<P> The tests carried out on the parchment of the Birmingham folios yield the strong probability that the animal from which it was taken was alive during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad or shortly afterwards . This means that the parts of the Qur'an that are written on this parchment can, with a degree of confidence, be dated to less than two decades after Muhammad's death . These portions must have been in a form that is very close to the form of the Qur'an read today, supporting the view that the text has undergone little or no alteration and that it can be dated to a point very close to the time it was believed to be revealed . </P> <P> Dr Saud al - Sarhan, Director of Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh, has been more sceptical; questioning whether the parchment might have been reused as a palimpsest, and also noting that the writing had chapter separators and dotted verse endings--features in Arabic scripts which are believed not to have been introduced to the Qur'an until later . Dr Saud's criticisms have been backed by a number of Saudi - based experts in Quranic history who strongly rebut any speculation that the Birmingham / Paris Quran could have been written during the lifetime of the prophet Muhammad . They emphasize that while the prophet Muhammad was alive, Quranic texts were written without any chapter decoration, marked verse endings or use of coloured inks; and did not follow any standard sequence of surahs . They maintain that those features were introduced into Quranic practice in the time of the Caliph Uthman, and so it would be entirely possible that the Birmingham leaves could have been written then, but not earlier . </P> <P> Professor Süleyman Berk of the faculty of Islamic studies at Yalova University has noted the strong similarity between the script of the Birmingham leaves and those of a number of Hijazi Qurans in the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum; which were brought to Istanbul from the Great Mosque of Damascus following a fire in 1893 . Professor Berk recalls that these manuscripts had been intensively researched in association with an exhibition on the history of the Quran, The Quran in its 1,400 th Year held in Istanbul in 2010, and the findings published by François Déroche as Qur'ans of the Umayyads in 2013 . In that study, the Paris Quran, BnF Arabe 328 (c), is compared with Qurans in Istanbul, and concluded as having been written "around the end of the seventh century and the beginning of the eighth century ." </P> <P> Professor Joseph E.B. Lumbard of Brandeis University has written in the Huffington Post in support of the dates proposed by the Birmingham scholars . Professor Lumbard notes that the discovery of a Quranic text that may be confirmed by radiocarbon dating as having been written in the first decades of the Islamic era, while presenting a text substantially in conformity with that traditionally accepted, reinforces a growing academic consensus that many Western sceptical and' revisionist' theories of Quranic origins are now untenable in the light of empirical findings . Whereas, on the other hand, counterpart accounts of Quranic origins within classical Islamic traditions stand up well in the light of ongoing scientific discoveries . </P>

Where is the oldest copy of the holy quran preserved