Qur'an, Maghrib or Andalusia, Fragment

Type: Fragment

Date: ?

Setting: North Africa?

Produced By/For: ?

Contents: Qur'an, Maghrib or Andalusia, showing part of Surat al-An'am?

Shelf Mark: MS Victoria 2005-032

Location: Shelf 02/J/24 (Acc. 2005-032)

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 2005-032

Arabic, parchment bifolium (not coming from the centre of the quire since the text is not continuous, but probably the leaf just underneath the central leaf), hinge of the bifolium now very fragile and in risk of tearing loose, hair side: ff. 1b-2a, flesh side: ff. 2b-1a, 18 × 17.9 cm, text area 15.5 × 13.2 cm, ragged edges, all four corners of the fragment are missing (as if the leaf was taken out of an album), the corners in the upper margin are also missing, several smaller worm holes in the pages, some mud or ink blots over the text, which on the whole remains well visible, Maghribī or Andalusī script, brownish ink, diacritics (Naqṭ) in the same ink as the ductus (Rasm), reading signs (Shadda, Sukūn) in green ink, vowels in red ink, 14 lines to the page, verse dividers in the text, small concentric circles to indicate the beginning of every tenth āya, smaller dividers in order to indicate the beginning of every fifth āya. Kept in a portfolio.

Two fragments from sūra 6 of a North African (or Andalusian?) Qurʾān.

(1) ff. 1a-b. First words on f. 1a (flesh side): wa-lahwan wa-gharrathumu l-ḥayātu al-dunyā (Qurʾān 6:70) Last words on f. 1b: ḥakīmun ʿalīmū | wa-wahabnā (Qurʾān 6:83-84).

(2) ff. 2a-b. First words on f. 2a (hair side): ʿalayhim kulla shayʾin qubulan (Qurʾān 6:111). Last words on f. 2b: fa-man yurida (Qurʾān 6:125).

Earlier provenance: In the right top corner of the verso side is written in pencil: ‘8182’. Purchased from Sam Fogg, London.

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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