parchment, palm leaves, bone, and even stone

Ingredients

animal skin, parchment, palm leaves, bone, stone, paper (later development)

Preparation Steps

Original Recipe Text

Early supports for Quranic verses were highly diverse, ranging from organic materials like parchment (animal skin) and palm leaves to rigid materials like bone and stone (p. 1167). The Codex Birmingham is a specific example of a parchment support (p. 1167). The text notes a major shift occurred with the introduction of paper to the Islamic world via trade routes with China, which eventually replaced the more cumbersome and expensive parchment (p. 1169).

Evidence

"Radiocarbon dating suggests that this parchment manuscript was produced between 568 and 645 CE, making it one of the oldest known Quranic manuscripts."

Remarks

The physicality of these manuscripts, including size, shape, and layout, offers clues about the regional and cultural influences on their creation (p. 1167). The Sana'a Manuscripts (discovered in the Great Mosque of Sana'a, Yemen) show orthographic conventions and textual variations that reflect the flexibility of written transmission in the 7th and 8th centuries (p. 1167). Modern digitization efforts, including high-resolution scans and OCR, now facilitate the comparison of these ancient supports without risking physical damage to the originals (p. 1172-1173).