Scoperta Corano Birmingham: Un CORANO PRE-ISLAMICO PRE-MAOMETTO E PRE-CORANICO!!

21/7/2015 

IL PIU’ANTICO  MANOSCRITTO CORANICO  IRONICAMENTE SI RIVELA LA SCOPERTA PIU' INFAUSTA DELLA STORIA ISLAMICA. E': 

1. PRE-ISLAMICO

2. PRE-MAOMETTO

3. E...PRE-CORANICO!!

TRE NUOVI RECENTI ARTICOLI SONO STATI SCRITTI CHE SVELANO CHE QUESTI PRESUNTI “ MANOSCRITTI PIU’ ANTICHI” NON SONO REALMENTE CORANICI.

Un nuovo articolo (31/8) su TIMES presenta le catastrofiche conclusioni di TOM HOLLAND & KEITH SMALL su questi manoscritti:

                                    (clicca qui)

             

Un nuovo articolo del DR. GABRIEL SAID REYNOLD'S sul cosa implichino le date più antiche 

                           (clicca qui)

Un’altro articolo illuminate  R. JOSEPH HOFFMAN'S analizza rapidamente il significato e i risvolti delle date più antiche:

                             (Clicca qui)

Qui di seguito, invece, la sinossi particolareggiata di Jay Smith del dramma dietro la 'trionfale scoperta':

LA DATAZIONE AL CARBONIO DEI FRAMMENTI DI BIRMINGHAM

Nel luglio 2015 la BBC ha avanzato la tesi che i due frammenti coranici rinvenuti a Birmingham datassero, in base al Carbonio 14, tra il 568 e 645 d.C. Poiché queste date coprono grosso modo il periodo di vita di Maometto (570 – 632 d.C., stando alla tradizione islamica), i reperti devono essere considerati il materiale coranico più antico che esista, contemporaneo alla vita del profeta. Il convincimento presenta una serie di problematiche:

1. La tradizione islamica (da Al Bukhari 6:509-610) è inequivocabile sul fatto che durante la vita di Maometto non è stato scritto alcunché del Corano, e il profeta non sapeva leggere né scrivere, per cui la preservazione è avvenuta su pietre, foglie, corteccia e la memoria dei suoi affiliati. La tradizione asserisce che la prima compilazione si deve al segretario di Maometto, Zaid ibn Thabit, durante il tempo di Abu Bakr (632-634 d.C.), per poi essere riscritto durante il tempo del Califfo Uthman (circa 650 d.C.). Quattro o più copie di questa stesura sono state inviate a quattro città (Medina, Bassora, Bagdad e Damasco). Stando ai musulmani, sono proprio queste copie del Corano a esistere ai nostri giorni. Pertanto, non dovrebbe esserci alcun manoscritto coranico prima del 650 d.C., cioè la data della formazione del primo testo canonico.
2. Stando alla datazione dei frammenti di Birmingham (effettuata nel laboratorio di Oxford col Carbonio 14), ci troveremmo in anticipo di cinque anni sulla presunta compilazione del Corano. Altri laboratori stanno fornendo date analoghe per altri frammenti (principalmente dal manoscritto di Sanaa). È bene notare le date medie (516, 593, 606, 622 d.C.). Ad eccezione del manoscritto di Tubinga, tutti precedono non solo Uthman, ma anche il ministero di Maometto che, secondo la tradizione islamica, ha cominciato a ricevere il materiale coranico dal 610 d.C.

Laboratorio Arizona (USA) e Lione (Francia): 443-599 d.C. (media 516);

Laboratorio Arizona (USA) e Lione (Francia): 543-643 d.C. (media 593);

Manoscritti Birmingham, Laboratorio Oxford (Regno Unito): 568-645 d.C. (media 606);

Manoscritti Tübingen, (Laboratorio in Germania: 649-675 d.C. (media 662).

Come valutare quindi questi frammenti? Forse come esempi di manoscritti pre-coranici, o addirittura antecedenti Maometto?

1. Sappiamo che nel Corano si trovano parecchie vicende simili a plagi, e in alcuni casi quasi identiche, a racconti apocrifi giudaici pre-islamici e scritti settari cristiano-siriaci. Ecco alcuni esempi: 

1. -Sura 5:27-32 (Cain & Abel) =Targum Jonathan-ben-Uzziah, Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5

   -S. 21:51-71 (Abraham & the Kabah) = Midrash

        Rabbah (& Jonathan Ben Uziel’s mistake di UR)

   -S. 7:171 (Mt. Sinai) = Abodah Sarah

   -S. 27:17-44 (Salomone e Sceba) =  II° Targum 

                         of Esther

   -S  3:35-37 (Maria, Imran e Zaccaria) = ‘Proto-

                       evangelion’s James the Lesser’

   -S. 19:22-26 (Gesù, Maria e la palma) = ‘The 

                         Lost Books of the Bible’

   -S.3:46  (Gesù parla sin da neonato) = ‘The first

                 Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ’

  -S.3:49  (Gesù da bambino crea uccello dalla

               terra)= ‘Thomas‘ Gospel of the Infancy 

                of Jesus Christ’.

Sono forse racconti come questi che si trovano nei frammenti? Tutti risalgono al periodo II° – V° secolo, quindi pre-islamici, antecedenti Maometto e sicuramente prima di Othman, terzo califfo.

In conclusione, è possibile che le datazioni al carbonio possano in futuro essere dimostrate false, vista l’indeterminatezza delle date e la scienza ancora ai primi passi. Che i frammenti di Birmingham si collochino verso l’intervallo temporale più antico o recente, permangono comunque problematici non solo per essere troppo antichi rispetto al materiale coranico, ma anche incompleti (abbiamo solo porzioni di Sure) e con esempi di varianti manoscritti (termini e frasi che non corrispondono al Corano odierno). Stiamo ancora aspettando di trovare un Corano completo della metà del VII° secolo (cioè con tutte le 114 Sure) che sia esattamente come il Caireen Text canonico in uso ai nostri giorni. Di seguito, un elenco di manoscritti che possediamo e relative datazioni:

Bnf Arabo 328 (ab) CODICE PARIGINO-PETROPOLITANO (BN Parigi).

• 46 foglie nella Biblioteca Nazionale di Russia.
• 2 foglie nella Biblioteca Università di Birmingham (Datate a Oxford: 568-645 d.C.; media 606 d.C.).
• 1 foglia nella Biblioteca Vaticana (Collezione Khalili).

Deroche afferma che il Manoscritto include solo il 26% del Corano, scritto da cinque copisti differenti (1), con correzioni apportate al testo (2); differisce dal testo Caireen in 93 punti (3), che includono cancellature e addizioni (4). Tali modifiche erano intese allinearlo al testo canonico (5).

Bnf Arabo 328 (c) CODICE PARIGINO-PETROPOLITANO (BN Parigi).

• 16 foglie acquistate da Jean-Louis Asselin de Cherville da Fustat.

Includono le Sure 10:35 – 11:95; 20:99 – 23:11.

Manoscritto Tubinga (Tubingen- Germania).

• (Ms M a VI 165), datato al carbonio 649-675 d.C.; media 622 d.C.

Manoscritto Topkapi(Palazzo Topkapi, Istanbul)

• Altikulac e Ihsanoglu lo datano tra l’inizio e la metà dell’ VIII° secolo (6). Contiene circa il 99% del Corano, ma solo il 78% risulta leggibile. In tale porzione leggibile, si constatano oltre 2.270 varianti manoscritte (7).

Corano Samarkand Kufic(Tashkent, Uzbekistan)

• Studi paleografici e datazione al carbonio lo collocano fra l’ VIII e il IX secolo. Con una approssimazione del 95,4%, la datazione al radiocarbonio lo colloca fra 795-855 d.C. (Media 825 d.C.). Include solo le prime 43 Sure e contiene ortografia disordinata, errori di scrittura e di copiatura propri di uno scriba amatoriale (8).

Manoscritto Ma’il (BL 2165 – Biblioteca 

                              Britannica, Londra)

• Datato fra il tardo VII secolo e l’inizio dell’ VIII. Include solo le prime 43 Sure (il 53% del Corano).

Manoscritti Sanaa (Casa dei Manoscritti, Sanaa,  

                               Yemen)

• La datazione calligrafica si orienta fra il 710-715 d.C. (9). Nuovi studi non ancora resi pubblici suggeriscono si tratti di sovrapposizioni di testi, quindi di un palinsesto. Stando a Puin, la numerazione e l’ordine delle Sure è differente.

1 Deroche 2009:172

2 Deroche 2009:173

3 Deroche 2009:174

4 Deroche 2009:175

5 Deroche 2009:178

6 Altikulac, ‘Al-Mushaf al-Sharif’ 2007:81

7 Altikulac, ‘Al-Mushaf al-Sharif’ 2007:81

8 Altikulac, ‘Al-Mushaf al-Sharif’ 2007:71-72

9 Saifullah, M S M; Ghali Adi; ‘Abdullah David (2008-11-08)

Koran Birmingham: CARBON DATING THE EARLIEST FOLIOS – WHAT IS ITS SIGNIFICANCE?

CARBON DATING THE EARLIEST FOLIOS – WHAT IS ITS SIGNIFICANCE? (Jay Smith – Pfander Centre for Apologetics)

The Birmingham fragments (folios) claimed by BBC in July 2015, suggested that their two folios have been dated, using Carbon 14 dating, from 568 - 645 AD, and since these dates roughly cover the life of Muhammad (according to Islamic Tradition: 570 - 632 AD), these folios must be the oldest Qur’anic material in existence, due to the fact that they are from Muhammad's lifetime. There are a number of problems with this claim. Here are a few:
1) Islamic tradition (from Al Bukhari 6:509-610) is very clear that there was no Qur'an written during the lifetime of Muhammad, that he could not read nor write himself, and thus it was preserved on stones, bark, leaves, and within the memory of his companions. Islamic Tradition also tells us that it was first compiled by his secretary, Zaid ibn Thabit, during the time of Abu Bakr (632-634 AD), and then had to be rewritten again during the time of the Caliph Uthman (around 650 AD), and that 4 or more copies of this recension were then sent to four cities (Medina, Basra, Baghdad, and Damascus). Muslims claim that it is these final copies of the Qur'an which exist today. Therefore, there should be no manuscripts of any Qur’an from before 650 AD, since this is the date that the first canonized text was created.
2) These two folios in Birmingham were compiled (according to the Carbon 14 dating, at the Oxford laboratory), between 568 - 645 AD, which is five years before the Qur'an was supposedly compiled. There are other laboratories which are now giving us similar dates for other folios (primarily taken from the Sana'a manuscript). Note the median dates (516 AD, 593 AD, 606 AD, 662 AD). Except for the Tubingen MS, they all predate, not only Uthman, but also the ministry of Muhammad, who, according to Islamic Tradition, only began to receive Qur’anic material from 610 AD:
-Arizona Laboratory (USA) & Lyon Laboratory (France) = 443 – 599 AD: median date = 516 AD -Arizona Laboratory (USA) & Lyon Laboratory (France) = 543 – 643 AD: median date = 593 AD -Birmingham MS, Oxford Laboratory (UK) = 568 – 645 AD: median date = 606 AD
-Tubingen MS, Zurich Laboratory (Germany) = 649 - 675 AD: median date = 662 AD
So, what are these folios (or fragments)? Could they be examples of pre-Qur’anic, or even pre- Muhammad manuscripts?
3) We do know that there are quite a number of stories within the Qur’an which are similar, and in some cases almost identical to pre-Islamic apocryphal Jewish fables, and Christian Syriac sectarian writings. For instance, here are a few examples:
-S. 5:27-32 (Cain & Abel) = the Targum of Jonathan-ben-Uzziah, and the Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5 -S. 21:51-71 (Abraham & the Kabah) = the Midrash Rabbah (& Jonathan Ben Uziel’s mistake of UR) -S. 7:171 (Mt. Sinai) = the Abodah Sarah
-S. 27:17-44 (Solomon and Sheba) = the II Targum of Esther
-S. 3:35-37 (Mary, Imran and Zachariah) = the Proto-evangelion’s James the Lesser
-S. 19:22-26 (Jesus, Mary and the Palm Tree) = the Lost Books of the Bible
-S.3:46 (Baby Jesus talking) = the first Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ
-S.3:49 (Jesus creating birds from clay) = Thomas’ Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ
Could it be stories such as these which are found within these folios? They are all from the 2nd – 5th centuries, thus all pre Islamic, pre-Muhammad, and certainly pre Uthman.
Conclusion: It is possible that the carbon datings might later be proven false, since the dates are so inexact, and this is still a rather new science. Regardless, whether these folios are early or late, they are still problematic, not only because they are too early to be Qur’anic, but they are not complete (they only include portions of Suras), and they show examples of manuscript variants (words and phrases which do not correspond with the Qur’an we have today).

We are still waiting for a complete mid-7th century Qur’an (i.e. all 114 Suras, inclusive), which is exactly like the current canonized 1924 Caireen Text used today. That has yet to be found.
Consider next the much larger Qur'anic manuscripts we do possess, and their dates, all of which are much later than these folios. This is indeed problematic as well. You will note that not one of them is from the time of Uthman, nor (except for possibly the Ma'il MS), even from the same century! Nor are they complete. What's more, they all have corrections, some of which continue up to the 9th century!
Unlike the earlier folios, the larger manuscripts should be complete, and unchanged from the current Qur'anic text. The fact that none of them are, including those which were written over a century after Muhammad, suggests that they were all created by later Muslims, borrowing and incorporating much of the earlier Jewish (apocryphal) and Christian (sectarian) stories found in the earlier pre-Qur'anic folios now being dated in laboratories around the world.
Both the early dates for the folios and the late dates for the manuscripts prove that the Qur'an we have today is not eternal, nor is it from Muhammad, nor from Uthman, but possibly nothing more than a man-made document written and compiled much later, and redacted back to a man named Muhammad, in order to give the Arabs the identity they craved, providing them with a 'book and a man', much like the Jews and Christians already had.

OVERVIEW OF THE MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE:
BnF Arabe 328 (ab) CODEX PARISINO-PETROPOLITANUS (BN PARIS):
-46 leaves in the Russian National Library
-2 leaves in the University of Birmingham Library (Dated in Oxford at: 568-645 AD, med = 606AD) -1 leaf in the Vatican Library (Khalili Collection)
-Deroche says the Manuscript only includes 26% of the Qur’an
-Written by 5 different copyists,1 and corrections have been made to the text2
-It disagrees with the Caireen text in 93 places,3 including erasures and additions.4
-These later changes were intended to bring it in line with the canonical text.5
BnF Arabe 328 (c) CODEX PARISINO-PETROPOLITANUS (BN PARIS):
-16 leaves bought by Jean-Louis Asselin de Cherville (d.1822) from Fustat -They include Suras 10:35 – 11:95; 20:99 – 23:11

Tübingen manuscript
-(Ms M a VI 165), has been carbon dated to between 649 and 675 (Median = 662AD)
Topkapi Manuscript (Topkapi Palace, Istanbul, Turkey)
-It is dated by Altikulac & Ihsanoglu from early to mid 8th c.6 -Contains around 99% of the Qur’an, but only 78% is readable



1 Deroche 2009:172
2 Deroche 2009:173
3 Deroche 2009:174
4 Deroche 2009:175
5 Deroche 2009:178
6 Altıkulaç, ‘Al-Mushaf al-Sharif’ 2007:81

-There are over 2,270 manuscript variants within the 78% readable portion.7
Samarkand Kufic Qur’an (Tashkent, Uzbekistan)
-Dated to the 8th or 9th c. using paleographic studies and carbon dating.
-Radio-Carbon dating = 95.4% probability between 795AD-855AD (Median = 825AD) -Only includes the first 43 Suras.
-Contains: Undisciplined spelling, scribal mistakes, copyist mistakes, written by an amateur8
Ma’il Manuscript (BL 2165 – British Library, London, England) -Dated late 7th - early 8th c.
-Only includes the first 43 Suras (or 53% of the Qur’an)
Sana’a Manuscripts (House of Manuscripts, Sana’a, Yemen)
-Calligraphic dating points to 710AD – 715AD9
-New, unpublished studies suggest there are layers of text underneath, thus a palimpsest -Puin suggests it has different numeration and Sura arrangements

7 Altıkulaç, ‘Al-Mushaf al-Sharif’ 2007:81
8 Altıkulaç, ‘Al-Mushaf al-Sharif’ 2007:71-72
9 Saifullah, M S M; Ghali Adi; ʿAbdullah David (2008-11-08) 

Koran Birmingham: VARIANT READINGS – by GABRIEL SAID REYNOLDS

VARIENT READINGS – by GABRIEL SAID REYNOLDS
The Birmingham Qur’an in the context of debate on Islamic origins Published: 5 August 2015

A section of a Qur’anic manuscript in the Hijazi script held by the University of Birmingham. Experts in radiocarbon analysis at the University of Oxford have dated the parchment to between the years 568 and 645

On July 22 the BBC published an article on its website entitled “‘Oldest’ Koran Fragments found in Birmingham University” that sparked great excitement among academics and Muslim

believers alike. At the heart of the article is the news – mentioned in last week’s issue of the TLS – that two leaves of a Qur’an manuscript studied by Alba Fedeli and held at Birmingham’s university library had been carbon dated to somewhere between AD 568–645 (carbon dating allows only for a range of years, and not a precise date). Several academics and Muslim leaders are quoted in the article, and they agree that this finding reveals something of immense importance about the origins of Islam. Muhammad Isa Waley, a manuscript expert from the British Library, declares that the news will have Muslims “rejoicing”. David Thomas, Professor of Christianity and Islam at Birmingham University, explains that whoever composed this manuscript might “have heard the Prophet Muhammad preach”, and insists that the dating of the manuscript shows that the Qur’an “has undergone little or no alteration”.

However, the BBC article – like a subsequent New York Times article (also July 22) – misses the most significant point about the dating of this Qur’an manuscript (which contains only a small section of the text: parts of chapters 18, 19, and 20). Islamic tradition reports that Muhammad received revelations from the angel Gabriel between the year 610, when he was forty years old, and his death in 632. But according to Islamic tradition, he did not write down these revelations. Instead, his proclamations were preserved only on various scraps (one tradition speaks of palm leaves, parchment and the shoulder blades of camels), or in versions which some of his companions composed. An official text of the Qur’an was only recorded around 650, during the reign (644–656) of Uthman (the third Caliph, or successor, of the Prophet Muhammad). According to a well-known Islamic tradition Uthman had his “official” text of the Qur’an prepared by a committee, and all variant versions destroyed by fire: “Uthman sent to every Muslim province one copy of what they had copied, and ordered that all the other Qur’anic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt”.

Most traditional Muslim scholars believe that Uthman’s version of the Qur’an was reliable, although there are interesting traditions according to which certain companions of Muhammad resisted the Caliph’s orders, notably one Ibn Masud (a companion who is said to have been commended by the Prophet for his knowledge of the Qur’an) in the city of Kufa. Moreover, many early Shiite scholars doubted the reliability of the Qur’anic version of Uthman (someone who, from a Shiite perspective, usurped the rightful place of Ali at the head of the Islamic community).

Yet the very early dating of the Birmingham manuscript (568–645) – almost certainly before the reign of Uthman – casts doubt on the traditional story. The Birmingham

manuscript does not appear to be a scrap, or a variant version kept by some companion, which somehow escaped the Caliph’s burning decree. It appears to be the standard Qur’an which Muslims attribute to Uthman. In other words, the dates of the Birmingham manuscript are not simply early. They’re too early. Instead of rejoicing, the news about this manuscript should lead to head-scratching.

Moreover, the extremely early date range of the Birmingham text (most of which is before even the date when Muhammad is said to have begun his preaching) seems to confirm the early dating of other manuscripts. Among the manuscripts that were discovered in 1972 when repair work was being done on the ceiling of the Great Mosque of Sanaa in Yemen was a rare Qur’anic palimpsest – that is, a manuscript preserving an original Qur’an text that had been erased and written over with a new Qur’an text. This palimpsest has been analysed by a German husband and wife team, Gerd and Elisabeth Puin, by Asma Hilali of the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, and later by Behnam Sadeghi of Stanford University. Sadeghi benefited from the use of X-Ray fluorescence imaging to render certain leaves of the lower (that is, original) text of the Qur’anic palimpsest visible. What all of these scholars have discovered is remarkable: the earlier text of the Qur’an contains numerous variants to the standard consonantal text of the Qur’an.

Now here it is important to explain that ancient manuscripts of the Qur’an tend not to represent all of the vowels, but only a skeletal form of Arabic consonants. Later manuscripts vary in terms of the marks they add to the consonantal “skeleton” of the Qur’an to indicate vowels and consonants. Indeed, throughout most of Islamic history there were open discussions about variant readings of the Qur’an. Things changed only in the early twentieth century. In 1924 a committee organized by the Egyptian ministry of education produced a text of the Qur’an for use within the country (and had competing editions sunk in the Nile River). This Egyptian text (slightly revised later in 1924, and again in 1936, the first year of King Farouk’s reign, for which reason it became known as the King Farouk Qur’an) has now become the standard Qur’an text. Today this text is so widespread it might lead one to conclude that the Qur’an has never had any variants. Yet this reflects the success of the Egyptian project, and not the history of the Qur’anic text.

Nevertheless, while the history of Qur’anic variants has long been a topic of academic discussion, it has also long been thought that at least the Qur’an’s consonantal skeleton was unchanging. Before the Sanaa palimpsest, no early manuscript was known to vary significantly in terms of that skeleton. The basic form of the Qur’anic text, in other words, was thought to have been more or less perfectly preserved. Yet the Sanaa manuscript, which is almost certainly the most ancient Qur’an manuscript known to us, contains a surprising number of variants, including completely different words, and presents the chapters (known as suras) of the Qur’an in a different order.

What made this discovery all the more exciting was the dating of this manuscript. When Sadeghi sent out a sample of parchment of the palimpsest for radiocarbon dating (performed at a laboratory in Arizona) the result came in that it had a 75.1 per cent chance of dating before 646. Now carbon dating estimates when the animal was slaughtered to make the parchment, not when the text itself was written, but it is thought that not much time would pass between the two (in theory it is possible to date the ink on a manuscript, but it is difficult to get enough ink, and to avoid contamination from the parchment, to do so). Sadeghi’s colleague at Stanford, Uwe Bergmann, announced elsewhere that this manuscript likely dates to the lifetime of Muhammad himself.

Meanwhile, two fragments of this same manuscript were sent out for dating by a French scholar of early Arabic, Christian Robin, to a laboratory in Lyon. Results came back which indicated that the manuscript is older still: one fragment was dated to 543–643 and the other to 433–599. There has been a lot of discussion of these early dates over social media. Some scholars have held that they are so early that the job had been botched. However, still further tests (not yet published) on additional fragments of this manuscript have been done which have also yielded early results. In any case, the Birmingham results suggest that Lyon might not have botched the job after all. Intriguingly, the first date range from Lyon (543–643) corresponds rather closely to the date range given (from a laboratory in Oxford) for the Birmingham manuscript (568–645).

Now the Sanaa manuscript has so many variants that one might imagine it is a vestige of an ancient version that somehow survived Uthman’s burning of all versions of the Qur’an except his own. The problem with this idea is that the variants of that manuscript do not match the variants reported in medieval literature for those codices kept by companions of the Prophet. Sadeghi argues that this must have been the codex of some unknown companion. This is an interesting, although speculative, idea. For now all we know is that our most ancient manuscript of the Qur’an does not agree with the standard text read around the world today.

It is also important to remember that the carbon dating of parchment is an imprecise science (something indicated by the large range of possible dates given for the various fragments). Scholars have long debated, for example, the carbon 14 tests that have been carried out on the Dead Sea scrolls found around Qumran. And indeed, the date ranges for the Scrolls vary widely. For example, the famous Isaiah scroll of Qumran has been dated (with a 95 per cent probability) variously either to 351–295 BC, or 230–53 BC (or, according to another laboratory, 351–296 BC, or 203–48 BC).

Thus the Dead Sea Scrolls dating allows for a range of several hundred years (and even then many scholars argue that the palaeographic dating – that is, dating based on the script – of the Scrolls is more reliable than carbon dating). What is more, the dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls might be considered more accurate than the dating of the Qur’an manuscripts, since fragments from many different samples of the scrolls – and even samples from other materials found at Qumran (including a piece of leather and a scrap of linen) have been tested. This allows scientists to calibrate their measurements more precisely. Such calibration has not yet been possible for Qur’an manuscripts. We are not even sure of the precise original location of the manuscripts (the Birmingham manuscript may have been located in Fustat, Egypt at some point, but this does not mean it was written there).

Nevertheless, the early dating of the Sanaa manuscript is telling in light of the extremely early dating of the Birmingham manuscript. Almost all of the date range (568–645) given for that manuscript is before the reign of Uthman and most of it is even before the traditional dates of Muhammad’s preaching. This is all the more startling because the Birmingham manuscript has the appearance of a more developed text. Both the lower text of the Sanaa palimpsest and the text of the Birmingham manuscript include certain features – such as dividers between suras, and certain dashes to distinguish consonants – which may represent a later stage of writing (which means it is possible that we will still find even earlier, and more primitive, Qur’an manuscripts). However, the Birmingham manuscript largely conforms to the standard text of the Qur’an. It seems, in other words, to represent a distinctly later stage in the history of the Qur’anic text. Now one might assign the Birmingham manuscript to the very end of the date range given for it (568–645) because of what we think we “know” about the traditional story

of the Qur’an’s origins, in an attempt to make it fit in to the reign of Uthman (644–656). Alternatively, it might be time to consider again what we think we know.

The upshot of all of these early dates is that the Qur’an may very well date earlier than Uthman, possibly much earlier. It may be time to rethink the story of the Qur’an’s origins, including the traditional dates of Muhammad’s career. In other words, what observers have celebrated as something like evidence of the traditional story of Islam’s origins (the New York Times article argued that the manuscript “offered a moment of unity, and insight, for the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims”) may actually be, when considered carefully, evidence that the story of Islam’s origins is quite unlike what we have imagined.

Nevertheless, the extremely early dating of these manuscripts is helpful for the way it helps clarify something which has troubled scholars of early Islam. Many elements of the Qur’an are difficult to understand. For example, twenty-nine of its suras begin with a series of disconnected letters, yet the origin and meaning of those letters remains a mystery (for which reason they have been dubbed the “mysterious letters”). To give another example: in two passages (2:62 and 5:69) the Qur’an speaks of a group called the Sabi’un who seem to be promised entry into heaven (along with “the believers”, Jews and Christians). Yet no one is sure exactly who these Sabi’un are. Indeed, we find that Muslim scholars, even the earliest Muslim scholars, do not understand the “mysterious letters” and cannot identify the Sabi’un. In other words, somehow the meaning of these things had been lost by the time the text reached them.

The early dating of these Qur’an manuscripts helps us make sense of this (even if it won’t tell us the meaning of the “mysterious letters” or the identity of the Sabi’un). It seems that by the time the Qur’an reached these scholars (whose work begins to be written in the second half of the eighth century) it was already a very old text which was no longer understood well. This is a hypothesis raised by Michael Cook at the end of his work The Koran: A very short introduction (2000). Now that the Qur’an appears to be older than imagined, the hypothesis seems more likely than ever. 

Koran Birmingham:The BBC-Birmingham “Qur’an” Facts Fiasco

The BBC-Birmingham “Qur’an” Facts Fiasco
Posted on July 23, 2015 by R Joseph Hoffmann
The New Oxonian - Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient (https://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/2015/07/23/the-bbc-birmingham- quran-facts-fiasco/)

It is one of the cardinal tenets of Islam that the Qur’an was essentially “complete” in the Prophet’s lifetime and written down very soon after in the time of Uthman before the end of the seventh century It is a further tenet that the exact wording of the text has remained unchanged from the time of its revelation until today. A standard web-based information site offers the following standard orthodox appraisal:

“The Qur’an is a record of the exact words revealed by God through the Angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad. It was memorized by Muhammad and then dictated to his Companions, and written down by scribes, who cross-checked it during his lifetime. Not one word of its 114 chapters, Suras, has been changed over the centuries, so that the Qur’an is in every detail the unique and miraculous text which was revealed to Muhammad fourteen centuries ago.” (www.islamicity.com, search for ‘What is the Qur`an?’)

To this surgically clean declaration of authenticity, one might want to compare the tortured history of the New Testament: academic study has shown that nothing was written by Jesus; nothing was written in Aramaic, the language he spoke, and the written record shows a long history of textual transmission and change going back to a fluid period of “orality” in which specific sayings and deeds were recorded (and others chopped or forgotten). Modern biblical criticism, though it did not begin as this, has been for the last two centuries a systematic exploration of redactions, alterations, variations and theological finessing of texts: There are no original manuscripts and there is today no possibility of finding one that could indubitably be called “original.” None existed in the time of Jesus or his followers, as far as we know, and it is really not until the end of the first century that written gospels begin to appear—and not until the second that we begin to see hard—papyrological–as opposed to narrative allusions to their existence.

The belief that the Qur’an had an entirely different history from the biblical text was called into question by a palimpsest (a manuscript from which an existing text has been scraped or washed to make room for another one, to avoid the expense of additional writing material) known as ‘DAM 0 1-27.1.’1, discovered by Muslims in 1972 at the ancient Great Mosque of Sana’a in Yemen.

Aided by ultraviolet photography, this palimpsest was shown to contain many differences compared with today’s Arabic Qur’an. They range from different and missing words and dissimilar spellings to a changed order of Surahs and words within verses. The find is part of a bundle of parchments thought—until a few days ago– to be the oldest surviving copies of the Qur’an. According to Gerd Puin, a western expert in the early text of the Qur’an, the palimpsest known as ‘DAM 0 1-27.1’ contains at least 38 Qur’an leaves. It is undoubtedly extracted from a “book” rather than notes used by imams for the purpose of recalling stories learned by rote. They were each written on parchment with an approximate size of 36.5 x 28.5 cm. Since on the majority of the leaves a primary text is visible and both texts contain parts of over 70 % of today’s Qur’an, the palimpsest must be a remnant of two, previously complete, yet different Qur’ans. ‘Folio 16r’2 contains Surah 9:70-80 in the less visible primary writing and Surah 30:26-40 in the better visible secondary writing. The Yemeni Qur’an provides almost conclusive evidence that the text of the Qur’an was not settled in the seventh century and underwent the same kind of editorial emendation that parchment- manuscripts routinely went through in the process of copying and transcription.

The Yemen Qur’an’s story is repeated in the work of the Coranica Project. Scholars at the University of Tübingen, examined a Quranic manuscript written in Kufic script, one of the oldest forms of Arabic writing. Using carbon-14 dating on three samples of the manuscript parchment, the researchers concluded that it was more than 95 percent likely to have originated in the period 649-675 AD. The Tubingen Qur’an also showed clear signs of alteration, increasing the probability that the Qur’anic text was altered over time.

The Birmingham “Qur’an”

The discovery in Birmingham University touted by the BBC and happily embraced by Muslim scholars and others as “the oldest” copy of the Qur’an yet discovered is riddled as Robert Spencer argues with journalistic error. The BBC story, trumpeted by news agencies all over the world, is one of those examples of media reporting about religion based on wishful thinking and an ill-disguised hankering for stories about miracles that occasionally remind us that journalism is not science, nor history, or even responsible analysis. Eventually, experts will chime in with questions, the most poignant of which will be these:

1. 1. Islamic tradition itself asserts that the Qur’an was finalized during the reign of the caliph Uthman in 653 who ordered “other versions” burned. What were these “other versions” if not variant texts that differed from the text of the one he authorized to be used in his region? Inscriptions at The Dome of the Rock (ca. 691) do not respect the Qur’anic ordering of the surahs as they have come to exist in modern editions of the Qur’an; it would be anomalous indeed if a text (arguably) dating from so close to the Prophet’s lifetime followed the ordering of surahs (chapters) used in later versions of the text.
2. 2. The earliest literary reference to the Qur’an as a complete book is from the early eighth century, in the context of a debate between a Christian monk from the monastery of Beth Hale (Iraq?) and an Arab nobleman. The dialogue suggests that Muhammad taught a portion of what Muslims believed in the Qur’an and a portion in free floating “surat albaqrah and in gygy and in twrh.” The surah the monk mentions is now fully incorporated in the Qur’an, but in his time was not, since he knows it as a stand- alone book, سورة البقرة, al-Baqara. It is the second and longest surah in the Qur’an as we possess it today.

3. The Birmingham University professor, David Thomas, who has made extravagant claims for this discovery does not seem to be aware that he is arguing against his own position: Since (as for a gospel) there is no standard prototype of the Qur’an which could possibly show whether the “original” text has been altered or modified, how can we possibly be sure that the thin series of verses available correspond to an original word order? The Yemen and Tubingen Qur’anic extracts showed just the opposite: under ultraviolet examination they revealed editorial modification or “bleeding” beneath the superscribed text. As Robert Spencer correctly asks, if the only reliable date we have is for the organic material (sheep or goatskin) we still need to date the ink, as Hijazi script, while early, is common in parchment found from this part of the Arabian peninsula.
4. The nature of the leaves themselves is puzzling: bits of Suras 18 and 20, “containing a story about Moses (18), along with material about Dhul Qarnayn, who is usually assumed to be Alexander the Great, and the Christian story of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, and sura 19, with an extended retelling of the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ.” These are some of the most obviously derivative sections of the entire Qur’an– stories which the Qur’an cannibalizes without attribution, increasing the likelihood that what we may have is not the Qur’an at all but fragments of stories that were eventually incorporated into the Qur’an at a later period.

Compositionally this may be an exciting archaeological find—since it would tell us something about the real process under which the book was compiled using fragments of other books. Instead, using the traditional religious view of compositional integrity, a theological doctrine rather than a scientific conclusion, the Birmingham experts and the media rush to conclude that we have a kind of proof for the immutability of the text. The Birmingham team as much as admit this since we are told that “the verses are incomplete, and believed to have been an aide memoire for an imam who already knew the Qur’an by heart, but the text is very close to the accepted authorized version.”

5. Even if we would allow that the parchment, the ink and the verses coincide to give us the oldest example of Qur’anic material yet discovered, which is not only not conclusive but highly improbable, the question remains why such an early “edition” of the Qur’an should have been circulating among the illiterate Arab populations of the Middle East at such an early date. No one can have read it. It was not used for distribution to masses of believers or potential converts. The only plausible explanation is that what has been found in Birmingham is an aide memoire of a few verses that may correspond to late stories incorporated in the Qur’anic corpus. It is not from that corpus and probably, given the selection of material, was used to preach to Christians and Arabic speaking Jews who were interested in hearing how their own traditions could be reconciled with the teaching of Muhammad. In other words, what has been discovered is proof of the fluidity rather than the rigidity of the Qur’anic compositional process in the late seventh or more likely eighth century.
6. Faith before reason: A disturbing feature of this story is in the backlight. The problem is clear enough from this part of the BBC report:

‘The British Library’s expert on such manuscripts, Dr Muhammad Isa Waley, said this “exciting discovery” would make Muslims “rejoice”. The manuscript had been kept with a collection of other Middle Eastern books and documents, without being identified as one of the oldest fragments of the Koran in the world.When a PhD researcher, Alba Fedeli, looked more closely at these pages it was decided to carry out a radiocarbon dating test and the

results were “startling”. The university’s director of special collections, Susan Worrall, said researchers had not expected “in our wildest dreams” that it would be so old. “Finding out we had one of the oldest fragments of the Koran in the whole world has been fantastically exciting.” The fragments of the Koran are still legible.’

It is disheartening enough to think that an archivist thinks that archaeology has the reinforcement of religious belief as one of its byproducts, but it is clear from the way the story has been told and disseminated that enthusiasm for an outcome has outdistanced any sober examination of claims. The find is already being touted throughout the Islamic world as a vindication of Islamic belief.

So to repeat: What we have at Birmingham is the discovery of leaves of parchment, probably recycled and scraped and used by a religious teacher to record bits of memorized narrative from sources that finally make their way into the Qur’an. That there should be some overlap in these extracts and later editions of the Qur’an as copied and printed is not at all surprising. But as there is no prototype, it can hardly be said to be evidence of an unalterable textual tradition. There is no compelling reason to think that this slim discovery proves the inviolability of the Islamic holy book, or vindicates any doctrine. In fact, if treated intelligently and using the methods of western textual criticism, this could shed light on how books like the Qur’an evolved over time to become compendiums of the words of men regarded as the prophets and teachers of their tradition. So far however, we see little evidence that the find will be treated in that way. As Gerd Puin has said, “My idea is that the Koran is a kind of cocktail of texts that were not all understood even at the time of Muhammad. Many of them may even be a hundred years older than Islam itself. Even within the Islamic traditions there is a huge body of contradictory information, including a significant Christian substrate; one can derive a whole Islamic anti-history from them if one wants...” What we have at Birmingham perfectly illustrates that point. 

BIRMINGHAM: Koran discovery could rewrite Islamic history

Koran discovery could rewrite Islamic history
Oliver Moody - Science Correspondent
Published at THE TIMES, August 31 2015

 The manuscript has been identified as one of the world's oldest fragments of the Koran

A copy of the Koran that may predate the Prophet Muhammad could rewrite the early history of Islam, scholars believe.

Scientists at the University of Oxford said last month that carbon dating of a fragment of the holy text held by a Birmingham library suggested that it was among the oldest in the world.

At the time the discovery was hailed as confirmation that the Koran had faithfully preserved the words passed on by Muhammad for more than 1,350 years. Now, several historians think the parchment appears to be so old that

it contradicts most accounts of the Prophet’s life and legacy, and may “radically alter the edifice of Islamic tradition”. These claims are strongly disputed by Muslim scholars.

If the dating is correct, the “Birmingham Koran” was produced between AD568 and AD645, while the dates usually given for Muhammad are AD570 to AD632. At the very latest, it was made before the first formal text of the Koran is supposed to have been collated at the behest of the caliph Uthman, the third of the Prophet’s successors, in 653. At the earliest it could date back to Muhammad’s childhood, or possibly even before his birth.

Some academics believe the text’s impact could be comparable to discovering of a copy of gospel sayings that dated back to the infancy of Jesus.

Tom Holland, the historian and author of In The Shadow of the Sword, said evidence was mounting that traditional accounts of Islam’s origins were unreliable or even wrong.

This would be especially challenging for the Salafist branch of Islam, whose offshoots include al- Qaeda and Islamic State, and which attempts to rebuild the politics and lifestyles of Muhammad’s contemporaries as described in later historical sources, most of which were only compiled after AD800.

“It destabilises, to put it mildly, the idea that we can know anything with certainty about how the Koran emerged — and that in turn has implications for the historicity of Muhammad and the Companions [his followers],” Mr Holland said.

 

Other very old Korans — particularly a more eccentric text found in the roof of the Great Mosque in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen and carbon-dated to the sixth or seventh century — seem to confirm that the holy verses were circulating in written form at least before the Prophet’s death.

Keith Small, Koranic manuscript consultant at the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, said that carbon dating was not always reliable and the dates announced last month applied not to the ink but to the parchment. The provenance of the text is also unclear and its calligraphic script is characteristic of later inscriptions.

Yet Dr Small believes that the dates are probably right and may raise broad questions about the origins of Islam. “If the [radio carbon] dates apply to the parchment and the ink, and the dates across the entire range apply, then the Koran — or at least portions of it — predates Muhammad, and moves back the years that an Arabic literary culture is in place well into the 500s,” he said.

“This gives more ground to what have been peripheral views of the Koran’s genesis, like that Muhammad and his early followers used a text that was already in existence and shaped it to fit their own political and theological agenda, rather than Muhammad receiving a revelation from heaven.

“This would radically alter the edifice of Islamic tradition and the history of the rise of Islam in late Near Eastern antiquity would have to be completely revised, somehow accounting for another book of scripture coming into existence 50 to 100 years before, and then also explaining how this was co-opted into what became the entity of Islam by around AD700.”

Muslim academics are more sanguine about the dates of the Birmingham Koran. Mustafa Shah, from the School of Oriental and African Studies, in London, said it was important to be wary of revisionist claims. “If anything, the manuscript has consolidated traditional accounts of the Koran’s origins,” he said.

Shady Hekmat Nasser, from the University of Cambridge, said: “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.”
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/faith/article4542663.ece
Tom Holland and Dr. Sajjad Rizvi (Univ. of Exeter) on BBC Radio 4 (1 p.m. BST) August 31, 2015: (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p031727y)