In a recent article I copied and pasted the complete Summary of The Codex of a Companion of the Prophet and the Qurʾān of the Prophet by Behnam Sadeghi and Uwe Bergmann.

I have now ploughed through approximately half of the complete article (it is a small book really: 94 pages of highly technical academic analysis). I have copied some of the significant points of the essay. It is a tightly packed and concise article, but I hope these extracts will convey something of the points made. When I finish reading the essay I will post further important extracts.

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Early Muslim reports assert that different Companions of the Prophet had different versions of the Qurʾān, and some reports give the purported variants of their codices. The differences among these codices appear to have motivated an attempt at standardization. According to the collective memory of early Muslims, the Companion ʿUtm̠ ān, after becoming caliph, disseminated a version of the holy book, declaring it the standard. The date of this event is uncertain, but it appears to have taken place sometime during AH 24-30, i.e. AD 644-650. It is to the textual tradition identified with this version that almost all extant Qurʾānic manuscripts belong. (page 344)

The largest differences between the Qurʾānic textual traditions of C-1, ʿUtm̠ ān, etc. go back to when the prototype was recited and taken down by different scribes in somewhat different ways. The data suggests that among them, the textual tradition of ʿUtm̠ ān gives the most accurate reproduction of the prototype. (page 345)

The analysis paves the way for a discussion of the ancestor of all Qurʾānic textual traditions, the “prototype.” The evidence analyzed in this essay indicates that the prototype is to be identified with the Prophet Muḥammad. (p. 346)

Aside from the issue of dating, the evidence allows a discussion of other characteristics of the prototype. The conclusions here diverge from the usual premodern, traditional account towards a more conservative understanding. The most secure conclusion of the present study is that the sequences of verses and sentences were fixed already in the Prophetic prototype. This result is a departure from mainstream traditional views about the date when the pieces of revelation were joined together into fixed sūras. It is traditionally more common to date this to the reign of ʿUtm̠ ān. The findings here support the less common dating to the time of the Prophet. (p. 346)

The present essay, however, finds that the textual evidence supports a more conservative conclusion, namely that the ʿUtm̠ ānic tradition is better than C-1 in reproducing the Prophetic prototype. (p.347)

‘It is highly probable therefore, that the Ṣanʿāʾ 1 manuscript was produced no more than 15 years after the death of the Prophet Muḥammad.’ (p. 353)

Surprisingly, the lower script on occasion appears to use what are possibly diacritics, in the form of perfectly round dots, to signify short vowel marks (and possibly elided alifs, i.e. hamzat al-waṣl). These dots are in the same ink as the rest of the lower writing and do not appear to have been added later. (p. 359)

Why was the lower script erased and written over? Perhaps the original owner deemed the lower writing obsolete after ʿUtm̠ ān’s standardization. This would be likely if the codex belonged to a mosque. Perhaps after the original owner died, the new owner wished to replace the text with the ʿUtm̠ ānic version. Alternatively, it is possible that the original codex needed to be written over because it was damaged or worn out. This would fit the fact that a narrow horizontal strip along the bottom edge of some of the leaves was cut and discarded before the text was written over. The question remains open. (p. 370).

The Lower Writing of Ṣanʿāʾ 1

Statement of the Problem

The lower writing is about as old as the parchment on which it appears (see above, p. 354). And the words and phrases it conveys are at least as old as the writing. The parchment, according to radiocarbon dating, has a 91.8 % chance of dating from before ʿUtm̠ ān’s death in AD 656, and a 95.5 % chance of dating from before AD 661. It is almost certainly older than AD 671 (probability 98.8 %). Most likely, it was produced no more than 14 years after the death of the Prophet Muḥammad: the probability of this is 75 %, or a three-to-one likelihood. It is even slightly more likely than not that it was produced within four years after the Prophet’s death (probability 56.2 %). (For more details, see Table 1, above, p. 353.) What makes it even more likely that Ṣanʿāʾ 1 was created in the first half of the seventh century is that after ʿUtm̠ ān’s standardization ca. AD 650, copying non-standard Qurʾāns became less common. Those who defied the edict and held on to their Companion codices were a minority. The standard version quickly became predominant, as shown by the manuscript record and literary sources. The lower writing, in any case, dates from the era of the Companions of the Prophet. It was thus an early copy of a Companion C-1’s codex. So far, this would make the C-1 textual tradition contemporaneous with the ʿUtm̠ ānic tradition, in the sense that they both date, at the latest, from the era of the Companions. There is more to be said, however. In this essay I seek to determine whether the wording of one codex can be determined to be even older—in the sense of being either the source of the other or a significantly more accurate copy of the common ancestor of both.

Two approaches to this question may be readily dismissed as callow. First, it would be simpleminded to say, because C-1 may be labeled “pre-ʿUtm̠ ānic”, that its wording necessarily is older than that of the ʿUtm̠ ānic text type. If by “pre-ʿUtm̠ ānic” one means “predating ʿUtm̠ ān’s act of standardization”, then the ʿUtm̠ ānic text type may be “pre-ʿUtm̠ ānic” too. The wording of the codices ʿUtm̠ ān sent out may have predated the standardization, just as ʿUtm̠ ān, the people he set to the task, and the material they worked with existed before AD 650. To ward off any prejudging of the matter, I call C-1 and other Companion textual traditions “non-ʿUtm̠ ānic” rather than “pre-ʿUtm̠ ānic”.

Second, it is equally naive to say, because the upper writing came after the lower one in this particular manuscript, that the wording of the ʿUtm̠ ānic Qurʾān must be later than that of C-1. That is tantamount to assuming that when the upper writing appeared, it represented the totality of the ʿUtm̠ ānic tradition, meaning that the wording of ʿUtm̠ ān’s codex did not exist before it appeared on this particular manuscript. But the upper writing must have been one of innumerable ʿUtm̠ ānic manuscripts in circulation, a fact supported by the manuscript record, literary evidence, and common sense. (pp. 383-384)