Written on Goat skin

and found in a Uni in Birmingham : clic to enlarge

                       

Radiocarbon dating found the manuscript to be at least 1,370 years old, making it among the earliest in existence.

The pages of the Muslim holy text had remained unrecognised in the university library for almost a century.

The tests, carried out by the Oxford University Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, showed that the fragments,

written on sheep or goat skin

were among the very oldest surviving texts of the Koran. 

These tests provide a range of dates, showing that, with a probability of more than 95%,

the parchment was from between 568 and 645.

"They could well take us back to within a few years of the actual founding of Islam,"
said David Thomas, the university's professor of Christianity and Islam.

"According to Muslim tradition, the Prophet Muhammad received the revelations that form the Koran,

the scripture of Islam, between the years 610 and 632, the year of his death.

The manuscript, written in "Hijazi script", an early form of written Arabic,

becomes one of the oldest known fragments of the Koran.

Dr Waley, curator for such manuscripts at the British Library, said

"these two folios, in a beautiful and surprisingly legible Hijazi hand,

almost certainly date from the time of the first three caliphs".


The first three caliphs were leaders in the Muslim community

between about 632 and 656.

                       

Aren't muslims supposed to destroy old copies of the quran?

Only if the Goat skin was not Halal ....

ask your British Librarians !

Methink carbon dating will make that clear  ::LOL::