The Birmingham Quran Folios: The World's Oldest Quran?
Two parchment leaves in Birmingham, radiocarbon-dated to 568-645 CE — a range that covers the Prophet's entire lifetime and reaches earlier still. Some called it confirmation of early written transmission; others urged caution about what a lab date can prove. Both columns, as-is. The verdict is yours.
By John Shaqi · July 21, 2026 · 15 min read
A Quiet Room in Birmingham
Summer 2015, in the hushed rooms of the Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham. Thousands of Middle Eastern manuscripts sit here — the Mingana Collection, gathered in the 1920s by Alphonse Mingana, an Iraqi-born Chaldean scholar, funded by the chocolate magnate Edward Cadbury. For almost ninety years, two leaves of parchment had rested under a routine catalogue number, bound with another early Quran manuscript, noticed by almost no one.
Then Alba Fedeli, cataloguing and studying these manuscripts for her doctorate, stopped. The two leaves did not belong with the manuscript they were bound to. The script was different; the hand was different. She suggested they be examined separately, and the university sent a tiny sample of parchment to the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit.
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