The paper discusses a manuscript of the Qurʾān dating from the first half of the seventh century AD. The text does not belong to the ʿUtmānic textual tradition, making this the only known ̠ manuscript of a non-ʿUtmānic text type. The essay compares this text type with those of ̱ the ʿUtmānic and other Companion textual traditions in order to shed light on the Prophetic ̠ prototype.

This is a study of two Qurʾāns: the upper and the lower layers of a palimpsest called here Saṇ ʿāʾ 1. The upper layer of writing, a standard Qurʾān, could be from the first or second half of the seventh century AD, and possibly even early eighth century. Radiocarbon dating assigns the parchment, and hence the lower writing, to the first half of the seventh century. The date of this event is uncertain, but it appears to have taken place sometime during AH 24-30, i.e. AD 644-650. For an analysis of the evidence bearing on the date of ʿUtmān’s standardization, see Mah ̠ ̣mūd Rāmyār, Tārīḫ-i Qurʾān, 2nd ed., Tehran, Amīr Kabīr, HS 1362/1983, p. 433-5; cf. Ahmad ʿAli al-Imam, Variant Readings of the Qur’an, Herndon, Virginia, International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2006, p. 20-1. It is to the textual tradition identified with this version that almost all extant Qurʾānic manuscripts belong. The main significance of the Saṇ ʿāʾ 1 manuscript is that its lower text does not belong to this ʿUtmānic textual tradition. In this sense, it is “non- ̠ ʿUtmānic.”The C-1 textual tradition is distinct not only from that of ʿUtmān, ̠ which is known from both literary sources and manuscripts, but also from those of Companions Ibn Masʿūd and Ubayy b. Kaʿb, whose recensions of the Qurʾān are not attested in manuscripts, being known only from descriptions in literary sources. I will argue that C-1 and these others formed parallel textual traditions. Comparing them can thus illuminate the state of the text prior to the branching off of these various traditions. It can shed light on the progenitor of all textual traditions, the Qurʾānic prototype.

Radiocarbon dating was performed on a sample of Stanford ’07. The analysis was done at the Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) Laboratory at the University of Arizona. The results indicate that the parchment has a 68% probability of belonging to the period between AD 614 to AD 656. It has a 95% probability of belonging to the period between AD 578 and AD 669. The results of radiocarbon dating at the NSF Arizona AMS Laboratory at the University of Arizona were described in a letter dated May 23, 2008, by the director of the lab and Professor of Geosciences and Physics, A.J. Timothy Jull.

The manuscript:

1. The probability that the parchment is older than AD 646 is 75.1 %, or a three-to-one likelihood. It is highly probable therefore, that the Saṇ ʿāʾ 1 manuscript was produced no more than 15 years after the death of the Prophet Muḥammad. (635.5 – 56.2%, 645.5- 75.1%, 655.5-91.8% – 660.5-95.5%, 670.5-98.8%, 675.5 – 99.2%)
2. The date of the parchment is a reliable indicator of the date of the lower writing. The parchment probably is not many years older than the lower writing. Given its dimensions, this manuscript must have been expensive, requiring a whole flock of animals. It is unlikely that the folios required for this Qurʾān were procured for a purpose other than the one to which they were put. In the initial decades of Islam, the period to which this manuscript belongs, the Arabs did not have many books to copy beside the Qurʾān. Indeed, the only extant vellum manuscripts of a comparable size in the Ḥiǧāzī script are without exception Qurʾāns. There would not have been a large supply of unused folios of this size.

Saṇ ʿāʾ 1 studied chart:

Name of Hand, prevalence, appearance, and whether or not there’s iron/copper in Ink:

1. Basic description of the Folios:
   • First, it wrote over some words and letters of the lower text that had faded or had not resurfaced because the ink had been thoroughly removed by the original scraping off of the lower writing.
   • Second, on occasion it wrote the standard version where the lower text departed from it. However, it does neither of these things systematically. And it does not try to obscure the deviations from the standard version. The evidence shows that the lower modifier came after the erased lower text had reemerged, hence after the upper text.
   • A few noteworthy differences between the upper and lower writings may be mentioned. The upper script is more generous than the lower one with the tiny dashes that distinguish consonants of a similar shape. The fact that the lower script exhibits such marks is important; but it is not wholly unexpected, since a commercial papyrus from the year 22/642 also has such marks. So does an inscription from the year 24/644-5 (Ali ibn Ibrahim Ghabban, Robert Hoyland, “The inscription of Zuhayr, the oldest Islamic inscription (24 AH/AD 644-645), the rise of the Arabic script and the nature of the early Islamic state”, Arabian Archaelogy and Epigraphy, 19/2 (2008), p. 210-37), in addition to other early documentary sources. There are even pre-Islamic inscriptions with diacritical marks distinguishing consonants. For a non-exhaustive list and images of some of the early sources with such marks see Muḥammad Musṭ afā l-A ̣ ʿzamī, ̣ The History of the Qurʾānic Text, 2nd ed., Riyadh, Azami Publishing House, 2008, p. 152-6.
2. How it’s non-Uthmanic:
   • The non-ʿUtmānic status of the lower text is shown by two things. First, its ̠ verbal differences with the ʿUtmānic Qur ̠ ʾān show that it represents a different text type and may therefore belong to a different branch of the family tree. Moreover, its variants are similar in nature to those reported of Companion codices. The second indication is its sūra ordering. On the Christie’s folio, sūras 63, 62, 89, and 90 appear in that order, a sequence that is very close to what has been reported for the codex of Ubayy b. Kaʿb, a point that will be discussed further (p. 51). In terms of wording, the lower text also agrees with reported non-ʿUtmānic variants in a few cases, as shown in Table ̠ 4; however, as a rule, reported non-ʿUtmānic variants do not appear in C-1, ̠ nor are the variants of C-1 reported in the sources. Thus C-1 should not be identified with the codices whose variants have been described in the literary sources (Ibn Masʿūd or Ubayy b. Kaʿb); it represents an independent codex, text type, and textual tradition.

Instances where C1 agrees with a reported non-Uthmanic variant:

Uthman, C1, and codex agreeing with C1:

A large number of Qurʾān manuscripts from the first and early second century AH are extant. Sometime around AD 650, ʿUtmān is said to have sent copies ̠ of the Qurʾān to Kūfa, Basra, and Syria and to have kept a copy with him in ̣ Medina.

How we know Uthman sent the regional codices:

These variants must have been introduced in Medina as the texts were copied off one another before being dispatched to the cities. They consist of small changes to the skeletal text that actually make a difference in pronunciation, usually changing one word to another (hence my label, “skeletal-morphemic” changes), as opposed to changing merely the spelling of a word. Typically, the meaning does not change.

1. Utmānic Qur ̠ ʾān manuscripts could encompass several different types of variants: differences in vowel markings and hamza markings in those manuscripts that do have such markings, variations in the small dashes distinguishing one consonant from another one of a similar skeletal shape (such as the letter ب versus ت) (cf. first row of Table 5), spelling differences that do not change a word or its pronunciation, spelling differences that do change the pronunciation of a word but not its meaning (e.g. اولاالالبب vs. الالبب اولى(, and the use of different words that have similar shapes. Among these types, some (such as those involving diacritics and vowel markings) can be recognized less frequently or not at all in the earliest manuscripts. For example, the upper writing of Saṇ ʿāʾ 1 does not have vowel markings.
2. The utility of the literary sources for determining the provenance of a manuscript fragment in the ʿUtmānic textual tradition depends on ̠ the types of variants found in the fragment:

1. In concrete terms, first-tier variations may be discussed under five headings:
   • (1) Changes of Minor Elements. The most commonly used elements of language are what I refer to, strictly as a shorthand, as “minor”. These are the easiest class of morphemes to add, drop, or substitute, for they are the least memorable. Minor elements include function morphemes like particles, articles, conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, and some prefixes and suffixes. Minor elements also include a morpheme such as Allāh which occurs 2,689 times in the Qurʾān. Among the most variable elements are wa- and fa-. While such changes do appear in written transmission, in dictation their absolute numbers are greater.
   • (2) Omissions of Major Elements. We more frequently forget a thing or remember a thing differently than we “remember” something we have not heard at all. Thus, words are dropped (or changed) more easily than they are added. Furthermore, it is easier to forget a word if it is an item on a list. The greater likelihood of omissions as compared to additions is a feature that dictation shares with written transmission.84 In general, if a variant is minor, or if it is an omission, then no special explanation is needed as to how it could have come about. If it is both, its occurrence is even more understandable. By contrast, if a variant is an addition, then it cannot be considered first-tier a priori, and one must ask whether there are first-tier mechanisms that might explain how it came about, mechanisms such as auto-contamination.
   • (3) Auto-contamination. Auto-contamination refers to the influence, within one textual tradition, of one part of the Qurʾān on another part. This is to distinguish it from “cross-contamination”, which refers to one textual tradition.
2. Auto-contamination takes two forms: (a) assimilation of parallels and (b) assimilation of nearby terms.
   • (a) Assimilation of Parallels. This refers to a scribe changing the text, making it more similar to a parallel passage in the work being transmitted (auto-contamination) or in another branch of the textual tradition (crosscontamination). It is the first of these, assimilation of parallels by way of auto-contamination, that is relevant here.
   • (b) Assimilation of Nearby Terms. It is more likely for a word to be used by mistake at a certain point if it is used in a nearby passage. A word is on the scribe’s mind if he heard it a moment ago or if he expects to hear it soon due to prior familiarity with the passage at hand. Such a word can insinuate itself into the writing.
3. Types of Phonetic Conservation of Major Elements, with Examples:

Examples of the phonetic conservation of major elements between Ibn Masʿūd and ʿUt̠mān:

The sūra order in C-1 compared to those reported for Ibn Masʿūd and Ubayy b. Kaʿb:

Which Text Type is Older?

In short, the options are (e) and (f)—stemma (f) being more likely. One may also attempt to choose among the stemmata using the data of the sūra ordering of the codices. The fact that the orderings of Ibn Masʿūd and C-1 are closer to each other than they are to ʿUtmān would exclude all stemmas except (e) and (f). If we went with (f), then one ̠ of the following three scenarios would explain the similarity of IM and C-1: (i) they reflected P’s sūra ordering better than ʿUt, (̠ ii) one influenced the other (“contamination”), or (iii) they independently used a similar principle to order the sūras. If we went with (e), then i would become moot and we would have to choose between ii and iii. Note that if ii or iii are true, however, then all the stemmata in the diagram would regain plausibility and sūra ordering would not help us choose between them. I place this discussion in a footnote because it is very easy to imagine ii and iii as valid scenarios for sūra ordering, especially if, as it seems to be the case, at the time of the Prophet many sūras were free-standing, not yet rigidly ordered in a fixed sequence. Scenario iii is especially plausible since the sūra sequences ascribed to Ibn Masʿūd and Ubayy b. Kaʿb appear intended to arrange most sūras in order of decreasing length (Robinson, Discovering the Qurʾān, p. 263-6).