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The Ṣanʿāʾ palimpsest, discovered in 1972 in the great mosque of Ṣanʿāʾ in Yemen, is the only Quranic manuscript we know of that differs significantly from the standard Uthmanic Quran. It has been radiocarbon dated to earlier than 669CE with 95% accuracy and earlier than 646CE with 75% probability making it one of the earliest Quranic manuscripts in existence! For those of you that don't know, a palimpsest is a manuscript page where the original text has been removed and a new text has been written over it. This was common before the invention of paper because people often wrote on parchment made from animal skin which is expensive to make. The upper text of the Ṣanʿāʾ palimpsest conforms to the skeleton of the standard Uthmanic text. By exposing the fragments to UV light, researchers were able to read and decipher the lower text that had been rubbed off and they found that it differs from the standard Uthmanic texts in word choices (sometimes with complete omission or addition of words), sentence structure, and chapter order. There was some debate in academia about the nature of the lower text. Asma Hilali who was one of the researchers that helped translate the lower text hypothesised that the palimpsest was the product of a teaching exercise in which a senior teacher dictated to students who then wrote the Quran. Others believed that it was physical evidence for the existence of the companion codices. Codicological studies conducted by Dr Éléonore Cellard on the 80 or so fragments (represents approximately 40% of the Quran) has recently discredited Asma Hilali's hypothesis as the reconstruction of the palimpsests has shown that they were part of a codex produced by professional scribes. She has also been able to reconstruct some of the page ordering and it shows similarities to what has been reported in the Islamic tradition about the content and structure of the companion codices but with some differences as well. Either way, it's a very interesting insight into the formative years of Islam.
Here is her twitter thread that summarises her findings:
And here is the full article:
Here is her twitter thread that summarises her findings:
And here is the full article:
