Recent years have seen an increased use of radiocarbon dating as a method for the absolute dating of qurʾānic manuscripts. This has resulted in unprecedented insight into the age of the earliest surviving material witnesses to the qurʾānic text. However, these data have not yet been leveraged to construct a holistic chronological model detailing the emergence, evolution, and spread of the text. There is also no consensus on the interpretation and reliability of these data among qurʾānic scholars. As a result, the chronology of key events relating to the formation and crystallization of the qurʾānic canon remains in dispute. In this paper, I describe a unified framework for interpreting radiocarbon dating evidence in combination with other sources of data. I also attempt to address several concerns over the reliability of radiocarbon dating including issues of long-term storage, calibration offsets, and statistical outliers. I further argue that available radiocarbon data are consistent with independent paleographic, epigraphic, and literary evidence and that they all support a canonization of the text during the reign of the caliph ʿUthmān (r. 644 – 656 CE). Some notable interpretations to the contrary are shown to be erroneous. Finally, I propose a new preliminary schematization of early qurʾānic script styles based on radiocarbon dating evidence.
Hythem Sidky is the Executive Director of the International Qurʾanic Studies Association. His research brings together traditional philology and mathematical analysis to study the dynamics and evolution of the Qurʾan in early Islam. Sidky also works on pre-Islamic epigraphy, with a particular interest in late pre-Islamic and early-Islamic paleo-Arabic inscriptions. He has worked on the stemmatics of Qurʾānic manuscripts and reconstruction of regional oral traditions, and continues to work on developing new methods for the study of the Qurʾanic text.
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