The Sana'a Quran from c. 650 A.D.

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), May 16, 2012 at 18:08

"Building on this Christian base, revisionists postulate a radically new account of early Islam. Noting that coins and inscriptions from the seventh century mention neither Muhammad, the Koran, nor Islam, they conclude that the new religion did not appear until about 70 years after Muhammad's supposed death. "

Since 1972 the premises of this account seem to have been undermined. In that year in the Great Mosque in Sana'a in Yemen fragments of an ancient manuscript in the early Hijazi script were found . Later , West Germany under the supervision of the Yemeni Department for Antiquities funded and partly conducted a research and restoration project in which Albrecht Noth, Gerd-Rüdiger Puin, Hans-Caspar Graf von Bothmer and Ursula Dreibholz were the leading personalities. Yet, the results of their work turned out to be so subversive that the Yemeni government withdrew from the project. The oldest Quran does differ from today's Quran! The myth of its perfect and unaltered preservation can no longer be upheld.

"The Sana'a palimpsest ... comprises two layers of text .The upper text conforms to the standard 'Uthmanic Qur'ān, whereas the lower text diverges from the standard text. Radiocarbon testing indicates that the parchment, and hence the lower text, most likely dates from within fifteen years of the death of" Mahomet.

"... carbon-14 tests, which make it likely that the lower text was written before 'Uthmān standardized the Qur'ānic text: the parchment (and therefore the lower text) has a 75% probability of being older than 650 AD, and a 95% probability of being older than 660 AD"

"...While the upper text is almost identical with the modern Qur'āns in use (with spelling variants), the lower text belongs to a codex which at times shows significant diversions from the standard text. The lower text was erased and written over, but due to the presence of metals in the ink the lower text resurfaced, and now appears in a light brown color."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sana%27a_manuscript

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerd_R._Puin

where relevant literature is indicated.

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