Quran Fragments, Said to Date From Time of Muhammad, Are Found in Britain

[Mocking You]

LONDON — Fragments of what researchers say are part of one of the world’s oldest manuscripts of the Quran have been found at the University of Birmingham, the school said on Wednesday.

The global significance of the ancient fragments, which sat in the university’s library for about a century, became apparent after a Ph.D. student noticed their particular calligraphy. The university sent a small piece of the manuscript, written on sheep or goat skin, to Oxford University for radiocarbon dating.

David Thomas, a professor of Christianity and Islam at the University of Birmingham, said that when the results had come back, he and other researchers had been stunned to discover that the manuscript was probably at least 1,370 years old, which would place its writing within a few years of the founding of Islam. He said the author of the text may well have known the Prophet Muhammad.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/23/world/europe/quran-fragments-university-birmingham.html

 

[User Name]

Interesting. My first question was, "How did these fragments of the Quran end up in Britain?" The article states:

The manuscript is part of a collection of more than 3,000 documents from the Middle East amassed in the 1920s by Alphonse Mingana, a theologian and historian who was born in what is now Iraq. His document-gathering expeditions to the Middle East were funded by Edward Cadbury, a member of the famous chocolate-making family.​

 

[bybee]

Interesting. My first question was, "How did these fragments of the Quran end up in Britain?" The article states:

The manuscript is part of a collection of more than 3,000 documents from the Middle East amassed in the 1920s by Alphonse Mingana, a theologian and historian who was born in what is now Iraq. His document-gathering expeditions to the Middle East were funded by Edward Cadbury, a member of the famous chocolate-making family.​

I am most interested in the translation of these fragments.