
Fragments of World's Oldest Koran May Predate Muhammad - ryan_j_naughton
http://news.discovery.com/history/religion/fragments-of-worlds-oldest-koran-may-predate-muhammad-150901.htm
======
s_q_b
Alright, this headline just seems wrong.

First, radiocarbon dating comes with error bars. The date range identified is
from 570 C.E. to 632 C.E. Given that Muhammad is thought to have founded Islam
in the period from 610 C.E. to 630 C.E., and that date keeping was relatively
good in this period, this would seem to confirm rather than dispute the
traditional accounts.

Second, the radiocarbon dating was performed on the parchment only, not the
ink, as the article belatedly notes. Given the practice of ancient scribes to
re-use parchment repeatedly, a rather unfortunate practice that has resulted
in the loss of uncountable ancient texts, the age of the writing would be
controlling, not the age of the parchment.

Third, I'm forced to draw a rather unfortunate conclusion from this
information. The assertion in this article seems deliberately calculated to
undermine the historicity of Islam. There is a very sad and shortsighted
movement in some corners of military scholarship right now that identifies
Islam itself as the enemy, often beginning with Huntington's "clash of
civilizations" narrative and ending with some examples of sheer lunacy, such
as the recent article by a West Point associate professor arguing that legal
human rights scholars are "an Islamist fifth column."

Islam is one of the world's great religions, and like all religions it
inspires everything from massive works of charity to zealotry, persecution,
and bigotry. I have known many good people who drew their strength from Islam,
and condemning an entire religion is a type of insanity that is directly
contrary to the founding principles of the United States.

Islam is not the enemy. Those who would pervert it for their own violent ends
are. We cannot lose that distinction.

~~~
DanBC
> and like all religions it inspires everything from massive works of charity
> to zealotry, persecution, and bigotry.

A few people try to claim that other religions don't inspire terrorist groups,
but that's clearly bullshit.

Buddhism is generally seen as pacifist but there's a Buddhist army and
probably 2 Buddhist terrorist groups. (And that's not including Aum Shinryko)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Karen_Buddhist_Army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Karen_Buddhist_Army)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodu_Bala_Sena](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodu_Bala_Sena)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/969_Movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/969_Movement)

etc.

~~~
s_q_b
Wholeheartedly agreed. The ethnic cleansing by the Buddhist majority of the
Muslim minority in Myanmar is horrifying right now.

I'm very disappointed in Aung San Suu Kyi's leadership thus far. I suppose
we'll see what she does after the election.

~~~
mc32
I don't think you can blame her. She's in a very difficult position. She has
to think of getting the country from under the throes of dictatorship before
she can address civil rights. If she starts with civil rights, her effort will
sputter and nothing will happen.

~~~
s_q_b
I agree that she's in an impossible position, with the Junta on one side and
Buddhist extremists on the other, but her extreme popularity makes her
uniquely capable of speaking up on behalf of the Rohingya.

Also, she seems to be constructing her party along an authoritarian model. I
was a supporter of her while under detention, but today I just don't know. I
very sincerely hope she lives up to her rhetoric once in power.

------
pp19dd
Reason why this story is doing circles again and trending high is because of a
colossal, major screw-up, and no one picked up on it but a few readers
yesterday.

The 8/31 rawstory "article" originally claimed the carbon dating range was 568
- 545. The 7/22 University of Birmingham press release that the story is
loosely based on stated "568 - 645": the reporter copied the range wrong by
100 years and then researched and wrote rest of the article based on that.
They've since corrected the number (after it trended on reddit), but not
altered the narrative to reflect the change.

So you have an entirely speculative article based off of incorrect facts and
sensationalized on that premise, and no one bothered issuing a correction
notice because it's obviously sloppy, sloppy work and that'd be too much work
or worse, embarrassing. And now, all the lazy regurgitation of trending
material from other news outlets is repeating the message whose very first
paragraph was so horribly wrong.

------
mandazi
>The Times of London reported that radiocarbon dating carried out by experts
at the University of Oxford says the fragments were produced between the years
568 A.D. and 645 A.D. Muhammad is generally believed to have lived between 570
A.D. and 632 A.D. The man known to Muslims as The Prophet is thought to have
founded Islam sometime after 610 A.D., with the first Muslim community
established at Medina, in present-day Saudi Arabia, in 622 A.D.

When they test the document, how do they know the difference of when the
document was created versus when the actual document was written on?

For example, paper could be created before the paper is actually used to write
on.

~~~
gilgoomesh
> Small cautioned that the carbon dating was only done on the parchment in the
> fragments, and not the actual ink

------
gilgoomesh
> University of Oxford says the fragments were produced between the years 568
> A.D. and 645 A.D. Muhammad is generally believed to have lived between 570
> A.D. and 632 A.D.

Without a narrower range, it's ridiculous to say that it predates Muhammad. At
_most_ it predates the first known, fully assembled Qur'an from 653CE.

(Aside: I realize this story comes from Fox News but its listing of dates as
"Anno Domini" is in poor taste, given the subject matter.)

~~~
vixen99
Why poor taste? As is common knowledge A.D. is an abbreviation for Anno
Domini. You might as well say that calling Muhammamad 'The prophet' is in poor
taste. For most people in the Western world the year zero is an arbitrary
number and not understood as year of 'Our Lord' nor is Muhammad regarded as a
prophet. Both are aids to communication not exegesis.

Not living in the US, the reference to Fox News is a bit lost on me. Perhaps
it's equivalent to the seemingly obligatory sideswipe at the British Daily
Mail on the part of some folk. Establishes their credentials, I guess.

~~~
gilgoomesh
Fox News are unashamedly biased towards Christianity.

The poor taste is because it is an article about one religion's prophet but
uses a date suffix which effectively translates as "our God is Jesus". It is
difficult to be academic about the subject matter if your word choice is
highly partisan. This is why academics use "Common Era", aka CE.

~~~
dragonwriter
Using CE -- either as "Common Era" or "Christian Era" \-- dating from the same
origin date as A.D. (and as a synonym for A.D.) is just as much of a
Christian-origin and Christian-centric system as A.D., and is several hundred
years old.

The idea that it is somehow more "neutral" and appropriate for academic when
compared to A.D. is a fairly recent idea that ignores the history, origin,
basis, and meaning (which directly holds Christianity as the norm) of the
label.

------
news_1776
This is highly unlikely as the parchment contains diacritical marks which were
not introduced until 4 caliphs/leaders after the Prophet who had all already
died/been killed. This has been mentioned by many critics as well.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_diacritics#history](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_diacritics#history)

This seems more like a means to incite Muslims rather than science.

~~~
chipuni
Not JUST the diacritical marks. The writing style looks like Nashk, which came
much MUCH later than the Koran.

------
nsns
The last paragraph says:

    
    
        Small cautioned that the carbon dating was only done 
        on the parchment in the fragments, and not the actual
        ink, but added "If the dates apply to the parchment 
        and the ink, and the dates across the entire range 
        apply, then the Koran — or at least portions of it 
        — predates Mohammed, and moves back the years that 
        an Arabic literary culture is in place well into 
        the 500s."
    

Nothing to report yet then?

------
brock_r
So if the parchment's carbon dating window contains the _known_ date in
reality, doesn't it make more sense to throw away the _low_ end of the window?

(Unless of course, you just want to undermine the religion.)

~~~
jessaustin
You're right. If the range didn't overlap _at all_ , that might be
_something_. It's hard to believe that professional researchers would be this
obnoxious, so I somewhat suspect that Discovery has the figures wrong.

------
ilitirit
While I would actually like this to be true (just to see how it would affect
Muslim beliefs), I don't think it is. But what surprises me more than anything
else is how a legitimate historian can come to the conclusion that this
finding changes in any way what we know already, especially since the same
person admits that the radiocarbon dating only applies to the ink and not the
parchment.

The quotes from Tom Small are unremarkable considering his previous
publications and statements about Islam.

------
dogma1138
The likelihood that the entire Koran was written from scratch after the birth
(and during the life) of Muhammad is pretty slim. The Hebrew Bible was
canonized* after the Babylonian exile and there have been copies found
containing different versions of other books. The Old Testament has additional
books to the Hebrew Bibles (Maccabees) that were never canonized in the Hebrew
Bible but remain an Historical Jewish cannon (The Great Revolt). There are
also varied versions of the New Testament such as additional Gospels and
Epistles that were not canonized at all or did not survive transition from
proto-Christianity into Orthodox Christianity (Or sub sects like the Coptic
and Syriac Bibles).

The original works that make up the New Testament was most likely been written
in Classical Hebrew, Hellenic Hebrew and Greek (Since some canonization was
conducted in as late as 300-400CE also possibly Talmudic Hebrew), there were
quite a few sects during the Hellenic period of Judaism that either converged
into Christianity or into Judaism so there was quite a bit of cross
pollination between various religious texts that some were canonized in the
New Testament, some were canonized as the external canon in Judaism and some
were lost for ever.

So it would be quite surprising if the Koran was a body of work that was
exclusively written during the life time of Muhammad since it's much more
likely that it's been gathered from existing works and rewritten and adjusted
just like the Hebrew Bible to fit the required goal during it's final
canonization. It is also highly likely that adjustments would've been made
after the canonization it self since variations can be found both the Hebrew
Bible and the Old and New Testaments, as far as the Hebrew Bible goes with the
exception of the Hebrew Bibles that is used by surviving Judaism derivatives
like The Samaritans, Karaim, and Beta Israel is standardized since the 9th
century (a handful more recent versions were discovered with alterations over
the years but not in masses) and the New and Old Testaments were altered with
each new translation pretty much upto the modern era.

On a side note, I am for one actually surprised that this work was conducted
dating early Islamic artifacts and texts tend to generate quite a big shit
storm.

*I refer to Canon as the agreed on final collection of works that made it into each book, minor variances such as ones regional differences between existing schools and different translations are not treated as separate canon.

~~~
news_1776
That's a lot of "facts".

------
saiya-jin
apologies for my simplistic agnostic point of view, but what's the big deal?
that some historic records from 1400 ago may not be that super accurate?
anyway from big enough distance, isn't christianity just a sect* of judaism,
and islam just a sect* of christianity? they share most prophets, events etc.
and god should also be roughly same guy up there somewhere. __

* by sect i mean forking given official doctrine at that time by claiming that all before didn 't get it right but you did, god showed it to you specifically etc. just like gazillion variations of chtristianity forked from original catholicism (well, I suspect that even catholicism is now are quite a bit different religion from the original one in early AD centuries).

 __something tells me I just insulted half of this planet, but cannot help it
- from rational point of view, what holy books contain are just some old
stories, not more or less interesting then say Myths and legends of ancient
greece, or Aesop 's fables. now imagine somebody would base their whole life
around those, feeling he is right and all others got it wrong. funny, no?
no... From purely rational point of view, I fail to see any added value of
religions in these times. There are many irrational - emotional aspects where
they work, but I just cannot turn off my rational critical part of me that
asks questions and doubts anything not provable by experiment, repeatedly. And
the Ultimate truth, I mean THE truth, should be able to stand any test of
logic with flying flags and should be as solid now as 1500/2000/3000 years
ago.

my 2 lousy cents

------
verandaguy
I'm very interested in how research into this will develop, but I'm also
concerned about zealots going out of their way to slow down any such research.
If this is true, it could be a major turning point for many of the Abrahamic
religions, not just Islam.

Hopefully this encourages more skepticism than aggressive idealism.

~~~
news_1776
Do you think Muslims will trust a group that is to them a bunch of random
British researchers that just happened to come across an old piece of
parchment with Arabic writing just lying around in a British university? Also
this is coming from a country that to them seems biased against them. That my
friend is just plain crazy.

------
j_m_b
Why not date some of the ink?

~~~
DoggettCK
I seem to remember reading they re-used paper a lot back then, scraping off
old ink. Paper could've been much older than the author.

------
ucho
Why the hell it is on front page of all IT news sites?

~~~
DanBC
There's a bunch of information hidden away in University libraries.

These things get rediscovered every now and again.

Isn't it exciting, interesting, that there's a bunch of knowledge to be gained
from stuff we already have?

Isn't "finding out about this stuff" relevant to hackers?

A bunch of Victorian authors were recently de-anonimised when we found notes
by Charles Dickens. [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/charles-
dicke...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/charles-dickens-
notes-solve-the-mystery-of-unidentified-victorian-authors-10384128.html)

Here's an HN discussion about the possibility of dinosaur feathers being
discovered in amber
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10145685](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10145685)

And here's how Al Jazeera reported the discovery of this Quran

[http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/07/world-oldest-quran-
man...](http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/07/world-oldest-quran-manuscripts-
uk-150722110034399.html)

------
zeveb
> 568 A.D. … 645 A.D. … 570 A.D. and 632 A.D. … 610 A.D. … 622 A.D.

It's 'A.D. _year_ ,' not ' _year_ A.D.'! Sheesh.

~~~
s_q_b
When discussing history, especially Islamic history, it would be better to use
_year_ C.E.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era)

~~~
NoGravitas
But CE's still just the same numbering system as AD. Much better to use
AUC[0].

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ab_urbe_condita](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ab_urbe_condita)

~~~
s_q_b
Well, really we should use the World Calendar, as specified by the League of
Nations, or the Hijri since we're discussing Islam, or good 'ol ISO 8601 as
this is Hacker News.

Heh, yeah, it all does become a little silly.

The important thing is communication. Using Christian dates is needlessly
upsetting when discussing world religions. Upsetting people disrupts
communication, so I avoid it.

