Birmingham Quran manuscript disproves Orientalists’ claims about Quran

Speaking to IQNA, Jafar Hassan Hadi, a professor of Jewish studies, referred to the so-called al-Hajiriya theory, saying that some orientalists have raised the claim that Islam and the Quran emerged in the second Hijri century (8th century CE).
They allege that the Quran was compiled by some Jewish and Christian individuals in the second century, he said.
The discovery of the Birmingham manuscript, however, refutes this assertion, because the manuscript has been dated to the first Hijri century (7th century CE), the scholar stated.
In July, two well-preserved leaves of parchment, closely written in an elegant script, were found in the collection of the Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham in Britain.
According to a radiocarbon analysis carried out by the University of Oxford, the fragments of the Quran date back to the period between 568CE and 645CE, close to the time of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).
Professor Hadi said the radiocarbon dating method is a modern and reliable method for dating old manuscripts with high certainty.
Another proof that the manuscript belongs to the first century, he stated, is that it is in Hijazi script, which is much older than Kufic script that emerged in the second century after Hijra.
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Earlier, David Thomas, professor of Christianity and Islam, and the Nadir Dinshaw professor of interreligious relations at the University of Birmingham, had also pointed out that the discovery of the manuscript backs up Muslims’ belief that the Quran was revealed at the time of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).
He said it supported the view that the version of the Quran in use today had hardly changed from the earliest recorded version, and the Muslim belief that the text represented an exact record of the revelations delivered to the Prophet (PBUH).
“They could well take us back to within a few years of the actual founding of Islam. According to Muslim tradition, the Prophet Muhammad [PBUH] received the revelations that form the Quran, the scripture of Islam, between the years 610CE and 632CE, the year of his death,” Thomas said.
The manuscripts were found in Birmingham University’s library, after remaining there unrecognized for nearly a century. They were discovered with a mass of other early Middle Eastern manuscripts collected in the 1920s by the scholar, theologian and Chaldean priest Alphonse Mingana.
The fragments consist of parts of chapters 18 to 20 of the Quran, written in an early form of Arabic script known as Hijazi which is still clearly legible.
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