Qur'an, showing Surat Yusuf, Fragment

Type: Fragment

Date: ?

Setting: China?

Produced By/For: ?

Contents: Qur'an, showing part of Surat Yusuf?

Shelf Mark: MS Victoria 2005-010

Location: Shelf 02/J/24 (Acc. 2005-010)

Description by Jan Just Witkam, Professor of Paleography and Codicology of the Islamic World, Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands (2010)

MS Victoria 2005-010

Arabic, thick Chinese paper with vertical ‘chain lines’ which are clearly visible in the paper’s structure, set at different distances from one another (irregular, but between at least 1 and 1.8 cm), one single leaf with text on either side, 26.4 × 18.4 cm, fully vocalized bold Chinese-Arabic script (al-Khaṭṭ al-Ṣīnī), 5 lines to the page, black ink with occasional use of red for reading signs, gold verse dividers (three in all, written slightly over the text, not on the line), five lines to the page, entire text set in a double frame (red ink, 16 × 11.5 cm), catchword on the verso side of the leaf, now held in a passe-partout.

A single leaf from a Chinese Qurʾān, containing a small part of sūrat Yūsuf (Qurʾān 12).

First word recto side: Kaydikunna (Qurʾān 12:28), last word verso side: Aydiyahunna (Qurʾān 12:31).

See for a somewhat similar handwriting the Chinese Qur'an reproduced in Arthur J. Arberry, The Koran illuminated. A Handlist of the Korans in the Chester Beatty Library. Dublin (Hodges, Figgis & Co. Ltd.) 1967, plate 70 (MS Chester Beatty 1602), for which Arberry gives a dating of 18th century.

Earlier provenance: In the right bottom corner of the verso side is written in pencil: ‘3844’.

Taken from The Islamic Manuscripts in the McPherson Library, University of Victoria, Victoria B.C. by Jan Just Witkam, Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 1 (2010), pp 101-142.

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Recto

Verso