The upper layer, though, which was written after, is the standard Quran that we have today. With different scans, scholars were able to put together the lower text and discover that it wasn’t the version of the Quran that we have today, it’s a different one. Hence, it contains two layers of text, the upper layer which is newer, and the lower layer which is older and was replaced with the upper layer. However, on closer inspection, it was revealed that the document was a Palimpsest meaning it was written over a previously written text. At first glance, it seems like a normal Quran dating to perhaps the late seventh or early eighth century of the Common Era. Sana’a 1 PalimpsestĪmong the fragments found in Sana’a, there is a set of fragments from the Quran. Hence, at the time, they were among the earliest known copies of the Quran.Ī few years later, Puin’s colleague, Von Bothmer took some 35,000 microfilm pictures of the fragments which are currently being used to study the manuscripts. It was quickly established that the fragments contained a version of the Quran and some of them dated back to the first century of Islam. In 1981, Gerd Puin of Saarland University in Germany became the first person to thoroughly examine the fragments to determine what they In 1979, he was able to get a visiting German scholar interested in the project of examining and preserving the fragments. He realized the potential of this find and got involved. It’s possible they would have been forgotten if it wasn’t for a man named Qadhi Ismail al-Akwa, who was then-president of the Yemeni Antiquities Authority.
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