Writings: IslamThe Birmingham Quran manuscript2 of 10

Writings: Islam

The Birmingham Quran manuscript

The Birmingham Quran manuscript is two parchment leaves holding parts of surahs 18 to 20, kept in the University of Birmingham's Cadbury Research Library. Radiocarbon dating of the animal skin gave 568 to 645 CE at 95.4 percent probability. The range dates the skin, not the ink or writing, and scholars disagree on what it means for the text.

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Three dates, kept apart

  1. The text's date: the tradition's view

    610 to 650 CE (revelation 610 to 632 CE; the written standard text under Uthman about 650 CE, as David Thomas reports the Muslim account, and within Uthman's rule of 644 to 656 CE, which Abdullah Saeed gives as the time Muslim tradition holds the Quran was compiled; Yousef Wahb gives the 23 years of revelation, and Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei places the standard text under Uthman)

  2. The text's date: critical scholars' view

    610 to 705 CE (the strip starts at 610 CE, the date Muslim tradition gives for the first revelations, borrowed here because the scholarly sources used give no start year; it ends at the later of two views of the standard written text: Nicolai Sinai holds 650 CE or earlier as the default view, and Stephen Shoemaker argues for 685 to 705 CE, under Abd al-Malik, while allowing that much of the content may go back to Muhammad's preaching in the early seventh century)

  3. This copy made

    568 to 645 CE for the parchment (radiocarbon, University of Oxford, 95.4 percent probability); the range dates the animal skin, not the writing or the ink; Francois Deroche dates the Paris leaves that Alba Fedeli matches with these later by handwriting, and Fedeli reads handwriting and wording as pointing later while leaving an earlier date open

  4. This copy found

    1930s according to the Cadbury Research Library (bought by Alphonse Mingana with funds from Edward Cadbury; the library does not say from whom or where, and Fedeli found a record only for seven other leaves, bought in 1936; the strip shows 1930 to 1937, computed here from the library's note that Mingana died in 1937; the radiocarbon result was received in March 2014 and announced on 22 July 2015)

All four rows share one timeline. A row with no marker says why in words. How ancient texts are dated.

What it is

The Birmingham Quran manuscript is a bifolio, a sheet folded into two leaves or four pages, of parchment written in ink in Arabic. It holds Quran 18:17 to 31, 19:91 to 98, and 20:1 to 40, that is, parts of three chapters, called surahs.12 Its script is Hijazi, an early form of Arabic with few marks to tell similar letters apart and no vowel signs.1

Alba Fedeli, whose doctoral thesis studied it, matches the two leaves with 16 leaves in Paris, BnF Arabe 328c, and so counts 18 leaves in one manuscript. The library describes that match as a suggestion based on handwriting.31

How the copy was dated

The University of Oxford's Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit returned the result in March 2014.1 The library gives the measurement as 1456 plus or minus 21 years before present, which calibrates to 568 to 645 CE at 95.4 percent probability.1 The library says the range gives the death of the animal whose skin became the parchment, and that the inks have not been dated, since no scientifically reliable method exists.1

David Thomas reads the range as a strong probability that the animal lived in Muhammad's lifetime or shortly after. He holds that the text on it can then be dated, with some confidence, to less than two decades after his death.2 Michael Marx and Tobias Jocham, who name John Wansbrough's 1977 book among alternative accounts of the Quran's emergence, write that dates like this make the hypothesis of an eighth-century emergence of Islam highly unlikely. They add that the dates do not end the debate over the text's history.4

Fedeli reads the handwriting and wording differently. She judges it likely that the scribe copied from a written exemplar, and she reads a blank line between surahs as a sign of a later practice. Omar Hamdan ties that practice to a project of 84 to 85 AH (the Islamic calendar; 703 to 705 CE). She notes that Francois Deroche dates the Paris leaves to the end of the first century AH, and that her analysis disagrees with the radiocarbon range.35

She offers two ways to reconcile them. Either the skilled copying belongs to the earlier project under Uthman, or the chronology of early written transmission should be moved earlier. She suggests dating another sample before relying on the result.3 Stephen Shoemaker, citing Fedeli and Deroche, holds that the text is later than the skin.6 For the methods, see how ancient texts are dated.

The text: its date and authorship

The date strip marks the Quran's text, not these two leaves. Both rows start at 610 CE, the year Muslim tradition gives for the first revelation.2 The scholars' row ends at the later of the two views below. The copy bar marks the skin, so it can start before the text does.

The tradition's view

Part of this column comes through reference works and scholars' reports (Saeed, Thomas). Abdullah Saeed writes that the standard traditional Muslim view, Sunni and Shia alike, holds that God alone composed the Quran. Muhammad passed it on without addition or alteration. Muslim tradition, he adds, holds that it was compiled in the caliphate of Uthman (ruled 644 to 656 CE).7 Yousef Wahb of the Yaqeen Institute writes that the Quran is God's speech. It was revealed over 23 years and kept in memory and writing, with memory the primary method.8

Al-Bukhari's collection of hadith (reports of what Muhammad said or did), a Sunni source, says Zayd ibn Thabit gathered the Quran under the caliph Abu Bakr. He used palm stalks, thin stones, and men's memories. The same collection says Uthman had the earlier sheets copied and sent a copy to each province.91011

The Shia scholar Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei rejects that report and others like it, as contradicting one another. He holds that the Quran existed as a complete written collection in Muhammad's lifetime and that Uthman united Muslims on one authoritative reading.1213 David Thomas reports Muslim tradition as dating the revelation to 610 to 632 CE and the written text to about 650 CE under Uthman, and writes that Muslims believe the Quran they read today is the text standardised under him, the exact record of the revelations to Muhammad.2

Scholars of the Quran's history: Sinai and Shoemaker

Nicolai Sinai, in a 2014 article, describes 650 CE or earlier as the traditional dating of the standard consonantal text, the letters without vowel signs. He holds that this ought to be the default view, apart from some spelling features, as long as no passages with a distinct style and vocabulary have been convincingly placed in the late seventh century. He writes that in recent years various scholars have espoused a conjectural dating of the text's codification to Abd al-Malik's time, or have at least held that it stayed open to significant revision until about 700 CE.14

Shoemaker, in a book of 2022, writes that most modern scholarship has accepted that Uthman fixed the text around 650 CE, and he calls that confidence undeserved.6 He argues that the canonical text took shape under the caliph Abd al-Malik (ruled 685 to 705 CE), and writes that much of the content may ultimately go back to Muhammad's preaching in the early seventh century.6

Shoemaker also notes that, taken strictly, the parchment seems a bit too early for the tradition of a collection under Uthman, at least for the earlier dates in the range.6 The left column gives two accounts that place written copies earlier: a gathering under Abu Bakr and a complete collection in Muhammad's lifetime. The passages cited here study when the text was fixed and do not address what Muslims hold about its authorship.

How it was found

The library says Alphonse Mingana bought the manuscript in the 1930s with funds from Edward Cadbury, a Quaker businessman and philanthropist. It does not say from whom or where.1 Fedeli traced Mingana's purchase of seven leaves of another Quran from the dealer Erik von Scherling in 1936 and found no record of how these two leaves arrived.3

The library says it cannot say where the manuscript was made or who the scribe was. It says the Paris leaves are believed to come from the mosque of Amr ibn al-As at Fustat, south of Cairo, built in 642.1

What it shows, and what it does not

The evidence shows that the animal whose skin became this parchment died between 568 and 645 CE, at 95.4 percent probability. It shows that the leaves carry parts of surahs 18 to 20 in Hijazi script.1 Fedeli finds that the text of the whole copy, these two leaves and the 16 in Paris, coincides to a large extent with the printed Medina mushaf (a bound copy of the Quran).38

It does not show when the ink was applied, where the leaves were made, or who wrote them. The range dates the skin, and the scholars above read the gap between skin and writing in different ways. It does not settle whether the two leaves belong with the 16 in Paris, which the library calls a suggestion.1

See also

Sources

  1. University of Birmingham, Cadbury Research Library. The Birmingham Qur'an: Frequently Asked Questions. University of Birmingham, the whole page. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  2. University of Birmingham. Birmingham Qur'an manuscript dated among the oldest in the world. University of Birmingham, 2015. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  3. Alba Fedeli. Early Qur'anic manuscripts, their text, and the Alphonse Mingana papers held in the Department of Special Collections of the University of Birmingham. PhD thesis, University of Birmingham (supervisor David C. Parker), 2015; Birmingham eTheses repository, 2015, printed pp. 47 to 50, 61, 147 to 148, and 182 to 185. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  4. Michael Josef Marx and Tobias J. Jocham. Radiocarbon (14C) Dating of Qur'an Manuscripts. In Andreas Kaplony and Michael Marx (eds.), Qur'an Quotations Preserved on Papyrus Documents, 7th to 10th Centuries (Brill, Leiden, 2019), chapter 6, pp. 188 to 221, 2019, pp. 188 to 217; the table on p. 216; the Dawud spelling on pp. 207 to 209. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  5. Marilyn Robinson Waldman; revised by Bruce B. Lawrence. Nubuwah. Encyclopedia of Religion (1987, revised 2005), via Encyclopedia.com, 2005. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  6. Stephen J. Shoemaker. Creating the Qur'an: A Historical-Critical Study. University of California Press (Luminos open access), 2022, introduction (radiocarbon summary; Abd al-Malik, p. 13; pp. 3 and 14 to 15), chapter 1 (p. 17 and pp. 25 to 30), chapter 2 (p. 43), the radiocarbon chapter (pp. 73 to 86), and p. 238 (printed page numbers). Accessed 2026-10-29.
  7. Abdullah Saeed. Qur'an: Tradition of Scholarship and Interpretation. Encyclopedia of Religion, second edition (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, 2005. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  8. Yousef Wahb. How the Quran Was Preserved During the Prophet's Time: Mechanisms of Oral and Written Transmission. Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, 2022. Accessed 2026-10-28.
  9. Muhammad al-Bukhari (compiler). Sahih al-Bukhari 4986, English translation. Hadith Unlocked, hadith 4986. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  10. Muhammad al-Bukhari (compiler). Sahih al-Bukhari 4987, English translation. Hadith Unlocked, hadith 4987. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  11. Mohammad Hashim Kamali. Hadith. Encyclopedia of Religion, second edition (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, 2005. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  12. Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei, translated by Abdulaziz A. Sachedina. The Prolegomena to the Qur'an, chapter 8: The Collection of the Qur'an. Oxford University Press (1998); online at Al-Islam.org, 1998, chapter 8. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  13. Al-Islam.org (Ahlul Bayt Digital Islamic Library Project). Sayyid Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei (biographical page, Shia Scholars). Al-Islam.org, the biography paragraph on the person page. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  14. Nicolai Sinai. When did the consonantal skeleton of the Quran reach closure? Part II. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 77, no. 3, 2014, abstract. Accessed 2026-10-29.