Qur’ans of the Umayyads

Abstract

Qur’an manuscripts have attracted a good deal of attention from scholars, especially in the wake of the spectacular finds in the Great Mosque in Sanaa in 1972. Some might suggest that this attention is superfluous or even reflective of a willful ignoring of the significance of the scripture’s oral transmission and a privileging of the written word over the oral. However, careful studies of these manuscripts tell us many things, such as early Muslim attitudes toward the text, that cannot be documented otherwise. In fact, early manuscripts are the only tangible source about the oral tradition itself. We can also see that changes in appearance in early manuscripts provide evidence of the perception and role of such copies and that this went through a significant transformation, especially during the Umayyad period (661-750). Studies done by knowledgeable scholars do not aim to establish an “original” text or to find fault with the modern version; rather, they aim to focus on such matters as the history of the Arabic script’s development and how manuscripts were used. Of course, such early manuscripts also provide evidence of textual variation, the precise dimensions of which have not always been preserved by Muslim tradition. It is worth reiterating, however, that these variations are never of such extent that one can doubt the integrity of the text or its doctrinal or legal contents. Overall, the study of early Qur’an manuscripts is a challenging task, subject to much scholarly speculation and thus difference of opinion, especially due to the absence of colophons on the available texts thought to stem from the Umayyad period. This is generally the result of the lost first and last pages in such manuscripts, for they are the first to become worn and detached and then disappear. Most of those manuscripts available to us today are in a highly fragmented condition. François Déroche is the world’s leading scholar on matters related to Qur’an manuscripts. The vast majority of his writing until now has been in French; his masterful examination of a single early exemplar, La transmission écrite du Coran dans les débuts de l’islam, appeared in 2009. Thus many readers to whom his scholarship has not otherwise been accessible will welcome this book written in English and marketed in a relatively inexpensive paperback format. The work originated as a series of four lectures given at the Leiden University Centre for the Study of Islam and Society in 2010. Those lectures were primarily the result of an extensive use of the resources held in Istanbul’s Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum ...