Al-Mu'awwidhatayn, an Arabic expression meaning "The Two Protectors" or "The Two Protective Incantations", refers to the final two surahs (chapters) of the Quran: 113 (Al-Falaq) and 114 (Al-Nas). They are called by this name because of their use of the term ʿādhā in a phrase that occurs in both surahs: ʿqul aʿūdhu bi-rabbi al- ... min .... Likewise, the two surahs appear consecutively in the Qur'an, are both very short, and bear additional stylistic resemblances with one another, broadly functioning as incantations that appeal to God's protection from evils or ailments. Some in the Islamic tradition have claimed that the two surahs were also revealed at the same time to Muhammad.
The Samarkand Kufic Quran is a manuscript Quran, or mushaf, and is one of the 6 manuscripts which were penned under the caliphate of Uthman ibn Affan. They represented an effort to compile the Qur'an into a standardized version. It is not exactly known to which area the Samarkand codex was originally dispatched or whether it was Uthman's personal manuscript.
The history of the Quran, the holy book of Islam, is the timeline ranging from the inception of the Quran during the lifetime of Muhammad, to the emergence, transmission, and canonization of its written copies. The history of the Quran is a major focus in the field of Quranic studies.
Hijazi script is the collective name for several early Arabic scripts that developed in the Hejaz, a region that includes the cities of Mecca and Medina. This type of script was already in use at the time of the emergence of Islam. A calligraphic Hijazi script is called a Ma'il script ; these are found in a number of the earliest Qur'anic manuscripts. The two terms are often used interchangeably.
The Sanaa palimpsest or Sanaa Quran is one of the oldest Quranic manuscripts in existence. Part of a sizable cache of Quranic and non-Quranic fragments discovered in Yemen during a 1972 restoration of the Great Mosque of Sanaa, the manuscript was identified as a palimpsest Quran in 1981 as it is written on parchment and comprises two layers of text.
The Codex Petropolitanus Purpureus, designated by N or 022, ε19, is a Greek New Testament codex containing the four Gospels written on parchment. Using the study of comparative writing styles (palaeography), it has been assigned to the 6th century CE.
Minuscule 8, ε 164, is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament on parchment. It is dated palaeographically to the 11th century. The manuscript has complex contents. It has complex contents and full marginalia.
The great uncial codices or four great uncials are the only remaining uncial codices that contain the entire text of the Bible in Greek. They are the Codex Vaticanus in the Vatican Library, the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Alexandrinus in the British Library, and the Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris.
The Blue Quran is an early Quranic manuscript written in Kufic script. The dating, location of origin, and patron of the Blue Quran are unknown and have been the subject of academic debate, though it is generally accepted that the manuscript was produced in the late 9th to mid-10th century in either Kairouan, Tunisia or Cordoba in Umayyad Spain. The manuscript is among the most famous works of Islamic calligraphy, notable for its gold lettering on a rare indigo-colored parchment.
The Birmingham Quran manuscript comprises two leaves of parchment from an early Quranic manuscript or muṣḥaf. In 2015, the manuscript, which is held by the University of Birmingham, was radiocarbon dated to between 568 and 645 AD. It is presently believed that the manuscript is an early descendant of the Uthmanic codex. It is part of the Mingana Collection of Middle Eastern manuscripts, held by the university's Cadbury Research Library.
In Muslim tradition the Quran is the final revelation from God, Islam's divine text, delivered to the Islamic prophet Muhammad through the angel Jibril (Gabriel). Muhammad's revelations were said to have been recorded orally and in writing, through Muhammad and his followers up until his death in 632 CE. These revelations were then compiled by first caliph Abu Bakr and codified during the reign of the third caliph Uthman so that the standard codex edition of the Quran or Muṣḥaf was completed around 650 CE, according to Muslim scholars. This has been critiqued by some western scholarship, suggesting the Quran was canonized at a later date, based on the dating of classical Islamic narratives, i.e. hadiths, which were written 150–200 years after the death of Muhammad, and partly because of the textual variations present in the Sana'a manuscript. Muslim scholars who oppose the views of the Western revisionist theories regarding the historical origins of the Quran have described their theses as "untenable".
Jean-Louis Asselin de Cherville was a French Orientalist. He studied in Cherbourg and Valognes and was destined for priesthood, receiving his tonsure in 1792. He became a lecturer in the short-lived revolutionary École normale in the year III (1794), and was employed by the Republican ministry of treasure from 1795 to 1802, a post which he left in order to study oriental languages. He went to Cairo as translator in 1806, where he served as vice-consul. He moved to Alexandria in 1816 and ended his career in the position of first dragoman of the French consulate for Egypt. He participated in the philological discovery of the South Semitic languages of Abyssinia, Amharic and Ge'ez. During his time in Egypt, he collected more than 1,500 manuscripts.
Arabic miniatures are small paintings on paper, usually book or manuscript illustrations but also sometimes separate artworks that occupy entire pages. The earliest example dates from around 690 AD, with a flourishing of the art from between 1000 and 1200 AD in the Abbasid caliphate. The art form went through several stages of evolution while witnessing the fall and rise of several Islamic caliphates. Arab miniaturists absorbed Chinese and Persian influences brought by the Mongol destructions, and at last, got totally assimilated and subsequently disappeared due to the Ottoman occupation of the Arab world. Nearly all forms of Islamic miniatures owe their existences to Arabic miniatures, as Arab patrons were the first to demand the production of illuminated manuscripts in the Caliphate, it wasn't until the 14th century that the artistic skill reached the non-Arab regions of the Caliphate.
François Déroche is an academic and specialist in Codicology and Palaeography, especially in relation to Quranic studies. He is a professor at the Collège de France, where he is holding "History of the Quran Text and Transmission" Chair.
Quran is the Holy Book of Allah in Islam.
The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art includes 26,000 objects documenting Islamic art over a period of almost 1400 years, from 700 AD to the end of the twentieth century. It is the largest of the Khalili Collections: eight collections assembled, conserved, published and exhibited by the British scholar, collector and philanthropist Nasser David Khalili, each of which is considered among the most important in its field. Khalili's collection is one of the most comprehensive Islamic art collections in the world and the largest in private hands.
Vat. Ar. abbreviates Vaticani arabi, a collection within the Vatican Library. Notable works within this collection include the following:
Codex Mashhad is an old codex of the Qurʾān, now mostly preserved in two manuscripts, MSS 18 and 4116, in the Āstān-i Quds Library, Mashhad, Iran. The first manuscript in 122 folios and the second in 129 folios together constitute more than 90% of the text of the Qurʾān. The current codex is in two separate volumes, MSS 18 and 4116. The former contains the first half of the Qurʾān, from the beginning to the end of the 18th sūra, al-Kahf, while the latter comprises the second half, from the middle of the 20th sūra, Ṭāhā, to the end of the Qurʾān. In their present form, both parts of Codex Mashhad have been repaired, partially completed with pieces from later Kufic Qurʾāns and sometimes in a present-day nashkī hand.
The codex of Ubayy ibn Ka'b is a mushaf of the Quran that differs from the Uthmanic codex and is attributed to Ubayy ibn Ka'b, a companion of Muhammad. The codices of Ubayy and Uthman differ on point of several textual variants between the two, but more importantly, Ubayy's codex possesses a total of 116 surahs, whereas the codex of Uthman possesses 114. The surahs absent from the Uthmanic codex, but present in that of Ubayy, are Al-Khalʿ and Al-Ḥafd. These continued to be seen as authoritative and Quranic by several scholars through the eighth century, and evidence for the transmission of the codex is available until the tenth or eleventh centuries. A copy of the codex of Ubayy is unavailable in any extant manuscript, although its historicity is accepted. Islamic scholars documented the text of Ubayy's two unique surahs in addition to the textual variants that distinguished the codex of Ubayy from that of Uthman.
