Congratulations to Alba Fedeli, who spotted during her recently-completed doctoral work on the Mingana manuscripts at Birmingham University that two leaves in volume predated the rest. Now radiocarbon dating has established that these leaves date from AD568-645, making them almost contemporaneous with the death of the prophet Muhammed in AD632, and challenging existing scholarly accounts of the Qu’ran’s composition. It’s a wonderful example of how close attention to the physical composition of a text can transform our understanding of its history.