Writings: IslamThe Hamburg papyrus codex (P. Hamb. Arab. 68)6 of 10

Writings: Islam

The Hamburg papyrus codex (P. Hamb. Arab. 68)

P. Hamb. Arab. 68 is a papyrus quire holding surah 2 (the Cow), a chapter of the Quran, except its opening verses. Its editors suggest it was a stand-alone booklet, probably copied in Egypt, and date it by its script to the late 7th or early 8th century CE. The Hamburg State and University Library holds it.

Last reviewed:

Three dates, kept apart

  1. The text's date: the tradition's view

    610 to 650 CE (revelation 610 to 632 CE; the written standard text under Uthman about 650 CE, as David Thomas reports the Muslim account, and under Uthman, who ruled 644 to 656 CE, as Abdullah Saeed writes that Muslim tradition holds)

  2. The text's date: critical scholars' view

    610 to 705 CE (the text's making and its standard written text; two views: Nicolai Sinai holds 650 CE or earlier as the default view for the standard written text, and Stephen Shoemaker argues for 685 to 705 CE, under Abd al-Malik; the strip starts at 610 CE, the year Muslim tradition gives for the first revelations, borrowed here because the sources used here give no historian's year for the start of the text, and ends at the later of the two views)

  3. This copy made

    late 7th or early 8th century CE; the editors' dating from the style of the script, which Matt Malczycki reports as the first century AH, so drawn here as 667 to 719 CE (computed here: the last third of the 7th century to the end of the first century AH, about 719 CE)

  4. This copy found

    1909 to 1914, the acquisition window the editors propose, not a find date; it was found in Egypt in the first quarter of the 20th century, probably at Edfu, and its identity was noticed in 2011

All four rows share one timeline. A row with no marker says why in words. How ancient texts are dated.

What it is

P. Hamb. Arab. 68 is a copy of surah 2 (a chapter) of the Quran, called the Cow, in Arabic on papyrus, a paper-like sheet made from the papyrus plant.1 Seven double leaves (bifolia) were folded into one gathering, a quire, and sewn at the fold; twenty-eight pages survive.2 The first page is missing, and with it the opening verses, which Malczycki counts as twenty-one in one place and twenty in another; Gozeler lists the text as lacking verses 1 to 21.34

The editors suggest it was an autonomous booklet holding only this surah. Their catalog page, updated in December 2024, calls it the longest Quran extract on papyrus known to date.25

The script is Hijazi, an early slanted Arabic hand, with many long vowels left unwritten.2 The editors count 37 differences from the standard text, most of them minor mistakes and spelling variants. They also count four omissions of whole phrases or verses, in 2:149 to 150, 2:160 to 163, 2:213, and 2:219. The last, in 2:219, leaves out the words about wine and gambling, as Malczycki and the editors' catalog page describe it; the editors' two explanations for the omissions are given below.32

How the copy was dated

The editors, Mathieu Tillier and Naim Vanthieghem, date the copy to the late 7th or early 8th century CE. They go by the style of the script, a method called paleography.25 Matt Malczycki, reviewing their book in 2025, reports that their analysis of the script leads them to the first century AH (the Islamic calendar). That century ends about 719 CE (computed here), so the date strip draws the copy as 667 to 719 CE.3

Esra Gozeler, a professor of Quran commentary at Ankara University, reports a complication in her review of 2024. The script resembles a type that Francois Deroche calls Hijazi III and dated to the second half of the second century AH, the 8th century CE. The editors note that recent radiocarbon results suggest the type may have been in use in the first century AH, the 7th century CE.4 The sources read here report no radiocarbon test of this papyrus and no scholar who dates it differently from its editors. For the methods, see how ancient texts are dated.

The text: its date and authorship

The date strip marks the Quran's text, not this codex. Both rows start at 610 CE, the year Muslim tradition gives for the first revelations, because the sources used here give no historian's year for the start of the text.1 The tradition row ends with the standard written text under Uthman: about 650 CE for David Thomas, who reports the Muslim account, and the years of Uthman's caliphate, 644 to 656 CE, for Abdullah Saeed.16 The critical row ends at the later of two views, Nicolai Sinai's 650 CE or earlier and Shoemaker's 685 to 705 CE, so its bar is longer.78

The tradition's view

Abdullah Saeed, in an encyclopedia article, writes that the standard traditional Muslim view, Sunni and Shia alike, attributes the Quran's composition to God alone. On this view Muhammad passed on, without addition or alteration, what came through the angel of revelation, usually identified as Gabriel. Saeed adds that the Quran was in its final and complete form at Muhammad's death, and that Muslim tradition holds it was compiled under Uthman.6 Yousef Wahb, writing for the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, defines the Quran as God's speech, preserved through both oral and written methods, with oral delivery from memory the primary one, and notes God's promise to preserve it.9

In the Sunni hadith collection of al-Bukhari (a hadith is a report of what Muhammad said or did), Zayd ibn Thabit gathers the text under the caliph Abu Bakr. Uthman later has copies sent to the provinces.101112 The Shia scholar Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei rejects the reports of a collection under Abu Bakr as inconsistent with one another. He holds that the Quran was a complete collection in Muhammad's lifetime and that Uthman united Muslims on one authoritative reading.1314

Scholars of the Quran's history: Sinai, Shoemaker, Tillier, and Vanthieghem

These scholars ask when the Quran's text took its form; the passages cited do not take up who wrote it. Nicolai Sinai, in a 2014 article, holds that 650 CE or earlier ought to be the default dating of the standard consonantal text (the skeleton of letters, before dots and vowel signs are added), apart from some features of spelling. That holds unless passages of distinct style and vocabulary are compellingly placed in the late seventh century. He calls the Abd al-Malik date a recent proposal by various scholars.15716

Stephen Shoemaker argues that the canonical text took shape under the caliph Abd al-Malik. He writes that most modern scholarship has placed uncomplicated confidence in a text fixed under Uthman around 650 CE, and he calls that confidence undeserved.8

Tillier and Vanthieghem point to early Islamic and Christian sources that name separate books, among them a Book of the Cow. Malczycki reports that, in the editors' account, the books so named circulated before the Quran was fixed in one volume and were later included as chapters, such as the Women and the Table.23

How it was found

Malczycki reports the editors' proposal that the Deutsches Papyruskartell acquired the papyrus between 1909 and 1914. Gozeler adds that the Hamburg library's 135 papyri were bought in those years through Carl Heinrich Becker. It was catalogued in 1938, framed between glass, and unnoticed until Vanthieghem came across it in March 2011; neither the inventory nor the papyrus records its origin.34

The editors think it was copied in al-Fustat, the Egyptian capital, and taken to Upper Egypt, where it was probably unearthed at Edfu. They remark that it is probably the only Quran manuscript found so far in a rural setting.234 The State and University Library Hamburg holds it, as publications of 2023 to 2025 place it.543

What it shows, and what it does not

It shows that a long stretch of the Quran, all of surah 2 except its opening verses, was copied on papyrus in a quire of seven double leaves. The editors date that copying to the late 7th or early 8th century CE and think it was probably done in Egypt. Deroche, in his foreword, writes that the book ends the debate over whether the Quran was copied on papyrus apart from amulets, as Gozeler reports. The editors and their ink analysts add that parchment was preferred for the word of God.45

It does not show why four stretches of text are missing. The editors offer two explanations. In the first, a copyist's eye skipped from one occurrence of a repeated word to the next, as Malczycki explains for 2:219. In the second, the copy faithfully follows an older copy that read differently, which would mean some early versions differed from Uthman's text. Malczycki calls the second revisionist but not radical and says it rests on reconstruction. Gozeler holds that repeated words point directly to scribal slips, and notes that errors could not be scraped out of papyrus as from parchment.34

See also

Sources

  1. University of Birmingham. Birmingham Qur'an manuscript dated among the oldest in the world. University of Birmingham, 2015. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  2. Mathieu Tillier, Naim Vanthieghem, and Claudia Colini. History of a Fragmentary 'Sura of the Cow': The Longest Quran Excerpt on Papyrus. Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC), University of Hamburg, 'Hamburgs Schriftschaetze' online catalogue (last update 16 December 2024), 2024, the whole page. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  3. Matt Malczycki. Review of The Book of the Cow: An Early Qur'anic Codex on Papyrus (P. Hamb. Arab. 68), by Mathieu Tillier and Naim Vanthieghem (Documenta Coranica, vol. 3, Brill, 2024). Journal of the American Oriental Society 145, no. 3 (July to September 2025), pp. 651 to 653 (the saved PDF is the issue's front matter and these three review pages), 2025, pp. 651 to 653. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  4. Esra Gozeler. Review of Mathieu Tillier and Naim Vanthieghem, The Book of the Cow: An Early Qur'anic Codex on Papyrus (P. Hamb. Arab. 68) (in Turkish). Kitabiyat Ilahiyat Arastirmalari Inceleme-Elestiri Dergisi 2, no. 2 (December 2024), pp. 52 to 64; the byline reads Prof. Dr. Esra Gozeler, Ankara University, Tefsir (Quran commentary), 2024, pp. 54 to 62. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  5. Sowmeya Sathiyamani, Mathieu Tillier, Naim Vanthieghem, and Claudia Colini. Leafing through time: Ink Analysis of the longest Qur'an on Papyrus. 2023 IMEKO TC-4 International Conference on Metrology for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, Rome, October 19 to 21, 2023 (proceedings pp. 851 to 855), 2023, the abstract and section II, description of the artefact. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  6. Abdullah Saeed. Qur'an: Tradition of Scholarship and Interpretation. Encyclopedia of Religion, second edition (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, 2005. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  7. Nicolai Sinai. When did the consonantal skeleton of the Quran reach closure? Part II. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 77, no. 3, 2014, abstract. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  8. Stephen J. Shoemaker. Creating the Qur'an: A Historical-Critical Study. University of California Press (Luminos open access), 2022, introduction (radiocarbon summary; Abd al-Malik, p. 13; pp. 3 and 14 to 15), chapter 1 (p. 17 and pp. 25 to 30), chapter 2 (p. 43), the radiocarbon chapter (pp. 73 to 86), and p. 238 (printed page numbers). Accessed 2026-10-29.
  9. Yousef Wahb. How the Quran Was Preserved During the Prophet's Time: Mechanisms of Oral and Written Transmission. Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, 2022. Accessed 2026-10-28.
  10. Mohammad Hashim Kamali. Hadith. Encyclopedia of Religion, second edition (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, 2005. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  11. Muhammad al-Bukhari (compiler). Sahih al-Bukhari 4986, English translation. Hadith Unlocked, hadith 4986. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  12. Muhammad al-Bukhari (compiler). Sahih al-Bukhari 4987, English translation. Hadith Unlocked, hadith 4987. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  13. Al-Islam.org (Ahlul Bayt Digital Islamic Library Project). Sayyid Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei (biography page, listed under Shia Scholars). Al-Islam.org, the biography paragraph. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  14. Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei, translated by Abdulaziz A. Sachedina. The Prolegomena to the Qur'an, chapter 8: The Collection of the Qur'an. Oxford University Press (1998); online at Al-Islam.org, 1998, chapter 8. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  15. Nicolai Sinai. When did the consonantal skeleton of the Quran reach closure? Part I. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 77, no. 2, pp. 273-292, 2014, abstract. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  16. Nicolai Sinai. Beyond the Cairo Edition: On the Study of Early Quranic Codices (a review article on Asma Hilali, The Sanaa Palimpsest, and Eleonore Cellard, Codex Amrensis 1). Journal of the American Oriental Society 140, no. 1 (2020), pp. 189 to 204, 2020, pp. 189 to 204; the footnotes on pp. 191 to 203. Accessed 2026-11-06.