A thread on manuscript dating. Early Qurans can be dated in many ways using codicology, paleography, orthography, art history, and radiocarbon dating. Here I wanted to provide a peek at a new approach which we will be seeing more of in the future. It is the use of combined dating

The idea is to combine radiocarbon dating with other knowledge, like paleography, to construct a chronological model. Before we dive into this for Quranic manuscripts, let me give a simple example of how combining C14 with other information is useful.

Suppose we radiocarbon date a skeleton from a grave to 1400 +/- 24 before present. Along with the skeleton, there is a coin dated to 600 AD. Obviously, the skeleton must come after the coin, and by incorporating the date into our estimate, we can refine the dating of the skeleton

How does this work for Quranic manuscripts? Well, for manuscripts that share the same script, we can group them together as belonging to the same phase.

How does this work for Q manuscipts? Well, for ones that share the same script, they can be grouped into a single phase. A phase is a collection of events (say, the copying of a muṣḥaf) that form a coherent group in a context (like script) but whose internal ordering is unknown

Radiocarbon dating of Qs is still in its infancy, but for Kufic B1a script, we have three MSs which have had multiple folios reliably dated with consistent results. Those are Wetz 1913, Arabe 331 and Tubingen https://www.islamic-awareness.org/quran/text/mss/wetzstein1.html https://www.islamic-awareness.org/quran/text/mss/arabe331.html
https://www.islamic-awareness.org/quran/text/mss/tubingen.html

The individual datings for each manuscript are varied (reproduced below), but in general are with high probability from the 1st century AH.

Combining them together into1 phase allows us bound the Kufic B1a script. The earlier bound is 643-671 CE, and later bound is 666-702 CE. The figure below places all results in context. Also note how the dates of the MSs have shifted a bit, with Wetz earlier and Tubingen later.

There’s tons to discuss here, but I will have to save it for another time. As more Kufic B1a manuscripts are radiocarbon dated, we can add them to the model to develop a better understanding of the emergence and extinction of the script.

The final point has to do with implications. Since the results for these three manuscripts are fairly consistent, we can use the estimated bounds to approximately date other manuscripts which haven’t been subject to 14C testing. In particular I am thinking of Codex Mashhad.

It is written in typical Kufic B1a, and over 129 folios contains 90%+ of the Quran. I am not sure where that puts the overall attestation of the Quranic text in the first century in terms of percentages (a silly excercise in my book), but that’s a job for @IslamicAware not me

As more and more Qurans are radiocarbon dated across manuscripts that share features, it will be possible to build more holistic models with the hopes of further illuminating our understanding of the early manuscript tradition.