Quran, Bible, Gita are considered as holy books for Muslims, Christians, Hindus respectively. These books show the people the path towards perfection and also specify spiritual goals to be completed by them in this world etc. These holy books are many years old. In United Kingdom some researchers belonging to University of Birmingham, have found some fragments of Quran manuscript in the university library and stated that they are the oldest in the world. The Quran’s age was estimated to be 1370 years, a period when Prophet Mohammed lived.
Radio carbon dating technique as used to determine the age of manuscript pieces and it was found that it belonged to a period between AD 568 and 645. The accuracy of this technique is found to be 95.4% in estimating the age. This test was carried out in a laboratory at University of Oxford, and this test findings show that the parchment belonged to the time of Prophet Muhammad, who lived between AD 570 and 632.
The Quran manuscript had parts of Suras or chapters 18 to 20, written with ink in an ancient form of Arabic script named Hijazi. Hijazi script was developed in the Hejaz regions of Arabian penninsula that has sacred cities Mecca and Medina. The Quran belonged to the University’s Mingana Collection of Middle Eastern manuscripts, in Cadbury Research Library. For a number of years,the manuscript had been misbound with leaves of similar type of Quran manuscript, that belongs to the seventh century period.
Susan Worrall, Director of Special Collections at Cadbury Research Library, praised the technique of radio carbon dating. For her PhD research, Dr Alba Fedeli, who studied the leaves, said that the two leaves which belonged to the seventh century came from same codex as the one which was placed in Bibliotheque Nationale de Francis in Paris, France.
As per the traditions of the Muslim community, Prophet Mohammad received the revelations which formed the Quran pages, recognized as the scripture of Islam, between AD 610 and 632, the year when Prophet Mohammad passed away. This was stated by David Thomas, professor of Christianity and Islam and by Nadir Dinshaw, Professor of Inter religious Relations at University of Birmingham.
Earlier, the revelations were preserved in the ”memories of men”, but now book form is there. Some were even written down on parchment, stone, palm leaves also. The parchment or stiff flat material from animal skin that was taken for tests to find the age revealed that, the animal lived during Prophet Mohammad’s period.
