![]() The upper text appears to have been presented a complete text of the Qur’an, but whether this was also the case for the lower text remains an issue of scholarly debate. In the Sana’a palimpsest, both the upper and the lower text are the Qur’an written in the Hijazi script. The manuscript is a palimpsest, meaning the parchment was written over once (the “lower” text), then its text was erased, and then it was written over a second time (the “upper” text) with this process potentially being repeated over time with the same parchment. The preserved fragments comprise Quranic and non-Quranic material. Al-Akwa’ sought international assistance in examining and preserving the fragments, and in 1979 managed to interest a visiting German scholar, who in turn persuaded the West German government to organize and fund a restoration project. Qadhi Isma’il al-Akwa’, then the president of the Yemeni Antiquities Authority, realized the potential importance of the find. Not realizing their significance, the workers gathered up the documents, packed them away into some twenty potato sacks, and left them on the staircase of one of the mosque’s minarets. In 1972, construction workers renovating a wall in the attic of the Great Mosque of Sana’a in Yemen came across large quantities of old manuscripts and parchments, many of which were deteriorated. A radiocarbon analysis has dated the parchment of one of the detached leaves sold at auction, and hence its lower text, to between 578 CE and 669 CE with a 95% accuracy. A partial reconstruction of the lower text was published in 2012 and a reconstruction of the legible portions of both lower and upper texts of the 38 folios in the Sana’a House of Manuscripts was published in 2017 utilising post-processed digital images of the lower text. The upper text largely conforms to the standard ‘Uthmanic’ Quran in text and in the standard order of suras whereas the lower text contains many variations from the standard text, and the sequence of its suras corresponds to no known quranic order. ![]() Part of a sizable cache of Quranic and non-Quranic fragments discovered in Yemen during a 1972 restoration of the Great Mosque of Sana’a, the manuscript was identified as a palimpsest Quran in 1981 as it is written on parchment and comprises two layers of text. The Sana’a palimpsest (also also called manuscript or Ṣanʿā’ 1 or DAM 01-27.1) is one of the oldest Quranic manuscripts in existence. The upper text covers Quran 2 (al-Baqarah), verses 265-271.
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