Early Quranic manuscripts
Muslim scholars who oppose the views of the Western revisionist theories regarding the historical origins of the Quran have described their theses as "untenable".
[5] More than 60 fragments including more than 2000 folios (4000 pages) are so far known as the textual witnesses (manuscripts) of the Qur'an before 800 CE (within 168 years after the death of Muhammad), according to Corpus Coranicum.
Most surviving leaves represent a Quran that is preserved in various fragments, the largest part of which are kept in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, as BNF Arabe 328(ab).
[13] [14] BnF Arabe 328(c) was part of a lot of pages from the store of Quranic manuscripts at the Mosque of Amr ibn al-As in Fustat bought by French Orientalist Jean-Louis Asselin de Cherville (1772–1822) when he served as vice-consul in Cairo during 1806–1816.
[7][8] The parts of Surahs 18-20 its leaves preserve[15] are written in ink on parchment, using an Arabic Hijazi script and are still clearly legible.
Marijn van Putten, who has published work on idiosyncratic orthography common to all early manuscripts of the Uthmanic text type[21] has stated and demonstrated with examples that due to a number of these same idiosyncratic spellings present in the Birmingham fragment (Mingana 1572a + Arabe 328c), it is "clearly a descendant of the Uthmanic text type" and that it is "impossible" that it is a pre-Uthmanic copy, despite its early radiocarbon dating.
[22] In November 2014, the University of Tübingen in Germany announced that a partial Quran manuscript in their possession (Ms M a VI 165), had been carbon dated (95.4% credible interval), to between 649 and 675.
[33] In their present form, both parts of Codex Mashhad have been repaired, partially completed with pieces from later Kufic Qurʾāns and sometimes in a present-day nashkī hand.
The script and orthography of the Codex show instances of archaic and not-yet-completely-recognized rules, manifested in various spelling peculiarities.
It "can generally be dated from the late eighth century depending on the extent of development in the character of the script in each case.
[39] The use of dyed parchment and gold ink is said to have been inspired by the Christian Byzantine Empire, due to the fact that many manuscripts were produced in the same way there.
The manuscript has been the subject of scholarly study for its textual variants, providing insights into the early transmission and preservation of the Qurʾānic text.
In recent years, a few folios from the manuscripts have been sold by private companies and were dated to the 9th century or earlier by Christie's.
[50] The dating and text of early manuscripts of the Qur'an have been used as evidence in support of the traditional Islamic views and by sceptics to cast doubt on it.
The high number of manuscripts and fragments present from the first 100 years after the reported canonization have made the text one ripe for academic discussion.
[52] The more recently uncovered Birmingham Quran manuscript holds significance amongst scholarship because of its early dating and potential overlap with the lifetime of Muhammad c. 570 to 632 CE[53] (the proposed radiocarbon dating gives a 95.4% probability that the animal whose skin made the manuscript parchment was killed sometime between calendar years 568–645 CE).
[56] David Thomas, professor of Christianity and Islam at the University of Birmingham, states that "the parts of the Qur’an that are written on this parchment can, with a degree of confidence, be dated to less than two decades after Muhammad’s death.
"[7] Joseph Lumbard also claims that the dating renders "the vast majority of Western revisionist theories regarding the historical origins of the Quran untenable," and quotes a number of scholars (Harald Motzki, Nicolai Sinai) in support of "a growing body of evidence that the early Islamic sources, as Carl Ernst observes, 'still provide a more compelling framework for understanding the Qurʾan than any alternative yet proposed.
[28] Those Hijazi manuscript fragments belonging to the "'Uṯmānic textual tradition" and dated by radio-carbon to the first Islamic century are not identical.
They fall "into a small number of regional families (identified by variants in their rasm, or consonantal text), and each moreover contains non-canonical variants in dotting and lettering that can often be traced back to those reported of the Companions"[33] Michael Cook[57] and Marijn van Putten[21] have provided evidence that the regional variants of the early Hijazi manuscript fragments share a "stem" and thus likely "descend from a single archetype", (that being Uthmanic codex in traditional Islamic history).
