Samarkand Kufic Quran

The Samarkand Kufic Quran (also known as the Mushaf Uthmani, Samarkand codex, Tashkent Quran and Uthman Qur'an) is a Quranic manuscript, or ''mushaf''. It is one of the oldest surviving Qur'an manuscripts in the world, although its exact dating is uncertain. Tradition holds that it is one of the six manuscripts that were penned under the caliphate of Uthman ibn Affan, when an official standard version of the Qur'anic text is said to have been compiled. Modern studies have suggested various dates for its production ranging from the 7th to 10th centuries. Today, about one third of the manuscript is kept in the Hast Imam library in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, while other pages are held in various collections around the world.

Dating the manuscript

Based on orthographic and palaeographic studies, the manuscript probably dates from the 8th or 9th century. Radiocarbon dating showed a 95.4% confidence interval for a date between 775 and 995. However, one of the folios from another manuscript (held in the Religious Administration of Muslims in Tashkent) was dated to between 595 and 855 A.D. with a likelihood of 95%. Another study of the folios at the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, has proposed that the manuscript was produced in the reign of Abbasid caliph al-Mahdi ().

History

Tradition vs scholarship

The copy of the Quran is traditionally considered to be one of a group commissioned by the third caliph Uthman. According to Islamic tradition, in 651, 19 years after the death of the Islamic Prophet, Muhammad, Uthman commissioned a committee to produce a standard copy of the text of the Quran (see Origin and development of the Quran). According to one report, 6 certified copies were written of which 5 were dispatched to various parts of the Islamic world, with the sixth being for Uthman's personal use in Medina. Each copy dispatched was accompanied by a reciter. These include: Zayd ibn Thabit (sent to Madinah), Abdullah ibn al-Sa'ib (sent to Makkah), al-Mughirah ibn Shihab (sent to Syria), Amir ibn Abd Qays (sent to Basra) and Abdul Rahman al-Sulami (sent to Kufa). The only other surviving copy was thought to be the one held in Topkapı Palace in Turkey, but studies have shown that the Topkapı manuscript is also not from the 7th century, but from much later.

Uthman was succeeded by Ali, who is thought to have taken the Uthmanic Quran to Kufa, now in Iraq. According to another, the Quran was brought from the ruler of Rum to Samarkand by Khoja Ahrar, a Turkestani sufi master, as a gift after he had cured the ruler. The Quran remained in the Khoja Ahrar Mosque of Samarkand for the next four centuries.

Certified history

The ''mushaf'' was initially in Damascus, Syria. However, after Tamerlane sacked the city during the Siege of Damascus in the beginning of the 15th century, he took it to Samarkand, as loot. In 1868, the Russians conquered Samarkand in the Siege of Samarkand and as a result Russian general Abramov bought it from the imams of the mosque and it was sent to the Imperial Library in Saint Petersburg (now the Russian National Library).

It attracted the attention of Orientalists and eventually S. Pissaref published a facsimile edition in 1905. Unfortunately, before doing so he decided to retrace the fresh ink in the folios whose ink had faded over time. In doing so, he introduced many unintentional alterations into the text. This rendered the text corrupted and hence useless for the purpose of textual study.

After the October Revolution, Lenin, in an act of goodwill to the Muslims of Russia, gave the Quran to the people of Ufa in Bashkortostan. After repeated appeals by the people of the Turkestan ASSR, the Quran was returned to Central Asia, to Tashkent, in 1924, where it has since remained.

Current state

Today, about one third of the manuscript is kept in the Hast Imam library in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, attached to the Tellya-Shaikh Mosque. Other surviving parts of the manuscript are held in collections and museums around the world. At least one folio, with text from ''Sura'' 21 ( Al-Anbiy), is kept at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. One or more folios are displayed in the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto. Some folios are housed at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha.

Description

The manuscript is the largest, or one of the largest, known Qur'an manuscripts written on parchment. Two illuminated folios from the manuscript have survived, preserved in collections in Paris and Gotha. Apart from these two pages, the rest of the manuscript is not illuminated and the script lacks the vowel diacritics that were used in later manuscripts to assist readers in pronunciation. The script used is in an early version of Kufic script, with some details resembling the even older Hijazi script. The quality of the calligraphy suggests it was an important or expensive commission.

See also

References

Further reading

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{{Quranic manuscripts, state=expanded

Memory of the World Register
Quranic manuscripts
History of Samarkand
Religion in Tashkent
History of Tashkent
Uthman