Early Quranic manuscripts

In Muslim tradition the Quran is the final revelation from God, Islam's divine text,^[1] 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.^[1] These revelations were then compiled by first caliph Abu Bakr and codified during the reign of the third caliph Uthman^[2] (r. 644–656 CE) so that the standard codex edition of the Quran or Muṣḥaf was completed around 650 CE, according to Muslim scholars.^[3] 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 written 150–200 years after the death of Muhammad,^[4] and partly because of the textual variations present in the Sana'a manuscript. With the discovery of earlier manuscripts which conform to the Uthmanic standard however, the vast majority of Western revisionist theories regarding the historical origins of the Quran have fallen out of favor and been described as "untenable".^[5]

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 Corpus Coranicum.^[6] However, in 2015, experts from the University of Birmingham discovered the Birmingham Quran manuscript, which is possibly the oldest manuscript of the Quran in the world. Radiocarbon analysis to determine the age of the manuscript revealed that this manuscript could be traced back to some time between 568 and 645 AD.^[7][8][9] Selected manuscripts from the first four centuries after the death of Muhammad (632–1032 CE) are listed below.