Manuscripts · a Light

One Sana'a manuscript was written over an older text

One of the Sana'a manuscripts is a palimpsest: the parchment was scraped clean and reused, and ultraviolet imaging brings back the erased lower layer. That lower text is Qur'anic, but it puts the chapters in a different order and differs from the standard text in wording at many points, mostly in ways that do not change the sense. Scholars read it as a companion's personal codex from before Uthman standardised copies, of the kind the early sources describe and name. What follows from that is argued over, from confirmation of the sources' own account to much wider claims. A leaf from the same manuscript was radiocarbon dated to between 578 and 669 CE with 95 per cent probability.

The Sana'a palimpsest, Yemen

Source · Scholars differ over how to read the lower text, from a companion's codex consistent with the early sources to broader conclusions about the