Koran fragments dating back more than 1,000 years found in a British library

At the U.K.'s University of Birmingham, researchers have discovered that pages found in the school's library, untouched for nearly a century, could be the oldest fragments of the Koran in existence.

Radiocarbon dating shows that there is a probability of more than 95 percent that the parchment is from between 578 and 645. "They could well take us back to within a few years of the actual founding of Islam," David Thomas, the university's professor of Christianity and Islam, told the BBC. "According to Muslim tradition, the Prophet Muhammad received the revelations that form the Koran, the scripture of Islam, between the years 610 and 632, the year of his death. The person who actually wrote it could well have known the Prophet Muhammad. He would have seen him probably, he would maybe have heard him preach. He may have known him personally — and that really is quite a thought to conjure with."

The fragments were written on sheep or goat skin in Hijazi script, an early form of written Arabic, and were mixed in with other Middle Eastern books and documents. The local Muslim community is excited by the news, and the university plans to put the pages — described by Thomas as a "treasure that is second to none" — on display in the Barber Institute in Birmingham this fall.

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