Scholars have suggested that fragments of the world's oldest known Koran may predate the accepted founding date of Islam by the Muslim prophet Muhammad.
Radiocarbon dating by the University of Oxford says the fragments were produced between the years 568 A.D. and 645 A.D. The man known to Muslims as The Prophet is thought to have founded Islam sometime after 610 A.D., with the first Muslim community established at Medina, in present-day Saudi Arabia, in 622 A.D. "This gives more ground to what have been peripheral views of the Koran's genesis, like that Muhammad and his early followers used a text that was already in existence and shaped it to fit their own political and theological agenda, rather than Muhammad receiving a revelation from heaven," says Keith Small of Oxford's Bodleian Library.
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