Oldest Manuscript of Koran Preserved by a Collector

What may be the world's oldest fragments of the Koran have been found by the University of Birmingham. Radiocarbon dating found the manuscript to be at least 1,370 years old, making it among the earliest in existence. The pages of the Muslim holy text had remained unrecognised in the university library for almost a century. The British Library's expert on such manuscripts, Dr Muhammad Isa Waley, said this "exciting discovery" would make Muslims "rejoice".

They'd better be grateful to the English for looking after it for them, if it had been left behind among the rag-head heritage destroyers, there'd be nothing left to look at.

The manuscript is part of the Mingana Collection of more than 3,000 Middle Eastern documents gathered in the 1920s by Alphonse Mingana, a Chaldean priest born near Mosul in modern-day Iraq. He was sponsored to take collecting trips to the Middle East by Edward Cadbury, who was part of the chocolate-making dynasty.

This once again shows the good that private collectors do - so often dismissed by the anti-collecting league. For more see here: ''Oldest' Koran fragments found in Birmingham University' BBC News.