Thread by @NaqadStudies

What can radiocarbon (C14) dating tell us about early Islamic documents?

Lets look at an academic paper by Eva Mira Youssef-Grob, who gives us a sense of the background, reliability and prospects of this crucial field of research - still in its opening stages!

Many scholars see C14 dating as too technical or unreliable, bearing results that are too hard to evaluate or too open to speculative interpretation.

Does radiocarbon dating provide useful results for studying Islamic history? This is currently an open question in the field.

The Dead Sea Scrolls (Qumran Documents) discoveries and their C14 datings generated much discussion, and some trials (and errors) in dating methods. It was a rocky start.

But much progress has been made in C14 dating technology, particularly in the last two decades.

One milestone was the 2010 project "Radiocarbon and the Chronologies of Ancient Egypt."

Over 200 Egyptian objects were C14 dated, and the results were discussed and evaluated by leading Egyptologists.

According to the radiocarbon scientists and Egyptologists in this landmark study, the applicability of Radiocarbon dating was clearly and positively answered.

C14 dating was demonstrably shown to be a reliable method for evaluating Egyptian material history.

Dutton (2007) performed a C14 dating of a portion of the Ṣanʽā palimpsest, yielding a date of 614-656 CE with a 68.2% confidence interval (95.4% confidence for 578-669 CE )

But this was only one measurement of a single target, making the result easy to contest (as Déroche did).

In 2014, The Coranica Project (led by Jocham, Marx, Youssef-Grob) began the first large-scale C14 dating of a wide variety of early Christian and Islamic manuscripts.

The work focuses on papyrus and parchment manuscripts.

coranica.de/front-page-en

The project began with an interlaboratory test on a small piece of the Ṣanʽā manuscript, already dated as early from a previous test.

Coranica selected the Laboratory of Ion Beam Physics at EHT Zurich to perform the carbon testing.

For brevity's sake, we won't overview the science of C14 dating here.

However, we need to mention that raw results need to be compared to a calibration curve, because radiocarbon concentration fluctuates slightly over the years.

Radiocarbon years do not equal calendar years.

For early Islamic history (600s CE) we are in luck!

The curve is steep without peaks and plateaus, which increases the achievable precision.

In other words, Islam's earliest manuscripts can be *more* reliably dated with C14 than those from many other periods!

No great geographic variation in radiocarbon concentration has been traced.

However, Dee et al. 2010 showed that, due to Nile Delta growth in spring (which is earlier than in the rest of the hemisphere) an offset of 19 carbon years should be added to results for Egyptian mss.

Interestingly, Coranica did extensive testing on two dated Egyptian papyri (710 CE), and their lab testing was precise enough to achieve the accurate datings - without the need for Dee's offset!

Coranica was now C14 dating manuscripts with unprecedented level of precision.

Now, before we look at Coranicum's data, we need a quick PSA about C14: carbon dating is all about *probability*.

C14 results should be read as saying “this manuscript is probably older than…"

Here is an example of a dated manuscript from the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. ms.or.fol. 4313.

The manuscript is probably older than 652 CE (97.7% probability).

Data taken from the following paper by Marx, Jocham: uni-frankfurt.de/71728940/EBOOK…

Coranica published a great many more C14 dates for early Islamic manuscripts, but we will just reproduce a few more below.

We encourage those interested to read Youssef-Grob's full paper, which we've linked to at the end of this thread.

UBT Ma VI 165.

Cod.or. 14.434b, folio 1r

SBB We II 1913

Here is an overview of the chronology for some of the manuscripts tested by Coranica, starting with the oldest, ms.or.fol. 4313 (reproduced above).

Coranica's C14 findings are on the right side, with Déroches’ paleographic analyses on the left.

Youssef-Grob and The Coranica Project advocate for the reliability of recently conducted carbondatings.

We find their work impressive and convincing, and we look forward to what conversations arise in academia as a result of this important research.

This thread is based on Eva Mira Youssef-Grob's "Radiocarbon (C14) Dating of Early Islamic Documents: Background and Prospects":

academia.edu/40203945/Youss…