it was accidentally seen by Judge Ismail Al-Akwa, who was head of the Yemeni Antiquities Authority at that time.

Realizing the historical importance of the texts found, Al-Akwa requested the German government to help restore and maintain them.

In 1979 Germany agreed to implement the library maintenance project, which cost 2.2 million Reichsmarks.

“Al-Hijazi” is the first script in which the Qur’an was written

The German researcher Gerd Bowen, who supervised the restoration and maintenance project of the discovered library, was the first to examine the Sana’a manuscripts in 1981, and he was a researcher specializing in Arabic calligraphy with the Saarland University in Saarbrucken, Germany. He realized the ancient history of scraps after noticing that some texts were written in the rare Hijazi script. It is the first calligraphy in which the Qur’an was written before the Kufic calligraphy.

When examining the manuscripts, it became clear that they were composed of scraps and small pieces of leather of different types and sources. They do not form one complete Qur’an, but rather fragments of multiple Qur’ans.

Studies conducted so far have also confirmed that these manuscripts came from 800 Qur’ans dating back to the period between the first and fifth centuries of the Hijra, that is, between the seventh and eleventh centuries AD.

Yemen owns a museum of Quranic flakes

“These treasures from the Qur’anic flakes that were found confirms that Yemen is still an open museum in which the archeology experts have not reached their goal yet,” described Moqbel Al-Tamam Amer Al-Ahmadi, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Culture for the Manuscripts and Bookstores Sector in Yemen, in January 2013, The discovery made at the Al-Jameh Mosque in Sana’a.

It should be noted that the Great Mosque in Sana’a is one of the oldest Islamic mosques, and it is the first mosque built in Yemen, and it is considered one of the ancient mosques that were built during the reign of the Prophet Muhammad.