Samarkand Kufic Quran

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Detached folio. Surah Al-Anbiya Ayah 105-110 from the Samarkand Kufic Quran in the Metropolitan Museum of Art Folio from the "Tashkent Qur'an" MET DP234018.jpg
Detached folio. Surah Al-Anbiya Ayah 105-110 from the Samarkand Kufic Quran in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Samarkand Kufic Quran (also known as the Mushaf Uthmani, Samarkand codex, Tashkent Quran and Uthman Qur'an) is a manuscript Quran, or mushaf. It is one of the oldest surviving Qur'an manuscripts in the world, [1] although its exact dating is uncertain. Tradition holds that it is one of the six manuscripts that were penned under the caliphate of Uthman ibn Affan, when an official standard version of the Qur'anic text is said to have been compiled. Modern studies have suggested various dates for its production ranging from the 7th to 10th centuries. [2] Today, about one third of the manuscript is kept in the Hast Imam library in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, while other pages are held in various collections around the world.

Contents

Dating the manuscript

Based on orthographic and palaeographic studies, the manuscript probably dates from the 8th or 9th century. [3] [2] [1] Radiocarbon dating showed a 95.4% confidence interval for a date between 775 and 995. [2] However, one of the folios from another manuscript (held in the Religious Administration of Muslims in Tashkent) was dated to between 595 and 855 A.D. with a likelihood of 95%. [2] Another study of the folios at the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, has proposed that the manuscript was produced in the reign of Abbasid caliph al-Mahdi (r. 775–785). [4]

History

Tradition vs scholarship

The copy of the Quran is traditionally considered to be one of a group commissioned by the third caliph Uthman. According to Islamic tradition, in 651, 19 years after the death of the Islamic Prophet, Muhammad, Uthman commissioned a committee to produce a standard copy of the text of the Quran (see Origin and development of the Quran). [5] According to one report, 6 certified copies were written of which 5 were dispatched to various parts of the Islamic world, with the sixth being for Uthman's personal use in Medina. Each copy dispatched was accompanied by a reciter. These include: Zayd ibn Thabit (sent to Madinah), Abdullah ibn al-Sa'ib (sent to sent to Makkah), al-Mughirah ibn Shihab (sent to Syria), Amir ibn Abd Qays (sent to Basra) and Abdul Rahman al-Sulami (sent to Kufa). [6] The only other surviving copy was thought to be the one held in Topkapı Palace in Turkey, [5] [7] but studies have shown that the Topkapı manuscript is also not from the 7th century, but from much later. [8] [9]

Uthman was succeeded by Ali, who is thought to have taken the Uthmanic Quran to Kufa, now in Iraq. According to another, the Quran was brought from the ruler of Rum to Samarkand by Khoja Ahrar, a Turkestani sufi master, as a gift after he had cured the ruler. The Quran remained in the Khoja Ahrar Mosque of Samarkand for the next four centuries. [5]

Certified history

The mushaf was initially in Damascus, Syria however after Tamerlane sacked the city during the Siege of Damascus in the beginning of the 15th century, he took it to Samarkand, as loot. [5] In 1868, the Russians conquered Samarkand in the Siege of Samarkand and as a result Russian general Abramov bought it from the imams of the mosque [10] and it was sent it to the Imperial Library in Saint Petersburg (now the Russian National Library). [5]

It attracted the attention of Orientalists and eventually S. Pissaref published a facsimile edition in 1905. [11] Unfortunately, before doing so he decided to retrace the fresh ink in the folios whose ink had faded over time. In doing so, he introduced many unintentional alterations into the text. [12] This rendered the text corrupted and hence useless for the purpose of textual study.

After the October Revolution, Lenin, in an act of goodwill to the Muslims of Russia, gave the Quran to the people of Ufa in Bashkortostan. After repeated appeals by the people of the Turkestan ASSR, the Quran was returned to Central Asia, to Tashkent, in 1924, where it has since remained. [5]

Current state

The Samarkand manuscript, now kept in Tashkent Uthman Koran Taschkent a.jpg
The Samarkand manuscript, now kept in Tashkent

Today, about one third of the manuscript is kept in the Hast Imam library in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, attached to the Tellya-Shaikh Mosque. [1] Other surviving parts of the manuscript are held in collections and museums around the world. At least one folio, with text from Sura 21 (Al-Anbiy), is kept at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. [1] One or more folios are displayed in the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto. [13] [14] Some folios are housed at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. [4]

Description

The manuscript is the largest, or one of the largest, known Qur'an manuscripts written on parchment. [1] [4] Two illuminated folios from the manuscript have survived, preserved in collections in Paris and Gotha. [1] Apart from these two pages, the rest of the manuscript is not illuminated and the script lacks the vowel diacritics that were used in later manuscripts to assist readers in pronunciation. [1] The script used is in an early version of Kufic script, [4] [1] with some details resembling the even older Hijazi script. [1] The quality of the calligraphy suggests it was an important or expensive commission. [4] [1]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Ekhtiar, Maryam (2011). "Folio from the "Tashkent Qur'an"". The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 4 March 2025.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Rezvan, E. A. (2000). "On The Dating Of An "'Uthmanic Qur'an" From St. Petersburg" (PDF). Manuscripta Orientalia. 6 (3): 19–22.
  3. ↑ "The "Qur'ān Of ʿUthmān" At Tashkent (Samarqand), Uzbekistan, From 2nd Century Hijra" . Retrieved 5 September 2013.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Ekhtiar, Maryam D. (2018). How to Read Islamic Calligraphy. Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 76. ISBN   978-1-58839-630-3.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Ian MacWilliam (2006-01-05). "Tashkent's hidden Islamic relic". BBC News . Retrieved 2010-05-27.
  6. ↑ Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, ed. (2015). The study Quran: a new translation and commentary (First ed.). New York, NY: HarperOne, an imprint of Collins Publishers. pp. 1607–1623. ISBN   978-0-06-112586-7.
  7. ↑ Ariffin, Syed Ahmad Iskandar Syed (19 June 2017). Architectural Conservation in Islam: Case Study of the Prophet's Mosque. Penerbit UTM. ISBN   9789835203732 – via Google Books.
  8. ↑ "Corpus Coranicum". corpuscoranicum.de.
  9. ↑ "Al-Mushaf Al-Sharif Attributed to 'Uthman bin 'Affan". www.ircica.org. Archived from the original on 2014-01-05.
  10. ↑ "Conquest of Samarkand. Samarkand Quran. Online Exhibition of the National Library of Russia. Manuscripts". expositions.nlr.ru. Retrieved 2024-11-09.
  11. ↑ iqsaweb (2015-10-26). "S. Pissaref". International Qur'anic Studies Association. Retrieved 2024-11-09.
  12. ↑ Jeffery, A.; Mendelsohn, I. (1942). "The Orthography of the Samarqand Qur'ān Codex". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 62 (3): 175–195. doi:10.2307/594134. ISSN   0003-0279.
  13. ↑ Stonard, John-Paul (2021). Creation: A fully illustrated, panoramic world history of art from ancient civilisation to the present day. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 117. ISBN   978-1-5266-4583-8.
  14. ↑ "Qur'an Folio (Q21: 76–82)". Aga Khan Museum. Retrieved 2025-03-04.

Further reading


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