Sana’a Palimpsest
The Holy Quran, also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims believe to be a revelation from God. It is widely regarded as the finest work in classical Arabic literature. The Quran is divided into 114 chapters (surah), which are subdivided into 6236 or 6,666 verses (ayah), the number varies if the (bismillahs) "In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful" a phrase recited before each surah, except for the ninth, are counted separately.
Muslims believe that the Quran was orally revealed by God to the final Prophet, Muhammad, through the archangel Gabriel (Jibril), incrementally over a period of some 23 years, beginning on 22 December 609 CE, when Muhammad was 40, and concluding in 632 CE, the year of his death. Muslims regard the Quran as Muhammad's most important miracle, a proof of his Prophethood.
The Quran assumes familiarity with major narratives recounted in the Biblical scriptures. It summarizes some, dwells at length on others and, in some cases, presents alternative accounts and interpretations of events. It describes itself as a book of guidance for mankind (Quran 2:185).
The Ma'il Quran is an 8th century Quran (between 700 to 799 CE) originated from Saudi Arabia. It contains two-thirds of the Quran text and is one of the oldest Qurans in the world. It is now kept in The British Library.
The Holy Quran as known in present day, was first compiled into book format by Zayd ibn Thabit and other scribes under the third caliph Uthman Ibn Affan (r. 644–56 CE). For this reason, the Quran as it exists today is also known as the Uthmanic codex.
In Birmingham is a Quran manuscript, a parchment on which two leaves of an early Quranic manuscript are written. In 2015 the manuscript, which is held by the University of Birmingham, was radiocarbon dated to between (568 to 645 CE) or (in the Islamic calendar, between 56 BH to 25 AH).
The Great Mosque of Sana'a is an ancient Mosque in Sana'a, Yemen, just east of the old Ghumdan Palace site, is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Old City of Sana'a. Dating to the seventh century, it was reportedly built in part from the materials of the Ghumdan Palace, an ancient palace and fortress in Sana'a, Yemen.
According to the authentic Islamic scriptures, Prophet Muhammad was associated with the Mosque's planning and construction around (630 AD) or (6 AH). Sana'a was central in the propagation of the Islamic religion in the post-Hijra period. Many of the archaeological finds discovered in the Great Mosque substantiate its construction to the era when Prophet Muhammad was alive.
In 1972–73, when plaster was removed by archaeologists, they discovered some 65 artifacts connected to the capital when it contained the Cathedral of Sana'a. These items included large quantities of old manuscripts and parchments, as well as the Sana'a manuscripts, found by construction workers while renovating an attic wall. Not realizing the value of their find, they gathered up the documents, packed them away into potato sacks, and left them on the staircase of one of the Mosque's minarets.
Some 12,000 Quranic parchment fragments were discovered. These fragments consist of tiny snippets to whole folios belonging to some 926 copies of the Quran. To date, only a small portion of the fragments have been published, and it is unknown when the rest will be published.
Also discovered while removing the plaster were twelve ancient copies of the Quran parchments in Kufic script, as well as four thousand rare Arabic manuscripts linked to the start of Islam, the Umayyad period, and Sheba's Palace of Ghamdan and its destruction.
The Quran found here is said to have been written or compiled by Imam Ali, the fourth Caliph of Islam from (656 to 661 AD), who is regarded as the rightful immediate successor to Muhammad as Imam by Shia Muslims. The library in the Mosque has preserved these finds.
Early book bindings found at the Mosque have been well documented by scholars such as Ursula Dreibholz (1997). Other archaeological finds at the Great Mosque are remnants of vaults and old buildings, unearthed in 2006 under the guidance of Dr. Mary Lynn, a leading French archaeologist.
Qadhi Isma'il al-Akwa', then the president of the 'Yemeni Antiquities Authority', realized the potential importance of these finds. Al-Akwa' sought international assistance in examining and preserving the fragments, and in 1979 managed to interest a visiting German scholars, who in turn persuaded the West German government to organize and fund a restoration project. The preserved fragments comprise Quranic and non-Quranic materials.
One of the Sana'a findings is a palimpsest which “may be, from a textual-critical standpoint, the most important one among those discovered in 1972 between the ceiling and the roof of the Great Mosque of ?ana'a”.
A palimpsest is a manuscript page that has been erased so that another text could be written over it. In other words contains two superimposed Qur'anic texts within two layers of writings.
The Sana'a Quran palimpsest is significant because the top layer (the text written over what was erased) is the standard Uthmanic version of the Quran. Beneath it is a version of the Quran (the part that was erased) is a non-Uthmanic version of the Quran.
Uthman was the third Caliph of Islam. According to Islamic tradition, he compiled the Quran and its several various readings (qira’at) about twenty years after Muhammad’s death. Muslims believe Uthman kept one copy for himself in Medina and sent copies to Kufa, Basra, and Damascus. He then commanded the destruction of all other Quran fragments and manuscripts.
The Sana'a Quran is significant because it through technology described below survived Uthman’s destruction of variants.
The lower erased layer of the Sana'a Quran palimpsest can be read because:
'Over time it resurfaces as a shadow, in this case as a pale brown text. In August 2007, Uwe Bergmann subjected the Stanford ’07 folio (a single folio of the Sana'a Quran palimpsest) to X-Ray fluorescence imaging at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory in the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). X-Ray fluorescence imaging is a technique for detecting, and tracing, the chemicals left on a leaf by inks or dyes. Its application to the Stanford ’07 folio assisted in reading and tracing out the lower text, bringing to light some letters, verse separators, and diacritical marks not otherwise visible or legible. Moreover, the fact that the inks used in the two layers were chemically different made it possible to determine to which layer every feature belongs. For example, it was possible to confirm that the diacritical marks and verse dividers were in the same ink as the main text. This holds true for both the lower and upper texts. The same is true of the decorative surah separators of the lower text. Therefore, these features probably were not added at a later stage.' (Behnam Sadeghi; Uwe Bergmann, “The Codex of a Companion of the Prophet and the Quran of the Prophet,” Arabica, Volume 57, Number 4, 2010, p.348.)
Radiocarbon dating of a Sana'a Quran parchment places it about forty years after Muhammad’s death or possibly earlier:
The parchment has a 68% probability of belonging to the period between (614 to 656 AD). It has a 95% probability of belonging to the period between (578 to 669 AD) (Behnam Sadeghi; Uwe Bergmann, “The Codex of a Companion of the Prophet and the Quran of the Prophet,” Arabica, Volume 57, Number 4, 2010, p.348.)
The Sana'a Quran palimpsest is significant because it is one of the oldest extant Quran manuscripts; it is different from the standard Quran that Uthman distributed; and it is manuscript evidence of a different textual tradition from Uthman.
Muslims sometimes denigrate the textual tradition of the Bible because they believe:
'So well has the Quran been preserved both in memory and in writing, that the Arabic text we have today is identical to the text as it was revealed to the Prophet. Not even a single letter has yielded to corruption during the passage of the centuries. And so it will remain forever, by the consent of Allah.'
The fact is that the Quran has a textual tradition. This doesn’t mean that Christians should denigrate the Quran because it has a textual history. Rather, this should give Muslims pause before dismissing the Bible because of its textual history.
An even greater question than the preservation of the Quran is whether the Angel Gabriel came from heaven and spoke to Muhammad. The evidence is lacking that the source of the Quran was the Angel Gabriel. It would not stand up in a court of law.
The early Christian polemical biographies of Muhammad share in claiming that any supposed illiteracy of Muhammad did not imply that he received religious instruction solely from the Angel Gabriel, and often identified Bahira or Sergius the Nestorian Monk as the secret, religious teacher to Muhammad...
Food for thought!