Manuscripts · a Light

Birmingham's two leaves belong to a book kept in Paris

The two parchment leaves in Birmingham that were radiocarbon dated in 2015 to between 568 and 645 CE are not a stray find. Alba Fedeli identified them during doctoral work as having been bound by mistake into a different manuscript, and François Déroche of the Collège de France confirmed that they belong with sixteen leaves in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, catalogued as Arabe 328(c). One codex, eighteen surviving leaves, split between two European cities and reunited on paper rather than in a case. The Birmingham pages carry part of Surah al-Kahf, the closing verses of Surah Maryam, and the opening forty verses of Surah Ta-Ha.

Mingana 1572a and BnF Arabe 328(c)