Vraie découverte ? manipulation ? Au lecteur de voir. Des chercheurs britanniques ont supposé
que les fragments du plus ancien Coran au monde, retrouvés en juin 2015 dans la
bibliothèque de l’Université de Birmingham, pourraient être plus vieux que le
prophète Mahomet, rapporte la chaîne BBC. La datation des fragments au
radiocarbone, effectuée par les scientifiques de l'Université d'Oxford,
démontre que le manuscrit a été rédigé entre 568 et 645 de notre ère, tandis
que la première communauté musulmane n'a été fondée à Médine (en Arabie
Saoudite) qu'en 622.
"Les récentes découvertes laissent supposer
qu'à l'époque, le prophète Mahomet et ses disciples se seraient servis
d'un manuscrit préexistant, tout en l'interprétant selon la conjoncture
politique et théologique", estime Keith Small, employé de la
Bibliothèque Bodléienne d'Oxford.
Deux pages du livre sacré de l'islam avaient été retrouvées dans la
bibliothèque de l'Université de Birmingham, au Royaume-Uni. Par erreur,
les scientifiques les avaient datées du VIIe siècle de notre ère.
Ledit manuscrit fait partie d'une collection de livres et de documents du Moyen-Orient, retrouvés en Iran dans les années 20.
A présent, les chercheurs musulmans contestent les preuves apportées
par leurs collègues britanniques, affirmant que le Coran en question est
plus vieux que le prophète.
Small admet le scepticisme des chercheurs, tout en faisant remarquer
que la datation au carbone 14 permet de déterminer l'âge du parchemin,
mais pas celui de l'encre.
Le premier texte complet du Coran fut rédigé en 653 sous Othman ibn
Affan, le troisième calife de la communauté musulmane. Ainsi la
rédaction du manuscrit eut-elle lieu, officiellement, après la mort du prophète. A
l'époque, le texte sacré était transmis de bouche à oreille. Dans de
très rares cas, les disciples l'inscrivirent sur des pierres, du
parchemin et des os.
'Oldest' Koran fragments found in Birmingham University
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".
The manuscript had been kept with a collection of other Middle Eastern books and documents, without being identified as one of the oldest fragments of the Koran in the world.
Oldest texts
When
a PhD researcher, Alba Fedeli, looked more closely at these pages it
was decided to carry out a radiocarbon dating test and the results were
"startling".
The university's director of special collections,
Susan Worrall, said researchers had not expected "in our wildest dreams"
that it would be so old.
The
tests, carried out by the Oxford University Radiocarbon Accelerator
Unit, showed that the fragments, written on sheep or goat skin, were
among the very oldest surviving texts of the Koran.
These tests
provide a range of dates, showing that, with a probability of more than
95%, the parchment was from between 568 and 645.
"They could well
take us back to within a few years of the actual founding of Islam,"
said David Thomas, the university's professor of Christianity and Islam.
"According
to Muslim tradition, the Prophet Muhammad received the revelations that
form the Koran, the scripture of Islam, between the years 610 and 632,
the year of his death."
"The
person who actually wrote it could well have known the Prophet Muhammad.
He would have seen him probably, he would maybe have heard him preach.
He may have known him personally - and that really is quite a thought to
conjure with," he says.
First-hand witness
Prof
Thomas says that some of the passages of the Koran were written down on
parchment, stone, palm leaves and the shoulder blades of camels - and a
final version, collected in book form, was completed in about 650.
He
says that "the parts of the Koran 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 Koran 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.
The
manuscript, written in "Hijazi script", an early form of written
Arabic, becomes one of the oldest known fragments of the Koran.
Because
radiocarbon dating creates a range of possible ages, there is a handful
of other manuscripts in public and private collections which overlap.
So this makes it impossible to say that any is definitively the oldest.
But the latest possible date of the Birmingham discovery - 645 - would put it among the very oldest."
'Precious survivor'
Dr
Waley, curator for such manuscripts at the British Library, said "these
two folios, in a beautiful and surprisingly legible Hijazi hand, almost
certainly date from the time of the first three caliphs".
The first three caliphs were leaders in the Muslim community between about 632 and 656.
Dr Waley says that under the third caliph, Uthman ibn Affan, copies of the "definitive edition" were distributed.
Dr Waley
suggests that the manuscript found by Birmingham is a "precious
survivor" of a copy from that era or could be even earlier.
"In
any case, this - along with the sheer beauty of the content and the
surprisingly clear Hijazi script - is news to rejoice Muslim hearts."
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.
VOIR AUSSI :