Fragments of the world's oldest Koran were found in Birmingham last month and they bring into focus a heated controversy. According to scholars, the ancient Koran found in England predate the Prophet Muhammad. This discovery of fundamental importance for the Muslim religion could even rewrite the early history of Islam, scholars say.
The newly discovered copy of the Koran is just a fragment containing several pages and it was found at the library of the University of Birmingham, bound to another Koran from the late seventh century. According to carbon dating, the world's most ancient Koran is thought to be between 1,448 and 1,371 years old.
The book is written on parchment made from an animal skin in ink in an early form of Arabic script. The pages discovered contain parts of the Suras, or chapters, 18 to 20. According to scholars, it seems they may have been written by someone who actually knew the Prophet Muhammad, the revered founder of the Islamic faith.
Experts at the University of Oxford have carbon-dated the pages and the results have showed the Islamic holy book manuscript could be the oldest Koran in the world. In the early years of Islam, the Koran was thought to have been memorized and rather than written it was passed down orally. For this reason, the new discovery is considered to be particularly significant, since early copies of the Islam's Holy Book are very rare.
Several historians have already expressed their opinion that the parchment might even predate the Prophet Muhammad. According to carbon-dating, it is believed that the Koran found at Birmingham was produced between 568AD and 645AD. The dates usually given for Muhammad's life are between 570AD and 632AD.
In an interview for the Times, historian Tom Holland said that the new discovery destabilizes the idea that scholars would know anything with certainty about how the Koran emerged. He added that this has implications for the history of Muhammad and the Companions.
Keith Small, from the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library, declared that this new discovery gives more ground to peripheral views of the Koran's genesis, claiming that rather than Muhammad receiving a revelation from heaven, the creator of the Islamic faith and his early followers used a text that was already in existence. They might have shaped the early text in order to fit their own theological and political agenda.
These claims are strongly disputed by Muslim scholars. For instance, Mustafa Shah from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London declared that the manuscript, in fact, has consolidated traditional accounts of the Koran's origins.
It is believed that the Prophet Muhammad have founded Islam sometime after 610AD. According to historians and Islamic scholars, the first Muslim community was founded in the year 622AD, in Medina.
