The “Qur'ān Of ʿUthmān” At The Topkapi Museum, Istanbul, Turkey, From 1st / 2nd Century Hijra

Islamic Awareness

© Islamic Awareness, All Rights Reserved.

First Composed: 19th November 2003

Last Updated: 31st July 2008

Tweet

Assalamu ʿalaykum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu:

(a)		(b)

(c)		(d)

(e)

Date

Late 1st century / early 2nd century of hijra.

Accession Number

H.S. 194. The number was later changed as H.S. 22 and later shown as H.S. 44/32.

Size & Folios

Size: 41 cm x 46 cms. The text is 32 cm x 40 cm, written on vellum. The thickness of the codex is 11 cm.

Total number of folios: 408. Only two folios are missing. The extant folios contain more than 99% of the text of the Qur'an.

History Of The Manuscript

Mehmed Ali Pasha, Governor of Egypt, sent this muṣḥaf to the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II as a gift in 1226 AH / 1811 CE. A note in the beginning of the muṣḥaf says that it was brought to the Topkapi Palace and kept in the Holy Relics Department, which was built during the reign of Sultan Selim I. A facsimile edition of this manuscript appeared in the year 2007.^[1]

Did this Qur'an belong to the third caliph ʿUthmān? The answer is no. There are good number of other Qur'ans [such as the ones at St. Petersburg, Samarqand, Istanbul and two at Cairo, viz., at al-Hussein mosque and Dār al-Kutub al-Misriyya] having at times turned up in different parts of the Islamic world, almost all purporting to show the traces of the blood of the third caliph ʿUthmān upon certain pages, and thus the genuine ʿUthmānic Qur'an, the imām, which he was reading at the time of his death. Moreover, the manuscript clearly shows the script, illumination and marking of vowels that are from the Umayyad times (i.e., late 1st century / early 2nd century of hijra).^[2] Furthermore, this manuscript was also briefly discussed by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Munajjid who did not consider it to be from the time of caliph ʿUthmān.^[3]

Script & Ornamentation

Kufic.

It is extensively dotted perhaps by a later hand. A general examination of the codex indicates that its script varies in thickness and size. For example, parts between folios 1b-6b and 11a-11b exhibit a different hand as compared with the script in rest of the codex. This needs to be further investigated. It could be that some of the folios were lost and damaged for some reason and were rewritten and added to the codex later. If so, these additions must have been made within short intervals of time.

The letters contain vowel marks in the form of red dots according to the method of Abū al-Aswad al-Duʾalī (d. 69 AH / 688 CE). Single dots were placed above, beside or below the letters. Two dots were placed to indicate the nunation known as tanwīn. Diacritical marks are represented by dashes.

The surahs are separated by wide horizontal bands in the form of rectangles. Sometimes the corners of these rectangles are decorated. The sequence of the surahs is just like what is seen in modern day copies of the Qur'an.

The codex is contains rosettes in the form of big circles after every 5 and 10 verses, rectangular shaped signs after every 100 verses and signs of similar shape following every 200 verses in surahs such as al-Baqarah, āl-ʿImrān and al-Shuʿarā. These rosettes are illuminated in a colour different from the other signs.

Contents

The contents of the manuscript, as tabulated below, are gathered from the facsimile edition.

Location

The Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul, Turkey.

References

[1] T. Altikulaç, Al-Muṣḥaf Al-Sharif: Attributed To ʿUthmān Bin ʿAffān (The Copy At The Topkapi Palace Museum), 2007, Organization of the Islamic Conference Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture: Istanbul (Turkey).

[2] ibid., pp. 10-11

[3] S. al-Munajjid, Dirāsāt fī Tārīkh al-Khatt al-ʿArabī Mundhu Bidayatihi ilā Nihayat al-ʿAsr al-Umawi (French Title: Etudes De Paleographie Arabe), 1972, Dar al-Kitab al-Jadid: Beirut (Lebanon), p. 55.

The images above are reproduced from the stated sources under the provisions of the copyright law. This allows for the reproduction of portions of copyrighted material for non-commercial, educational purposes.

With the exception for those images which have passed into the public domain, the use of these images for commercial purposes is expressly prohibited without the consent of the copyright holder.

Back To The Qur'anic Manuscripts