The oldest Quran was over 100 years after Muhammad died and was buried, Samarkand Kufic, or Uthmans Quran. And contains hardly any of what we have today. The manuscript is incomplete: it begins in the middle of ayat 7 of the second sura and ends at Surah 43:10. The manuscript has between eight and twelve lines to the page and, showing its antiquity and the text is devoid of vocalisation. Based on orthographic and palaeographic studies, the manuscript probably dates to the 2nd century hijra or the 8th century CE, possibly as late as the beginning of the 9th century CE. Radio-carbon dating showed a 95.4% probability of a date between 595 CE and 855 CE. The copy of the Quran is traditionally considered to be one of a group commissioned by the third caliph Uthman; however, this attribution has been questioned, although no evidence was proffered. In 651, 19 years after the death of the Islamic Prophet, Muhammad, Uthman commissioned a committee to produce a standard copy of the text of the Quran. Five of these authoritative Qurans were sent to the major Muslim cities of the era, and Uthman kept one for his own use in Medina, although the Samarkand Quran is most likely not one of those copies. The only other surviving copy was thought to be the one held in Topkapı Palace in Turkey, but studies have shown that the Topkapı manuscript is also not from the 600s AD, but from much later. So both the Quran and hadith are severely questioned. We have no criteria to base the Islamic claims of history on around these times except biased, unauthentic hadiths to understand a book that is also questioned severely to come from the Divine and to be the same one that Muhammad spoke out to his companions.
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 14:23:22 +0000
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