At least 1,370 years old fragments of the holy Quran have been found by the University of Birmingham, making it among the earliest in existence.

The pages of the Muslim holy text had remained unrecognised in the university library for almost a century.

The British Library`s expert on such manuscripts, Dr Muhammad Isa Waley, said this "exciting discovery" would make Muslims "rejoice".

The manuscript had been kept with a collection of other Middle Eastern books and documents, without being identified as one of the oldest fragments of the Quran in the world.

When a PhD researcher looked more closely at these pages it was decided to carry out a radiocarbon dating test and the results were "startling".

The university`s director of special collections, Susan Worrall, said researchers had not expected "in our wildest dreams" that it would be so old.

The tests, carried out by the Oxford University Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, showed that the fragments, written on sheep or goat skin, were among the very oldest surviving texts of the Quran.

These tests provide a range of dates, showing that, with a probability of more than 95%, the parchment was from between 568 and 645.

The manuscript, written in "Hijazi script", an early form of written Arabic, becomes one of the oldest known fragments of the Quran.

Because radiocarbon dating creates a range of possible ages, there is a handful of other manuscripts in public and private collections which overlap. So this makes it impossible to say that any is definitively the oldest.

But the latest possible date of the Birmingham discovery - 645 - would put it among the very oldest.

Dr Waley, curator for such manuscripts at the British Library, said "these two folios, in a beautiful and surprisingly legible Hijazi hand, almost certainly date from the time of the first three caliphs".

The first three caliphs were leaders in the Muslim community between about 632 and 656.

Dr Waley says that under the third caliph, Uthman ibn Affan, copies of the "definitive edition" were distributed.

The manuscript is part of the Mingana Collection of more than 3,000 Middle Eastern documents gathered in the 1920s by Alphonse Mingana, a Chaldean priest born near Mosul in modern-day Iraq.

He was sponsored to take collecting trips to the Middle East by Edward Cadbury, who was part of the chocolate-making dynasty.

The local Muslim community has already expressed its delight at the discovery in their city and the university says the manuscript will be put on public display.