Writings: IslamThe Sana'a palimpsest1 of 10

Writings: Islam

The Sana'a palimpsest

The Sana'a palimpsest is a Quran on parchment, mainly in Yemen, with a first Quranic text erased and a second written over it. Radiocarbon tests of its parchment gave ranges that differ by laboratory, one of them 578 to 669 CE for a leaf likely from it. Scholars date the writing differently and disagree about the lower text.

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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 within Uthman's rule of 644 to 656 CE, which Abdullah Saeed gives as the time Muslim tradition holds the Quran was compiled; Yousef Wahb gives the 23 years of revelation, and Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei places the standard text under Uthman)

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

    610 to 705 CE (the strip starts at 610 CE, the date Muslim tradition gives for the first revelations, borrowed here because the scholarly sources used give no start year; it ends at the later of two views of the standard written text: Nicolai Sinai holds 650 CE or earlier as the default view, and Stephen Shoemaker argues for 685 to 705 CE, under Abd al-Malik, while allowing that much of the content may go back to Muhammad's preaching in the early seventh century)

  3. This copy made

    578 to 669 CE for the parchment of one detached leaf likely from the codex (radiocarbon, University of Arizona, 95 percent probability); other leaves and laboratories gave other ranges, some scholars place the lower writing later in the 7th century or in the early 8th, and the upper writing, on the same parchment, is thought to be of the 8th century

  4. This copy found

    1972 or 1973 (found in the Sana'a mosque, according to Eleonore Cellard; the sources used here do not name the finder)

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

What it is

A palimpsest is a manuscript whose first writing was scraped off or erased and overwritten by another text.1 This one is a Quran in Arabic on parchment, animal skin prepared for writing. Both layers are Quranic, covering different parts of the text.1 The Institute of Ismaili Studies describes 38 leaves, and Nicolai Sinai says more than thirty. They are in the Dar al-Makhtutat (House of Manuscripts) in Sana'a, Yemen, numbered DAM 01-27.1.213

Sinai adds that a similar number of leaves in the library of the Great Mosque, and four stray leaves in Europe and North America, have hypothetically been assigned to the same codex, a book of pages. Asma Hilali doubts the first assignment and is at least undecided about the second.14

How the copy was dated

Radiocarbon dating measures the carbon left in organic material and gives a range of years at a stated probability. It dates the animal skin, not the writing, and both layers share one parchment.5

Behnam Sadeghi and Uwe Bergmann reported in 2010 that the University of Arizona dated a detached leaf to 578 to 669 CE at 95 percent probability. They held that it was very probably made within 15 years of Muhammad's death.4 Sinai and Stephen Shoemaker think the leaf likely came from this codex, though Shoemaker writes that this is not certain.14 Shoemaker reports that laboratories disagreed on samples from another leaf. Lyon gave 388 to 535 CE, Zurich 565 to 660, and Oxford 595 to 658.4 Michael Marx and Tobias Jocham call dating this manuscript problematic.5

Scholars who date by handwriting and decoration place the lower text later. Francois Deroche holds that the titles of surahs (chapters) and the decorations between them point to a date later in the seventh century CE.16 As Shoemaker reports, Eleonore Cellard holds that the lower text seems to date to the early eighth century. Deroche places the upper text no earlier than the middle of that century.4

The Institute of Ismaili Studies gives the lower text as first century AH (the Islamic calendar), the seventh century CE. It gives the upper text as second century AH, the eighth century CE.27 For the methods, see how ancient texts are dated.

The text: its date and authorship

The date strip marks the Quran's text, not the palimpsest. Both rows start at 610 CE, the year Muslim tradition gives for the first revelation.6 The scholars' row ends at the later of the two views below. The copy bar marks the parchment, so it can start before the text does.

The tradition's view

Part of this column comes through reference works and scholars' reports (Saeed, Thomas). Abdullah Saeed writes that the standard traditional Muslim view, Sunni and Shia alike, holds that God alone composed the Quran. Muhammad passed it on without addition or alteration. Muslim tradition, he adds, holds that it was compiled in the caliphate of Uthman (ruled 644 to 656 CE).8 Yousef Wahb of the Yaqeen Institute writes that the Quran is God's speech. It was revealed over 23 years and kept in memory and writing, with memory the primary method.9

Al-Bukhari's collection of hadith (reports of what Muhammad said or did), a Sunni source, says the caliph Uthman had the earlier sheets copied. He sent a copy to each province and had other materials burned.1011 The Shia scholar Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei rejects the reports that caliphs collected the Quran, as contradicting one another. He holds that it existed as a complete written collection in Muhammad's lifetime, and that Uthman united Muslims on one authoritative reading and destroyed other texts.1213 David Thomas reports Muslim tradition as dating the revelation to 610 to 632 CE and the written text to about 650 CE under Uthman.6

Scholars of the Quran's history: Sinai and Shoemaker

Sinai, in a 2014 article, describes 650 CE or earlier as the traditional dating of the standard consonantal text, the letters without vowel signs. He holds that this ought to be the default view, apart from some spelling features, as long as no passages with a distinct style and vocabulary have been convincingly placed in the late seventh century. He writes that in recent years various scholars have espoused a conjectural dating of the text's codification to Abd al-Malik's time, or have at least held that it stayed open to significant revision until about 700 CE.14

Shoemaker, in a book of 2022, writes that most modern scholarship has accepted that Uthman fixed the text around 650 CE, and he calls that confidence undeserved.4 He argues that the canonical text took shape under the caliph Abd al-Malik (ruled 685 to 705 CE). He writes that much of the content may ultimately go back to Muhammad's preaching in the early seventh century.4 He holds that the lower text was erased once the standard text became dominant, in the middle of the eighth century.4 The passages cited here study when the text was fixed and do not address what Muslims hold about its authorship.

How it was found

Cellard writes that three Quran manuscripts, this palimpsest among them, were found in the Sana'a mosque in 1972 or 1973 and imaged by a digitization project from 2005 to 2008.3 Shoemaker reports that Alba Fedeli, in Sana'a in 2008, says the leaves now in the House of Manuscripts had been kept for centuries in the false ceiling of the Great Mosque. They came to light after floods made restoration necessary.4 The sources used here do not name who found the leaves.

What it shows, and what it does not

The evidence shows that a Quran text on parchment was erased and the parchment reused for a second Quran text. Sinai calls the lower text the only known material witness to a different recension, or version, from the canonical one. He sees the palimpsest as in line with the Islamic tradition's report of several versions in the first decades after Muhammad's death.1 In his quick tally of variants, it has about 18 additions of a word or more against about six in the standard text. Sadeghi's count of major additions on four detached leaves found ten against fourteen.1

It does not settle what the lower text was. Sadeghi tentatively judged that it derives from the standard text or a prototype of it.1 Sinai disagrees with Hilali and judges it very likely that the scribes of both layers were copying out an entire Quran, though he allows that the project may not have been finished.1 As Sinai reports, Hilali argues that the lower text is probably a scribal exercise from a teaching circle. She holds that its variants mostly constitute glosses, and doubts that either layer formed part of a full codex.1 No source used here settles who erased the lower text or why.

See also

Sources

  1. 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.
  2. Institute of Ismaili Studies (publisher's description of Asma Hilali's book). The Sanaa Palimpsest: The Transmission of the Qur'an in the First Centuries AH, by Asma Hilali. Institute of Ismaili Studies, with Oxford University Press (Qur'anic Studies Series, vol. 17), 2017, the whole description. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  3. Eleonore Cellard (an excerpt of her review, posted by the International Qur'anic Studies Association). Review of Qur'anic Research, Vol. 5 no. 9 (2019). International Qur'anic Studies Association (IQSA), 2019, the posted excerpt. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  4. 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.
  5. Michael Josef Marx and Tobias J. Jocham. Radiocarbon (14C) Dating of Qur'an Manuscripts. In Andreas Kaplony and Michael Marx (eds.), Qur'an Quotations Preserved on Papyrus Documents, 7th to 10th Centuries (Brill, Leiden, 2019), chapter 6, pp. 188 to 221, 2019, pp. 188 to 217; the table on p. 216; the Dawud spelling on pp. 207 to 209. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  6. University of Birmingham. Birmingham Qur'an manuscript dated among the oldest in the world. University of Birmingham, 2015. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  7. Marilyn Robinson Waldman; revised by Bruce B. Lawrence. Nubuwah. Encyclopedia of Religion (1987, revised 2005), via Encyclopedia.com, 2005. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  8. 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.
  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. Muhammad al-Bukhari (compiler). Sahih al-Bukhari 4987, English translation. Hadith Unlocked, hadith 4987. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  11. Mohammad Hashim Kamali. Hadith. Encyclopedia of Religion, second edition (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, 2005. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  12. 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.
  13. Al-Islam.org (Ahlul Bayt Digital Islamic Library Project). Sayyid Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei (biographical page, Shia Scholars). Al-Islam.org, the biography paragraph on the person page. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  14. 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.