In Muslim tradition the Quran is the final revelation from God, Islam's divine text, believed to be delivered to the Islamic prophet Muhammad through the angel Jibril (Gabriel). Muhammad's revelations were said to have been recorded orally and in writing, through Muhammad and his followers up until his death in 632 CE. These revelations were then compiled by first caliph Abu Bakr and codified during the reign of the third caliph Uthman ( CE) so that the standard codex edition of the Quran or was completed around 650 CE, according to Muslim scholars.Cook (2000): p. 6 This has been critiqued by some western scholarship, suggesting the Quran was canonized at a later date, based on the dating of classical Islamic narratives, i.e. hadiths, which were compiled 150–200 years after the death of Muhammad,Berg (2000): p. 495 and partly because of the textual variations present in the Sana'a manuscript. Academic scholars who oppose the views of the Western revisionist theories regarding the historical origins of the Quran have described their theses as "untenable".
According to Corpus Coranicum, more than 60 fragments including more than 2000 folios (4000 pages) are so far known as the textual witnesses (manuscripts) of the Qur'an before 800 CE (within 168 years after the death of Muhammad).According to the official website: "Mehr als 60 Fragmente mit insgesamt mehr als 2000 Blättern (4000 Seiten) sind als Textzeugen für den Koran vor 800 bisher bekannt." https://corpuscoranicum.de/ Selected manuscripts from the first four centuries after the death of Muhammad (632–1032 CE) are listed below.
Hijazi manuscripts
Hijazi manuscripts are some of the earliest forms of Quranic texts, and can be characterized by Hijazi script. Hijazi script is distinguished by its "informal, sloping Arabic script." The most widely used Qurans were written in the Hijazi style script, a style that originates before Kufic style script. This is portrayed by the rightward inclining of the tall shafts of the letters, and the vertical extension of the letters.
Codex Parisino-petropolitanus
The Codex Parisino-petropolitanus formerly conserved portions of two of the oldest extant Quranic manuscripts. One of these is preserved in various fragments, the largest part of which are kept in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, as BNF Arabe 328(ab). Forty-six folios are held at the National Library of Russia and one each in the Vatican Library (Vat. Ar. 1605/1) and in the Khalili Collection of Islamic Art (KFQ 60).
BnF Arabe 328(c) BnF Arabe 328(c), formerly bound with BnF Arabe 328(ab), has 16 leaves, with two additional leaves discovered in Birmingham in 2015 (Mingana 1572a, bound with an unrelated Quranic manuscript).
BnF Arabe 328(c) was among a group of folios from the store of Quranic manuscripts at the Mosque of Amr ibn al-As in Fustat. These were bought by French Orientalist Jean-Louis Asselin de Cherville (1772–1822) when he served as vice-consul in Cairo during 1806–1816.
The 16 folia in Paris contain the text of chapter 10:35 to 11:95 and of 20:99 to 23:11. The Birmingham folia covers part of the lacuna (gap) in the Paris portion, with parts of the text of suras 18, 19 and 20.
Birmingham Quran manuscript
The Birmingham Quran manuscript parchment of two leaves (cataloged as Mingana 1572a) has been radiocarbon dated to between 568 and 645 CE (95.4% credible interval), indicating the animal from which the parchment was made lived during that time.
The parts of Surahs 18-20 its leaves preserve are written in ink on parchment, using an Arabic Hijazi script and are still clearly legible. The leaves are folio size (343 mm by 258 mm; 13½" x 10¼" at the widest point), and are written on both sides in a generously scaled and legible script. The text is laid out in the format that was to become standard for complete Quran texts, with chapter divisions indicated by linear decoration, and verse endings by intertextual clustered dots.
The two leaves are held by the University of Birmingham, in the Cadbury Research Library, but have been recognized as corresponding to a lacuna in the 16 leaves catalogued as BnF Arabe 328(c) in the in Paris, now bound with the Codex Parisino-petropolitanus.
There are disagreements over the dating of the manuscript's text. According to David Thomas of the University of Birmingham, it could be said with some confidence the text was written before 652 CE while Marijn van Putten, who has published work on the idiosyncratic orthography common to early manuscripts of the Uthmanic text type, has argued with reference to a number of these same idiosyncratic spellings present in the Birmingham fragment (Mingana 1572a + Arabe 328c) that it is "clearly a descendant of the Uthmanic text type," and that it is therefore "impossible" that it represents a pre-Uthmanic copy.
Ms. or. fol. 4313 (Formerly Qāf 47) Ms. or. fol. 4313, formerly known as Qāf 47, is a Qurʾānic manuscript held across two collections: 31 parchment folios at the Dār al-Kutub library (Ms. 247 Maṣāḥif) in Egypt, and seven parchment leaves at the Berlin State Library — 38 folios in total, covering approximately 16 percent of the Qurʾānic text. The Egyptian fragments have undergone recent restoration.
Bernhard Moritz initially dated the manuscript to the third/ninth century; Adolf Grohmann and Sergio Noseda later revised this to the first/seventh century. Recent radiocarbon dating of two samples by Corpus Coranicum places it between 15–30 AH/606–652 CE with a 95.4 percent probability.
François Déroche classified the script subtype as 'Ḥijāzī II', though Marx and Jocham do not accept this designation, noting that it remains paleographically difficult to classify. The qirāʾāt of the manuscript shows general alignment with Ibn ʿĀmir (d. 118 AH/736 CE), with notable exceptions in certain places.
Tübingen fragment In November 2014, the University of Tübingen in Germany announced that a partial Quran manuscript in their possession (Ms M a VI 165), had been carbon dated (95.4% credible interval), to between 649 and 675. The manuscript is now recognised as being written in hijazi script, although in the 1930 catalogue of the collection it is classified as "Kufic", and consists of the Quranic verses 17:36, to 36:57 (and part of verse 17:35).
Sana'a manuscript
The Sana'a manuscript is one of the oldest Quranic manuscripts in existence. It was found, along with many other Quranic and non-Quranic fragments, in Yemen in 1972 during restoration of the Great Mosque of Sana'a.
The find includes 12,000 Quranic parchment fragments. All of them, except 1500–2000 fragments, were assigned to 926 distinct Quranic manuscripts as of 1997. None is complete and many contain only a few folios apiece.
The manuscript is written on parchment, and comprises two layers of text (see palimpsest). The upper text conforms to the standard 'Uthmanic Quran, whereas the lower text contains variants to the standard text. An edition of the lower text was published in 2012. A radiocarbon analysis has dated the parchment containing the lower text to before 671 AD with 99% probability.
Add. 1125 This manuscript was acquired by University of Cambridge from Edward H. Palmer (1840-1882) and EE Tyrwhitt Drake. It was created before 800CE according to Corpus Coranicum. It contains Quran from 8:10-72 written on 4 folios.
Ms. Or. 2165 British Library MS. Or. 2165 Early Qur'anic manuscript written in Ma'il script, 7th or 8th century CE.
Codex Mashhad
The term Codex Mashhad refers to an old codex of the Qurʾān, now mostly preserved in two manuscripts, MSS 18 and 4116, in the Āstān-i Quds Library, Mashhad, Iran. The first manuscript in 122 folios and the second in 129 folios together constitute more than 90% of the text of the Qurʾān, and it is also likely that other fragments will be found in Mashhad or elsewhere in the world. The current Codex is in two separate volumes, MSS 18 and 4116. The former contains the first half of the Qurʾān, from the beginning to the end of the 18th sūra, al-Kahf, while the latter comprises the second half, from the middle of the 20th sūra, Ṭāhā, to the end of the Qurʾān. In their present form, both parts of Codex Mashhad have been repaired, partially completed with pieces from later Kufic Qurʾāns and sometimes in a present-day nashkī hand.
Codex Mashhad has almost all the elements and features of the oldest known Qurʾānic codices. The dual volumes of the main body, written in ḥijāzī or māʾil script, are the only ḥijāzī manuscripts in vertical format in Iran. Like all ancient ḥijāzī codices, Codex Mashhad contains variant readings, regional differences of Qurʾānic codices, orthographic peculiarities, and copyists’ errors, partly corrected by later hands. The script and orthography of the Codex show instances of archaic and not-yet-completely-recognized rules, manifested in various spelling peculiarities. Illumination and ornamentation are not found even in sūra-headbands; rather, some crude sūra dividers have been added later and are found only on adjoining sections.
The script in this manuscript is similar to Codex M a VI 165 at Tübingen (Germany), Codex Arabe 331 at the Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris), and Kodex Wetzstein II 1913 at Staatsbibliothek (Berlin). The combined radiocarbon dating of these manuscripts points firmly to the 1st century of hijra.
Kufic manuscripts
Kufic manuscripts can be characterized by the Kufic form of calligraphy. Kufic calligraphy, which was later named after art historians in the 19th or 20th century is described by means of precise upstanding letters. For a long time, the Blue Qur'an, the Topkapi manuscript, and the Samarkand Kufic Quran were considered the oldest Quran copies in existence. Both codices are more or less complete. They are written in the Kufic script. It "can generally be dated from the late eighth century depending on the extent of development in the character of the script in each case."John Gilchrist, Jam' al-Qur'an: The codification of the Qur'an text (1989), p. 146.
The Blue Quran
The Blue Qur'an (Arabic: المصحف الأزرق al-Muṣḥaf al-′Azraq) is a late 9th to early 10th-century Tunisian Qur'an manuscript in Kufic calligraphy, probably created in North Africa for the Great Mosque of Kairouan. It is among the most famous works of Islamic calligraphy, and has been called "one of the most extraordinary luxury manuscripts ever created." Because the manuscript was done in Kufic style writing, it is quite hard to read. "The letters have been manipulated to make each line the same length, and the marks necessary to distinguish between letters have been omitted." The Blue Quran is constructed of indigo-dyed parchment with the inscriptions done in gold ink, which makes it one of the rarest Quran productions ever known. The use of dyed parchment and gold ink is said to have been inspired by the Christian Byzantine Empire, due to the fact that many manuscripts were produced in the same way there. Each verse is separated by circular silver marks, although they are now harder to see due to fading and oxidization.
Topkapı manuscript
The Topkapı Qurʾān manuscript is notable for its size, script, and historical context. Originating from late 7th Century to mid-8th century, this manuscript is preserved in the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul (inventory number H.S. 32). It showcases a unique style of Kufic script and is distinguished by its ornate decorations and intricate calligraphy. The manuscript has been the subject of scholarly study for its textual variants, providing insights into the early transmission and preservation of the Qurʾānic text. Originally it was attributed to Caliph Uthman Ibn Affan (). However, a 2024 analysis of the manuscript's paleography and orthography by Rami Husain Halaseh has denied this attribution.
Codex Mixt. 917