Thread. How to separate the sūrahs in early Qur’ān manuscripts ?
1/8. Empty space, ornament, heading…The scribes of the early manuscripts have known different ways to highlight the separation between the sūrahs. Is this feature a reliable evidence for dating the manuscripts?
1/8. Empty space, ornament, heading…The scribes of the early manuscripts have known different ways to highlight the separation between the sūrahs. Is this feature a reliable evidence for dating the manuscripts?
2/9. In the middle of the 20th century, scholars established this chronological framework : 1. Empty space > 2. Ornamental headband (in official Qur’āns) // gradual introduction of headings (in private milieu) > 3. Sūrahs headings inserted in ornamental frame.
3/9. But that framework is very simplistic and too linear for matching with the early scribal production, especially before the 3rd century Hijra. Above all, it has been based on the few materials known at that time, that is mainly the manuscripts from the ‘Amr mosque in Egypt.
4/9. Let’s try now to establish that kind of framework, but based only on the manuscripts found in Ṣan‘ā’. In this collection, most of the hijazi (and close to hijazi) manuscripts have ornaments between the sūrahs… and sometimes even titles…
5/9. Another challenge discredits that framework : one single manuscript could use several ways to separate the sūrahs. In MS 247 (Qaf 47), we find both ornament and empty space. Maybe the Codex Parisino-petropolitanus had also ornaments somewhere but these folios are now lost.
6/9. So, to tell the truth of the matter, there is no single and static Qur’ān model in the first 2 centuries of Hijra.
7/9. Titles formula also occur in very early times. In 1990, Whelan supported this idea, pointing out that in some mss, the way of writing the number of verses (hundreds, tens, units) reflects a pre-islamic custom. Now, we have some earlymaterial attestations (only for titles)
8/9. To conclude, we cannot affirm that the earliest Qur'āns first used empty space and, then, introduced ornaments. Maybe these are 2 distinct scribal traditions. We should consider other parameters, like geography, economy, sociology, instead of focusing on chronology.
9/9. We must not give up hope of finding any chronology… We need to look for more specific evidences : use of colored pigments, ornamental designs, formulation of sūrahs headings, etc… These are new perspectives for the retracing the history of the art of copying the Qur’ān.
