Oldest Known Written Part of Quran Found.

The document is part of the university's Mingana Collection of Middle Eastern manuscripts, held in the Cadbury Research Library. The library contains some 200,000 pre-1850 books dating from 1471 and some 4 million manuscripts. The Quran manuscript will be on public display at the university from Oct. 2 to Oct. 25.
 
I'm interested to see if other news outlets carry more information on this or if the graduate student conducting the research publishes a story about the discovery. There is certainly something to be said for the originality of the writing if passages from such an early Quran were seamlessly integrated into a newer version.
 
I agree Steve. I'd love to hear an Imam's (or several) to verify the text to the one we have. I will say however, it is possible that it is a reproduction of what was originally told, and travelled therefore picking up the inevitable error. I would very much so like it to be verified though.
 
the fact that it was written in another arabic language...(like greek of today and koine greek) is intriguing to me.... a lack of differences would be improbable...
 
wil said:
the fact that it was written in another arabic language...(like greek of today and koine greek) is intriguing to me.... a lack of differences would be improbable...
Click to expand...

I thought about that too. The article left a lot unsaid. For instance, what is "a more recent century?" Does that mean one century after those two leaves were written and Hijazi was still in use, or is it from a 1471 Quran and the earliest work in that library's collection? A librarian friend told me that collections usually list the date range, not from the earliest books in the collection, but from the earliest year that has a significant number of books.
 
wil said:
the fact that it was written in another arabic language...(like greek of today and koine greek) is intriguing to me.... a lack of differences would be improbable...
Click to expand...
Hijazi Arabic isn't another language, more of a dialect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hejazi_Arabic . And there is known that Prophet Mouhammed (PBUH) taught recitation in many dialects. It would sound different, but contain the same words.
 
BigJoeNobody said:
It would sound different, but contain the same words.
Click to expand...

That certainly helps explain the insertion of those leaves in an older work without raising any continuity gaps with the surrounding text.
 
you have to remember Classical arabic written is without vowels. The way they tell which group wrote what, is the style of writing. They all used similar shapes for each letter, but the letters themselves stayed the same. Here in the US we call the word ABOUT (ab-out), in Canada that same spelling comes out to sound more like (a-boot).

It is tough to understand how this all works. But what I find fascinating is that IF this is from the time where the ayas were revealed, this could be one of the original manuscripts used to create the whole written work we use today. It does say however that it contains full Surahs, which leaves me suspect that this is from at least soon after.
 
My understanding is that in Chinese...all is written the same...but the dialects read them different... everyone can read the words, but not everyone can talk to each other? How would a dialect be written differently??

Steve, it said the oldest book was from 1471 and it had a few hundred thousand books...but millions of manuscripts...did not say what the date of the oldest manuscript was...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top