Sanaa palimpsest

رقوق صنعاء (النص السفلي)

Parchment palimpsest found in 1972 in the Great Mosque of Sanaa; its lower Qur'anic layer is among the oldest surviving mushaf text, with variants studied academically.

Depth

At a glance

Identifiers
Wikidata
Review
Draft Completeness 1/5 · Help complete it

Scripture and its sciences

Overview

Parchments of Sana'a discovered in 1972 in the Great Mosque; they carry a lower Qur'anic text, one of the oldest surviving remnants of Qur'an copies, with variations of order and wording that academic research studies. 1

People and things also explored

The seven ahruf· Hadith· Shama'il Muhammadiyya· The Prophetic sira· The Prophetic Sunna· Command, prohibition and capacity· The Sunna as explanation of the Qur'an· Bid'a (religious innovation)

Sources

  1. Wikidata
Cite this page

islam.museum contributors. “Sanaa palimpsest”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/object/ruquq-sanaa/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Last updated 2026-10-17.

Improve this page on GitHub · Report an error · JSON

Wing

Objects

Manuscripts, art, architecture and relics from collections worldwide.
Related

The seven ahruf

The Prophet's saying 'the Qur'an was revealed in seven ahruf, so read of it what is easy' — narrated through Umar's dispute with Hisham ibn Hakim over Surat al-Furqan; its exact meaning is one of the widest debates in Qur'anic sciences.