Sana'a manuscripts

The Sana'a manuscripts—found in the Great Mosque of Sana'a, Yemen in 1972 represent the oldest existent versionFact|date=July 2008 of the Qur'an, dated to the latter half of the 7th century.

Discovery and assessment

laborers working in a loft between the structure's inner and outer roofs stumbled across a remarkable gravesite. The laborers didn't understand their discovery and gathered up the manuscripts, pressed them into some twenty potato sacks, and set them aside on the staircase of one of the mosque's minarets.

Qadhi Isma'il al-Akwa', then the president of the Yemeni Antiquities Authority realized the potential importance of the find. Al-Akwa' sought international assistance in examining and preserving the fragments, and in 1979 managed to interest a visiting German scholar, who in turn persuaded the West German government to organize and fund a restoration project. [http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199901/koran the atlantic]

Carbon-14 tests date them to 645-690 AD. Carole Hillenbrand, "The New Cambridge Medieval History", vol. 1, p.330 ]

The restoration project for the manuscript has been organized and overseen by a specialist in Arabic calligraphy and Koranic paleography,Gerd R. Puin, based at Saarland University, in Saarbrücken, Germany. Puin has extensively examined the parchment fragments found in this collection. It reveals unconventional verse orderings, minor textual variations, and rare styles of orthography and artistic embellishment. Some of the manuscripts are rare examples of those written in early Hijazi Arabic script. Although these pieces are from the earliest Qur'an known to exist, they are also palimpsests -- versions written over even earlier, scraped-off versions.cite journal
last = Lester
first = Toby
title = What Is The Koran
journal = The Atlantic Monthly
date = January 1999
url = http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/199901/koran
accessdate = 2007-10-19 ]

A substantial amount of material has been retrieved from the site, as the work continues. From 1983 to 1996, around 15,000 of 40,000 pages were restored, including 12,000 parchment fragments some dating to the 8th century. [cite web
title = Sana’a manuscripts: uncovering a treasure of words
publisher = UNESCO
date = 2007
url = http://portal0.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=37916&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
accessdate = 2007-07-09]

In 1999, Toby Lester, the executive editor of the website of The Atlantic Monthly reported on Puin's discoveries: "Some of the parchment pages in the Yemeni hoard seemed to date back to the seventh and eighth centuries A.D., or Islam's first two centuries -- they were fragments, in other words, of perhaps the oldest Korans in existence. What's more, some of these fragments revealed small but intriguing aberrations from the standard Koranic text. Such aberrations, though not surprising to textual historians, are troublingly at odds with the orthodox Muslim belief that the Koran as it has reached us today is quite simply the perfect, timeless, and unchanging Word of God."

More than 15,000 sheets of the Yemeni Qur'ans have been flattened, cleaned, treated, sorted, and assembled. They await further examination in Yemen's House of Manuscripts. Yet that is something Islamic authorities seem unwilling to allow. Puin suggests, "They want to keep this thing low-profile, as we do, although for different reasons."

Puin, and his colleague Graf von Bothmer, an Islamic historian, have published short essays on what they discovered. They continue to feel that when the Yemeni authorities realize the implications of the find, they will refuse further access. Von Bothmer, however, in 1997 shot 35,000 microfilm pictures of the fragments, and has brought the pictures back to Germany. The texts will soon be scrutinized and the findings published freely - a prospect that pleases Puin. "So many Muslims have this belief that everything between the two covers of the Qur'an is Allah's unaltered word. They like to quote the textual work that shows that the Bible has a history and did not fall straight out of the sky, but until now the Qur'an has been out of this discussion. The only way to break through this wall is to prove that the Qur'an has a history too. The Sana'a fragments will help us accomplish this."

The 1999 Atlantic Monthly Article, Puin's comments and conclusions

In a 1999 Atlantic Monthly article, Gerd Puin is quoted as saying that:Lester, Toby (1999) " [http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199901/koran What is the Koran?] " Atlantic Monthly]

Responses

In 2000, "The Guardian" interviewed a number of academics for their responses to Puin's claims, including Dr Tarif Khalidi, a lecturer in Islamic Studies at Cambridge University, and Professor Allen Jones, a lecturer in Koranic Studies at Oxford University. In regard to Puin's claim that certain words and pronunciations in the Koran were not standardized until the ninth century, the article notes, [ [http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4048586,00.html Abul Taher, 'Querying the Koran'. "The Guardian". August 8, 2000] ]

quote|Jones admits there have been 'trifling' changes made to the Uthmanic recension. Khalidi says the traditional Muslim account of the Koran's development is still more or less true. 'I haven't yet seen anything to radically alter my view,' he says. [Jones] believes that the Sa'na Koran could just be a bad copy that was being used by people to whom the Uthmanic text had not reached yet. 'It's not inconceivable that after the promulgation of the Uthmanic text, it took a long time to filter down.'

However, the article notes some positive Muslim reaction to Puin's research. Salim Abdullah, director of the German Islamic Archives, affiliated to the Muslim World League, commented when he was warned of the controversy Puin's work might generate –"I am longing for this kind of discussion on this topic." [ [http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4048586,00.html Abul Taher, 'Querying the Koran'. "The Guardian". August 8, 2000] ]

References

External links

* [http://portal0.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=37916&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html The UNESCO Restoration Project]
* [http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0011/001168/116850e.pdf Islamic Collections from the Museum] (pdf)
* [http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/ Islamic Awareness, The Qur'anic Manuscripts]
* [http://cremesti.com/amalid/Islam/Yemeni_Ancient_Koranic_Texts.htm The New Atlantic article at cremesti.com]
* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4048586,00.html Guardian Article: Querying the Koran]