Definitely pre-war not baseball but anyway...who made this ink?

[Fred]

I wonder if the Minister of Culture used JSA as their authenticating agent? Can anyone read Farsi? I wonder what the cert says.... probably something like this..."the authenticating agent indicates that in his opinion, it looks to be a real Prophet Muhammad signature, no guarantees it's authentic, but it looks real."

[drcy]

One problem is that Muhammad was illiterate.

[steve B]

That is apparently a matter of some debate.

Not a great source, but there are other letters out there, and at least according to the supposed translation this is among the known ones. The picture shown isn't a match to the fragement shown in the auction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhamm...heads_of_state


There is a long scholarly work that would indicate that all these letters were discovered within the last 200 years, and that they are probably old forgeries.

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q...mmad-authentic


If it is actually a few centuries old, the ink not fading doesn't surprise me. It would have been carbon(Maybe charcoal? ) mixed with some sort of binder. That's been used for millennia, and is still made. http://www.winsornewton.com/uk/disco...-on-indian-ink

[markcal02]

Hurry this won't last long with it being 8% off from the same Ebay seller => https://www.ebay.com/itm/Taoist-Temp...5G21:rk:1:pf:1

[barrysloate]

How I yearn for the good old days of the 7th century. What a great time to be alive!

[drcy]

I have a masters in philosophy of religion and knew that Muhammad spoke the Koran for others to write down, so I wondered if he could write. I googled and, voila, he couldn't read or write. Perhaps, ala Joe Jackson, his wife signed this for him.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by drcy

I have a masters in philosophy of religion and knew that Muhammad spoke the Koran for others to write down, so I wondered if he could write. I googled and, voila, he couldn't read or write. Perhaps, ala Joe Jackson, his wife signed this for him.

I read some stuff that had quotes from the Quran that seemed to indicate that he could write. Of course, there well could be a translation difference between "wrote" and "caused to be written".

Had to go back and find it https://submission.org/Claim_of_Muha...lliteracy.html


From what I've read I believe any claimed letters would be very suspect. The long paper I didn't read basically says they were constructed much later using a group of standard phrases taken from other sources.

[SetBuilder]

Originally Posted by steve B

That is apparently a matter of some debate.

Not a great source, but there are other letters out there, and at least according to the supposed translation this is among the known ones. The picture shown isn't a match to the fragement shown in the auction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhamm...heads_of_state


There is a long scholarly work that would indicate that all these letters were discovered within the last 200 years, and that they are probably old forgeries.

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q...mmad-authentic


If it is actually a few centuries old, the ink not fading doesn't surprise me. It would have been carbon(Maybe charcoal? ) mixed with some sort of binder. That's been used for millennia, and is still made. http://www.winsornewton.com/uk/disco...-on-indian-ink

India ink is one of the most ancient ink recipes and has been around for over 2,000 years. If anyone were to discover an ancient scroll from the days of the Roman Empire, it would probably have been written with India ink. It doesn't oxidize and eat into the paper like iron based inks.