According to official Islamic teachings, the Quran was written around 650. However, some Western Islamologists are skeptical about this early date and assume a gradual inscription, only from the 9th century. Recent research into ancient Koran fragments on parchment and papyrus, however, dates this material between 650 and 700…
The Koran fragments are in the possession of the Leiden University Library and were examined within the international research project Coranica. This broad project, coordinated by the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, has been researching early Quranic texts since 2007. Part of the research was C14 dating by the Technische Hochschule in Zurich to determine the approximate age of the material used.
The Koran fragments from Leiden are one of the first within the project whose analysis has been completed. This shows that the material used can be dated between 650 and 700. This is more than a century older than Leiden University thought before the study. These Koran fragments are therefore the oldest in the Netherlands.
Kennislink interviews Dr. Arnoud Vrolijk, curator of oriental manuscripts at the Special Collections of Leiden University Libraries (UBL), about this special find.
Big news! But why hasn't the age of the Quran fragments been researched before? “The C14 analysis is expensive and you only get reliable results across the board if you examine many fragments at once. That is now happening in the Coranica project.”
Why was the parchment analyzed and not the ink? Is it not possible that the text was written later? “It is theoretically possible that you keep a sheet of parchment for a very long time and only then write text on it. But it probably isn't. Parchment is labour-intensive and you need a lot of skins for one book. If you don't use the parchment right away, you will lose a lot of money.”
What do you think will be the reaction of skeptical Islamologists to this news? Is this enough evidence to convince them otherwise? “I don't think it will impress them much. The broader skeptical theory assumes that all of Islam grew very slowly and cannot be attributed to one person, the Prophet Muhammad. So they will continue to maintain, based on other historical theories, that Islam as a whole has gradually taken shape. But believing Muslims will certainly take this as proof that the Qur'an was written during the reign of Caliph Uthman (644-656), as Islam teaches."
Does the Leiden University Library have any more old Koran fragments that you would like to have examined at age? “All fragments used in the ancient script Hidjazi have been written are now examined. This type of script is long and thin and the letters hang strongly backwards. We also have fragments of the Kufic script, which is much thicker and more compact, but was not developed until later. You can also see the differences in the writing of Arabic:in the oldest fragments one and the same symbol is used for several sounds. Later they started to distinguish them from each other with points. Much later, separate signs were added to indicate the vowels.”
The Leiden fragments examined in the context of the Coranica project are Koran fragments on papyrus (Or. 8264) and on parchment (Or. 14.545). The fragment on papyrus was bequeathed in 1946 by the former curator of the University Library Leiden, C. van Arendonk. He had bought the piece privately from the antiquarian Erik von Scherling in Oegstgeest. The fragments on parchment were purchased in 1979 from a retired Dutch diplomat.
The Coranica project explores many more fragments of the Quran from Europe. We now have to wait for the analyzes of these fragments in order to obtain a balanced final result about the oldest Koranic texts. To be continued….