Academic Study of Rediscovered Ancient Koran Manuscripts Cause Controversy

The Koran is the holy book of Islam, the direct word of Allah as spoken through the Angel Gabriel to Muhammad. Unlike the variations and translations of the Bible, the Koran exists today in the exact same wording and format as when it was first recorded by the third Caliph nearly fourteen centuries ago. Or so everyone believes.

Until recently, some of the oldest variations of the Koran were paper fragments discovered during a Mosque restoration in Sana'a, Yemen. When the thousands of fragments were studied it was learned that not only did some date back as far as the 7th century, but many of them did not match to the modern version of the Koran. The Sana'a fragments stirred controversy in the 1980s when a German expert in Arabic calligraphy and Koranic paleography began studying them. "They don't want it made public that there is work being done at all, since the Muslim position is that everything that needs to be said about the Koran's history was said a thousand years ago," said Gerd-R. Puin. "These manuscripts say that the early history of the Koranic text is much more of an open question than many have suspected: the text was less stable, and therefore had less authority, than has always been claimed."

Other scholars that posed similar hypothesis had fatwas declared against them or declared apostates. Without additional evidence, scholars were reluctant to pursue the matter even though Puin's work had seeded doubt that the modern Koran was an exact version of Allah's word as spoken to Muhammad. That is, until another set of records that also depict ancient versions of the Koran surfaced.

As the story goes, the Bavarian Academy of Science was bombed April 24, 1944 and amongst the many artifacts lost was a photographic archive of ancient Koran pages. That is the story Anton Spitaler, an Arabic scholar of the academy, held onto for more than sixty years. The photographs were taken on a Leica in the 1930s by Gotthelf Bergsträsser and Otto Pretzl who set out on a quest to find the oldest copies of the Koran in the Middle East, Europe and Africa. After Spitaler's death, more than 250 rolls of film surfaced revealing texts from private libraries and holy mosques. Renowned scholar Angelika Neuwirth looks forward to using the photographs to continue the work she and others like Puin have difficulty pursuing due to complaints from the community: "Please ensure that these scholars are not given further access to the documents."