BIRMINGHAM, United Kingdom (AFP) - A Koran manuscript has been carbon dated to close to the time of the Prophet Mohammed, making it one of the oldest in the world, a British university said Wednesday.

The two leaves of parchment, filled with "surprisingly legible" text from Islam's holy book, have been dated to around the early seventh century, the University of Birmingham said.

"The tests carried out on the parchment of the Birmingham folios yield the strong probability that the animal from which it was taken was alive during the lifetime of the Prophet Mohammed or shortly afterwards," said David Thomas, professor of Christianity and Islam.

Describing it as a "startling result", he added that the text is "very similar indeed to the Koran as have it today.”

"This tends to support the view that the Koran that we now have is ... very close indeed to the Koran as it was brought together in the early years of Islam," he said.

The leaves, held in the university's Mingana Collection, contain parts of chapters 18 to 20, written with ink in an early form of Arabic script known as Hijazi.

"This is indeed an exciting discovery," said Muhammad Isa Waley, lead curator for Persian and Turkish manuscripts at the British Library in London.