Qur’ans of the Umayyads A First Overview By François Déroche (Leiden: Brill, 2014. 155 pages.)

Abstract

Qur’an manuscripts have attracted a good deal of attention from scholars, especially
in the wake of the spectacular finds in the Great Mosque in Sanaa in
1972. Some might suggest that this attention is superfluous or even reflective
of a willful ignoring of the significance of the scripture’s oral transmission
and a privileging of the written word over the oral. However, careful studies
of these manuscripts tell us many things, such as early Muslim attitudes toward
the text, that cannot be documented otherwise. In fact, early manuscripts
are the only tangible source about the oral tradition itself. We can also see that
changes in appearance in early manuscripts provide evidence of the perception
and role of such copies and that this went through a significant transformation,
especially during the Umayyad period (661-750).
Studies done by knowledgeable scholars do not aim to establish an “original”
text or to find fault with the modern version; rather, they aim to focus
on such matters as the history of the Arabic script’s development and how
manuscripts were used. Of course, such early manuscripts also provide evidence
of textual variation, the precise dimensions of which have not always
been preserved by Muslim tradition. It is worth reiterating, however, that these
variations are never of such extent that one can doubt the integrity of the text
or its doctrinal or legal contents. Overall, the study of early Qur’an manuscripts
is a challenging task, subject to much scholarly speculation and thus
difference of opinion, especially due to the absence of colophons on the available
texts thought to stem from the Umayyad period. This is generally the result
of the lost first and last pages in such manuscripts, for they are the first to
become worn and detached and then disappear. Most of those manuscripts
available to us today are in a highly fragmented condition.
François Déroche is the world’s leading scholar on matters related to
Qur’an manuscripts. The vast majority of his writing until now has been in
French; his masterful examination of a single early exemplar, La transmission
écrite du Coran dans les débuts de l’islam, appeared in 2009. Thus many readers
to whom his scholarship has not otherwise been accessible will welcome
this book written in English and marketed in a relatively inexpensive paperback
format. The work originated as a series of four lectures given at the Leiden
University Centre for the Study of Islam and Society in 2010. Those
lectures were primarily the result of an extensive use of the resources held in
Istanbul’s Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum ...