Sana'a Manuscript: Difference between revisions

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The Sana'a manuscript or Sana'a palimpsest, dubbed Ṣanʿā’ 1, is one of the oldest copies of the Quran in existence. Its lower text, subsequently overwritten, is dated to the 7th Century CE and has many variations from the standard Qur'an. It is the only known surviving example of a Quran manuscript that is not of the Uthmanic text type. It is considered to be a physical exemplar of the kinds of relatively substantial variations reported of the readings and codices of Muhammad's companions before such variety was constrained under Uthman around 650 CE. See the article [[Textual_History_of_the_Qur%27an#Disagreements_on_the_Qur.27an|Textual History of the Quran]] for a discussion about how Muslim scholars explain the existence of such variants and the responses of critics.

This table lists some of the variants in the lower text, as described in a lenghty paper by Behnam Sadeghi and Mohsen Goudarzi who have studied the manuscript folios in detail to reconstruct and analyse it.<ref>Sadeghi, Behnam; Goudarzi, Mohsen (2012). [https://bible-quran.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Sadeghi-Goudarzi-sana-Origins-of-the-Quran.pdf Ṣan'ā' 1 and the Origins of the Qur'ān]. Der Islam. Berlin: De Gruyter. 87 (1–2): 1–129. doi: 10.1515/islam-2011-0025</ref> Asma Hilali has argued that the lower text of the palimpsest might have actually been a student exercise book, in an attempt to explain the many differences to the standard Uthmanic text. However, leading Quranic manuscript expert Hythem Sidky refers to a paper by Nicolai Sinai for "criticism of her reading of the lower text and overall thesis"<ref>Nicolai Sinai, [https://www.academia.edu/42333408/ Beyond the Cairo Edition: On the Study of Early Qurʾānic Codices] JAOS 140 (2020): 189–204 cited in Sidky, H. (2020) [https://www.academia.edu/49523638/ On the Regionality of Qurʾānic Codices], Journal of the International Qur’anic Studies Association, 5(1) doi:10.5913/jiqsa.5.2020.a005</ref> and to a paper by another Quranic manuscript expert, Éléonore Cellard, "for a codicological reconstruction of portions of the undertext demonstrating the document’s status as a codex and the product of professional scribes". <ref>Éléonore Cellard (2021) [https://www.academia.edu/68162838/ The Ṣanʿāʾ Palimpsest: Materializing the Codices], Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 80(1) doi: 10.1086/713473.</ref>For these reasons Hilali's thesis is now widely considered to be completely untenable.