3 June 2026

The latest ELM Connex event, held on Tuesday 2 June 2026 at the London Muslim Centre, brought together students, scholars and community members for an evening exploring the written history of the Qur’an. 

Part of the Educate and Inspire lecture series, the session traced how the Qur’an has been preserved and transmitted, from the earliest surviving fragments to the printed copies widely used today.

The evening opened with a reminder of ELM Connex’s purpose: to create a space where scholars, experts and the wider community can engage with ideas across faith, history, science and philosophy.

The lecture was delivered by Dr F. Redhwan Karim, Lecturer in Islamic Studies and Course Leader for BA Islamic Studies at the Markfield Institute of Higher Education. Dr Karim completed his PhD in Islamic Studies at SOAS, University of London, and has studied in Egypt, Jordan and Oman. He is a Hafidh of the Qur’an with ijaza in Hafs, and author of “History of the Qur’an: Approaches and Explorations”, the book at the centre of the discussion.

 

Understanding the Qur’an’s Transmission 

Dr Karim began by placing the manuscripts within the wider history of the Qur’an’s transmission. He explained that the Qur’an is a multiform text: from the earliest days of Islam, there has been an accepted range of ways to recite it, with differences in wording and pronunciation. Over time, each major stage of its history narrowed that range.

The first major stage came under the third Caliph, Uthman, around twenty-five years after the passing of the Prophet ﷺ. Uthman standardised the consonantal skeleton, known as the rasm, and sent official copies to key centres of the Muslim world, including Mecca, Medina, Basra, Kufa and Damascus, among others.

From Seven Readings to the Cairo Edition

Dr Karim then guided the audience through later milestones: Ibn Mujahid’s selection of seven readings; the canonisation of two transmitters for each reader through al-Dani and al-Shatibi; and Ibn al-Jazari’s addition of three further readings, bringing the total to ten. 

The final key milestone, Dr Karim noted, was surprisingly recent. In 1924, the Cairo edition was prepared under King Fuad with scholars from al-Azhar and adopted the reading of Hafs an Asim. Today, this is the version read by around ninety per cent of Muslims worldwide. Dr Karim stressed, however, that Hafs should not be seen as the Qur’an’s only lens, but as one part of a much broader and richer tradition.

How Scholars Date Manuscripts

Commenting on how scholars date a manuscript, Dr Karim outlined three key methods: The first is palaeography, the study of handwriting styles, which can be compared with dated inscriptions carved into rock by ordinary people leaving their mark. 

The second is the use of colophons, notes sometimes left by scribes at the end of a manuscript recording when and where it was completed.

The third is carbon-14 dating, which measures the decay of carbon in the animal skin used for early parchment copies. Each method provides a range rather than a single date, he explained, which is why they must be considered together.

 

Manuscripts That Bring History to Life

The audience was then taken through several significant manuscripts, including the Codex Parisino-petropolitanus, now split between Paris and Saint Petersburg, which Dr Karim has seen in person; the Birmingham folios, which attracted global attention in 2015 because of their early carbon dating; and the Blue Qur’an, famous for its gold script on dyed indigo parchment and thought to have required the skins of up to three hundred sheep.

Dr Karim also showed how Qur’anic script developed over time: from the slanted Hijazi style of the earliest copies, to the more formal geometric Kufic script, and later to the proportioned cursive styles associated with Ibn Muqla and refined by Ibn al-Bawwab. Ibn al-Bawwab’s own hand survives in a complete Qur’an dated precisely to 391 AH through its colophon.

Early Vocalisation and the Sana’a Palimpsest 

Some of the most striking details came near the end of the lecture. Dr Karim explained that early manuscripts did not contain vowel markings or dots as we know them today. The first system of vocalisation used coloured dots: red for vowels and yellow for the letter hamza, a letter whose written form developed later.

He concluded with the Sana’a palimpsest, discovered in Yemen in 1972 in the roof space of the Great Mosque during construction work. It is the only known manuscript whose erased lower layer does not follow the Uthmanic rasm. Its variants correspond with what classical sources describe as the readings of Ibn Masud and Ubayy ibn Ka’b. As physical evidence from the earliest period, Dr Karim explained, its value is difficult to overstate.

A Rigorous and Accessible Discussion 

The talk reflected the aim of the ELM Connex series: intellectually rigorous, honest about what the evidence can and cannot prove, and accessible to a general audience. A short Q&A followed, giving attendees the opportunity to put their questions directly to Dr Karim before the evening came to a close.