The Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus (CPP) is an early Quran manuscript. The largest part of the manuscript is held at the

Bibliothèque nationale de France The (; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites, ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including bo ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, as BnF Arabe 328(ab), with 70

folios The term "folio" () has three interconnected but distinct meanings in the world of books and printing: first, it is a term for a common method of arranging sheets of paper into book form, folding the sheet only once, and a term for a book made ...

. Another 46 folios are kept in the

National Library of Russia The National Library of Russia (NLR, , ''РНБ''), located in Saint Petersburg, is the first, and one of three national public libraries in Russia. The NLR is currently ranked among the world's major libraries. It has the second biggest libr ...

Saint-Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

. Two additional folia have been preserved, one kept in the

Vatican Library The Vatican Apostolic Library (, ), more commonly known as the Vatican Library or informally as the Vat, is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City, and is the city-state's national library. It was formally established in 1475, alth ...

( Vat. Ar. 1605/1) and the other in the

Khalili Collections The Khalili Collections are eight distinct art collections assembled by Nasser Khalili, Nasser D. Khalili over five decades. Together, the collections include some 35,000 works of art, and each is considered among the most important in its field ...

in London (KFQ 60).

The manuscript

BnF Arabe 328 consists of six parts, labelled a–f. Of these, parts (a) and (b) were later recognized as having formed part of a single original manuscript. *BnF Arabe 328(a), 56 leaves (foll. 1–56), with additional leaves held by the

, the

Khalili Collection of Islamic Art The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art includes 26,000 objects documenting Islamic art over a period of almost 1400 years, from 700 AD to the end of the twentieth century. It is the largest of the Khalili Collections: eight collections ...

and the

. This portion accounts for about 26% of the text of the Quran. *BnF Arabe 328(b), 14 leaves (foll. 57–70). The remaining four parts of BnF Arabe 328 are from different Quranic manuscripts. * BnF Arabe 328(c), 16 leaves (foll. 71–86), with Birmingham Quran Manuscripts discovered in Birmingham and carbon-dated to before 645 (formerly bound with an unrelated late 7th century Quranic manuscript) in 2015. *BnF Arabe 328(d), 3 leaves (foll. 87–89). *BnF Arabe 328(e), 6 leaves (foll. 90–95). *BnF Arabe 328(f), 2 leaves (foll. 96–97). The manuscript Arabe 328(ab) is fragmentary. Originally it contained an estimated 210 to 220 leaves, of which 118 are extant (70 in Paris, 46 in Saint-Petersburg, and one each in Rome and London). The preserved text spans

Quran 2 Al-Baqarah (, ; "The Heifer" or "The Cow"), also spelled as Al-Baqara, is the second and longest chapter (''surah'') of the Quran. It consists of 286 verses ('' āyāt'') which begin with the "'' muqatta'at''" letters ''alif'' ()'', lām'' ( ...

:275 to Q72:2, with lacunae in between. Overall, it contains about 45% of the Quranic text. It was produced by five scribes, probably working concurrently in order to meet demand for a fast production. All of the hands use the

Hijazi script Hijazi script () is the collective name for several early Arabic scripts that developed in the Hejaz (the northwest of the Arabian Peninsula), a region that includes the cities of Mecca and Medina. This type of script was already in use at the ti ...

François Déroche François Déroche (born October 24, 1952) is an academic and specialist in Codicology and Palaeography, especially in relation to Quranic studies. He is a professor at the Collège de France, where he is holding "History of the Quran Text and T ...

says that the production of codex Parisino-petropolitanus could be dated as far back as the late 7th century CE (third quarter of the 1st century AH). David S. Powers agrees with this early date. Others agree with a date in the early 8th century CE, which Déroche also advocated in some of his earlier work. Still others suggest significantly later dates. Déroche writes of many mere orthographic differences between the text of the codex Parisino-petropolitanus and the standard text of today. Overall, the contents of the text are not hugely different from those of today's Quran. Orthography does not explain all of the differences, however. Some remaining differences can be explained as copyist mistakes. A few others are substantive variants according to Déroche, including some non-canonical variants. Powers says that some of these substantive variants show that the text of the Quran remained "fluid" and open to change until the end of the 7th century. Powers's book focuses on the fluidity of a single verse of the Qur'an.

History

The manuscript had been stored with other Quranic manuscripts in the

Mosque of Amr ibn al-As The Amr ibn al-As Mosque () is a mosque in Cairo, Egypt. Named after the Arab Muslim commander Amr ibn al-As, the mosque was originally built in 641–642 CE as the center of the newly founded capital of Egypt, Fustat. The original structure ...

Fustat Fustat (), also Fostat, was the first capital of Egypt under Muslim rule, though it has been integrated into Cairo. It was built adjacent to what is now known as Old Cairo by the Rashidun Muslim general 'Amr ibn al-'As immediately after the Mus ...

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

. During the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt in 1798/99, French Arabist

Jean-Joseph Marcel Jean-Joseph Marcel (24 November 1776 – 11 March 1854) was a French printer and engineer. He was also a ''savant'' who accompanied Napoleon's 1798 campaign in Egypt as a member of the Commission des Sciences et des Arts, a corps of 167 technical ...

(1776–1856) acquired a first lot of folios. A few more pages were bought by

Jean-Louis Asselin de Cherville Jean-Louis Asselin de Cherville (1772 in Cherbourg – 1822 in Cairo) was a French Orientalist. He studied in Cherbourg and Valognes and was destined for priesthood, receiving his tonsure in 1792. He became a lecturer in the short-lived revolut ...

(1772–1822) when served as vice-consul in Cairo some years later. Cherville's collection of Arabic manuscripts were sold to the Bibliothèque nationale after his death in 1822. The portion bought by Jean-Joseph Marcel was sold by his heiress to the Russian government and in 1864 became part of the collection of the Public Imperial Library (now

) in Saint-Petersburg. Besides the portions bought by Marcel and de Cherville, two additional folia reached Europe separately, one is now in the

(Vat. Ar. 1605/1) and the other in the

in London (KFQ 60). In the 1983 catalogue of the BnF, foll. 1–56 were described as a separate entity, Arabe 328(a), from foll. 57–70, Arabe 328(b). It was only later realised that the two parts once formed part of the same manuscript.

References

* * * * * *

External links

Photographic facsimile at the Bibliothèque nationale de France
*

Corpus Coranicum Corpus Coranicum (2007 - 2024) was a digital research project of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. The project made sources accessible that are relevant for the history of the Quran. These primary texts include Jewish, Ch ...

online edition:
BnF ar. 328(a)
56 foll.
BnF ar. 328(b)
14 foll.
Entry for folio KFQ 60 in the Khalili Collections catalogue
{{Quranic manuscripts Quranic manuscripts

The manuscript

History

See also

References

External links