Oldest Koran fragments found at Birmingham University

Much attention has been paid to the announcement made by University of Birmingham on Wednesday that the oldest Koran (the holly book of the Muslims) written as least 1,370 years ago was discovered. The university said that radiocarbon dating on sheepskin or goatskin ink manuscript showed that the fragments were written in somewhere between 568 and 645 with a probability of more than 95 percent.

If so, when and how was this Koran written? Koran is the religious text that Muhammad (570-632), the founder of Islam, wrote the words of Allah that he heard through the angel of Jibril (Gabriel). To be more accurate, Koran is the collection of stories that Muhammad heard from 610 when he received a divine message from Allah to 632 when he died. As Muhammad was illiterate, it had been passed down or memorized through words of mouth before it was compiled as unified texts after Muhammad died.

The compilation work that began during the era of Caliph Abu Bakr (ruled between 632 and 634) who succeeded Muhammad after his death was finished during the era of the second Caliph Uthman (ruled between 644 and 656). It is known that Uthman removed all the records with the only exception of completed manuscript. It the Koran discovered this time turns out to be the oldest one, there is a high possibility that the text was written while Muhammad was still alive prior to the era of Uthman when the Koran was compiled.

Before the discovery in the university, the manuscript fragment discovered at University of Tübingen in Germany last year was assumed to be the oldest one written between 649 and 675. The newly-discovered fragments date back 30-80 years earlier than the one from the German university.

“These portions must have been in a form that is very close to the form of the Koran 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,” said David Thomas, Birmingham University`s professor of Christianity and Islam, at the interview with BBC. “The person who actually wrote it could well have known the Prophet Muhammad... he would maybe have heard him preach.”

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