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Researchers at the University of Birmingham, in the UK, said on Wednesday they have found the world's oldest manuscript of the Quran, which are believed to date back to nearly 1,400 years.
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Are these the world's oldest Qur'an pages? A significant and historic find in our @CadburyRL http://t.co/QsDp3lQf9G pic.twitter.com/vgRDVzLxzY
— Uni of Birmingham (@unibirmingham)
July 22, 2015
According to a radiocarbon analysis the parchment on which the text is written dates back to the period between 568CE and 645CE, close to the time of Prophet Mohammad, making it among the earliest in existence.
The manuscript is part of a collection of other Middle Eastern documents and it remained stored for years until PhD researcher Alba Fedeli decided to conduct the analysis to determinate its origins.
Researchers never thought that among their collection was one of the oldest fragments of the Quran in the world.
The Quran is the central religious text of Islam that has about 1.62 billion followers or 23 percent of the global population, Muslims believe it to be a revelation from God.
Muslims believe the Quran was verbally revealed by God to Muhammad and that it is his most important miracle, a proof of his prophethood and the culmination of a series of divine messages.
