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| Olde Tyme Religion | |
| 7th century Koran fragments discovered | |
| 2015-07-22 | |
| [BBC] ...Finding out we had one of the oldest fragments of the Koran in the whole world has been fantastically exciting." The fragments of the Koran are still legible. 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. interestingly, script is in a form of Hijazi calligraphic that the Saudis would probably consider too decorative and, if brought for the Hajj, the Saudis would seize it and burn it.
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| Posted by:lord garth |
| #8 Was it a "prized goat" skin? And if so, what was it written with? Eeww... I wonder how the text compares to modern Korans It says "Pwned, suckers!!" Who knew "pwned" went back that far? |
| Posted by: charger 2015-07-22 18:58 |
| #7 I wonder how the text compares to modern Korans Fatwa in 5..4..3 |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2015-07-22 16:11 |
| #6 The original koran was a fragmentation bomb? It sure fits. |
| Posted by: BrerRabbit 2015-07-22 16:05 |
| #5 It seems to say "just kidding." |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2015-07-22 14:22 |
| #4 fwiw, sura 18, 19 and 20 are all meccan |
| Posted by: lord garth 2015-07-22 14:19 |
| #3 Did it say made in Taiwan on the back? Did it have "Page 3"? Was it a "prized goat" skin? |
| Posted by: AlanC 2015-07-22 13:31 |
| #2 Burn it on t |
| Posted by: chris 2015-07-22 12:36 |
| #1 But the latest possible date of the Birmingham discovery - 645 - would put it among the very oldest. And the earliest possible date would put it before Mohammed was born. There's very little actual information in the article. To properly evaluate the claim, we'd need to know: 1) Did they date the ink and parchment, or just the parchment? In other words, what's the over/under on whether this is a palimpsest? 2) What passages does the fragment contain? Are they definitely not the sections which supposedly read like older Syraic Christian hymns, which some scholars thought were incorporated by the Koran's compilers? 3) Do the scholars think this fragment is from a Hafsaic Koran, or is there any indication that it's part of one of the "private Korans" with possibly variant text ordered burned by Uthman in 653? If this report is true, this moves back the first extant verses from the Dome of the Rock inscriptions circa 691/2. Hmm, the Guardian article on the report indicates the fragment is suras 18-20. The same paragraph: The significance of Birmingham’s leaves, which hold part of Suras (chapters) 18 to 20, was missed because they were bound together with another text, in a very similar hand but written almost 200 years later. kind of leads to the "palimpsest" theory, if the fragment is in the same hand as the rest of the text, though. |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2015-07-22 12:07 |