An lmportantSeventh-Century Hijazi Qur'an Leaf

3 AN EARLYOUR'AN LEAF IN HIJAZISCRIPT ON VELLUM' ARABIANPENINSULA, SECOND HALF OF THE7TH CENTURY

TEXT:sURAT lBRAHtt'/ (XlV), w.: tr-++ Arabicmanuscript on vellum,23lines on rectoand 21 lineson verso writtenin Hrjazi scriptin brown ink, lackingvocalisation, ayas indicated occasionallyby four dots,a few dotsand angled dashesindicating diacriticalmarks and consonants FOLtO,35.5 BY 27.5CM.

f 400,000-500,oo0€505,000-650,000

Thisrare vellum leaf belongs to the earliestgroup of Qur'anmanuscripts, THEEARLY HISTORY OF THE QUR'AN manuscriptshave survived, and whichare also considered the earliestexamples of anysort of Arabic Veryfew leavesfrom suchQur'an for the documentationof the early manuscript.These Qur'ans have been dated to the secondhalf of the thereforethis leaf is important sometimebetween the Prophet's seventhcentury only decades after the deathof the ProphetMuhammad' collectionsof text that werewritten the Caliph'Uthmanin 656AD. Several Not onlyis this leaf of tremendousreligious significance as a relicof the deathin 62 AD andthe deathof in sheetform, some in codexform, were earliestperiod in lslamand the textualtransmission of the Qur'an,but it is copiesof the Qur'an,some of one of the Prophet'sformer secretaries, alsoan importantmilestone in the developmentof Arabicas a written compiledunder the supervision codiceswere then sent out to the languageand the evolutionof Arabicscripts. TaydiinThabit.These authoritative mainmetropolitan centres of lslamat thetime. The exactlist of citiesto havereceived a copy is not certain.Some reportssuggest that four copies weresent out whileothers suggest as many as seven. lt islikely that at leastMecca, Damascus, Basra and Kufareceived a copy,while one must havebeen retained in Medina.The earlycollections of the textwere basedon a combinationof sources,the memoriesof the Companionsof the Prophet,the sheetsin the possessionof Hafsa,the daughterof'Umar andone of the widowsof the Prophetand on the fragmentswhich had beenwritten down during the lifetimeof the Prophetby Companionsand secretaries,mosdy during the Medinanphase of hismission. manuscriptsare THEEARLY DEVELOPMENT OFTHE ARABIC SCRIPT The majorityof survivingfragments of the earliestQur'an in the One of the maincharacteristics of the earlyHijazi script is the vertical dividedamong major museums, libraries and private collections published stretchingof the letters,particularly visible in the elongatedforms of the MiddleEast and the West.There are only around thirty eight (fragmentsconsisting of alif,lam andkaf This verticalemphasis also extends to shorterletters such fragmentsof variousvertical format codices Fragmentsare as waw nunand ha.An unusualfeature is the extensionof the alif,alif multipleleaves, bifolia, single leaves and parts of leaves). KhaliliCollection, maqsaraand ya backwardsunderneath several preceding words. Other heldin the TokapiSaray, lstanbul, British Library and the LibraryDublin, distinctivefeatures are the verticalformat of the leafwhich gradually London,The VaticanLibrary Rome, The ChesterBeatty Khedival evolvedinto the horizontalformat in the earlypart of the Abbasidperiod The RussianAcademy of Sciences,St. Petersburg and the (A.D.zso-rzse), and the inconsistencyin orthography and line spacing LibraryCairo, while single folios are held in the DavidCollection, Bahrain asa resultof the presenceof manyscribes working on a singlecodex Copenhagen,Dar al-Athar al-lslammiyah, Kuwait, Beit al-Qur'an, andthe prioritizationof faithfullyreproducing the Qur'anictext over andThe OrientalInstitute, Chicago. aestheticconsiderations. Thisleaf aooears to be identicalto a sectionof 32leaves in the Chester The infrequentuse of diacriticaland orthographic markings indicate that BeattyLibrary Dublin (James 1980, no.1. p.14). beforea comprehensivesystem of diacriticalmarks thisleaf was written Other Hqazileaves were sold in theserooms on z April 1979,1ot13; in the form of dotsor verticaldashes was devised by al- on consonants Christie's,London 1 May 2001,lot 12and a Apriluooa, lot 20 and Yusuf,who died in A.D.714.This was an important Halajbin Bonhams,London, 1l October20o0, lot 13. developmentas it meantthat consonants of identicalform couldbe Calligraphy distinguishedfrom oneanother. The othergreat aid to the development A palimpsestQur'an leafwas exhibited tn lnk andGold-blamic (Fraser Kwiatkowski of the easilyreadable script was the inventionof the coloureddots to exhibition,Museum fur lslamicheKunst, Berlin and of Arabic indicatevowels. This invention has been attributed to Abu'l-Aswadal- 2006,pp. 14-17).For a detailed footnote on the development ppJB-23. Du'aliwho died in A.D. 688. scriptsee: Sotheby's, London,22 October 1993, lot 3'1,