Oldest fragments of the Holy Quran found in Birmingham

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According to a news story published in the BBC, the University of Birmingham may have found the world’s oldest fragments of the Holy Quran.

The manuscript is supposedly 1,370 years old, making it the earliest of its kind; this is devised after the radiocarbon dating confirmed the fragments’ age.

According to sources, the fragments were present in the university’s library for almost a century, but – up till now – they had remained unrecognized. The manuscript was situated with other books and artifacts from the Middle East, but they were not identified as one of the oldest fragments of the Holy Quran in the world.

Alba Fedeli, a PhD researcher, was the one who first discovered these fragments. After she studied these pages more closely and recognized the text of the religious scripture, she thought it best to get the manuscript tested with radiocarbon dating. According to Fedeli, the results of the test were “startling”.

The university’s researchers had not expected the manuscript to be so old. The university’s director of special collections, Susan Worrall, said they had not expected “in our wildest dreams” that it would be so old.

“Finding out we had one of the oldest fragments of the Holy Quran in the whole world has been fantastically exciting.”

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