How does a text survive 1,400 years?

Memory, parchment, radiocarbon and erased text. Weigh the traditional account, the manuscript evidence and the scholarly debates — clearly separated.

Exhibit 01

17%

Exhibit 01

A text carried in memory

Today, hundreds of thousands of people around the world have memorised the entire Qur'an — over 6,000 verses — and recite it aloud. For Muslims, the Qur'an is first a recited text: the word itself means "recitation".

So the question "how was it preserved?" has two strands: voices and pages.

§Historical finding

Recitation as practice

Ethnographic study documents a highly developed tradition of memorisation and rule-governed recitation (tajwīd), taught teacher to student.

1 source

Question

Which do you think is more reliable for preserving a long text: memory or writing?

Sources in this experience

Folios from a Qur'an Manuscript (10th century; image) — Metropolitan Museum of Art, 10th century, Met Open Access · CC0 View source
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Book of the Virtues of the Qur'an (accounts of compilation)
Online locators: Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 4986–4987. Edition and interpretation still require review.
View source
Birmingham Qur'an manuscript dated among the oldest in the world (press release, 22 July 2015) — University of Birmingham, 2015 View source
Ṣanʿāʾ 1 and the Origins of the Qurʾān — Behnam Sadeghi & Mohsen Goudarzi, 2012, Der Islam 87: 1–129
Qur'ans of the Umayyads: A First Overview — François Déroche, 2014, Brill
The Qur'an: A Historical-Critical Introduction — Nicolai Sinai, 2017, Edinburgh University Press
Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation — John Wansbrough, 1977, Oxford University Press
Corpus Coranicum — Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities View source
The Art of Reciting the Qur'an — Kristina Nelson, 1985, University of Texas Press View source

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Keep exploring

The opening page of a 13th-century Latin manuscript of Ptolemy's Almagest, with an enthroned Ptolemy in a gold and blue initial — Almagest, Latin manuscript, Paris, 13th c. · BnF Latin 16200, f. 1 · Source: gallica.bnf.fr / BnF · Public domain (cropped)

InvestigationHistory11 min

What happens to an idea when it changes language?

Begin · When Knowledge Traveled the World