Introduction to the Palaeography of Early Quranic Scripts at Cambridge University
The course will be followed by a one-day symposium on the codicology and palaeography of early Quran manuscripts on 14 May 2015.
This three-day course will introduce participants to the codicology and palaeography of Quran manuscripts made during the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties between the seventh and early eleventh centuries CE. The possible survival of Fatimid manuscripts will also be examined.
The course will begin with a description of the historical context in which early Quran manuscripts were produced, as well as the discovery of the four major deposits that comprise most of the surviving evidence of these manuscripts: Damascus, Kairouan, Fustat (Cairo), and Sanaa. This will be followed with a brief overview of Islamic codicology, knowledge of which is essential in order to reconstruct the original codices from the extant fragmentary manuscripts. Finally, the course will survey the various early Quranic scripts, with a focus on those used in Umayyad and Abbasid Quran manuscripts; and participants will learn to identify and read Hijazi scripts and Abbasid script styles B, C, and D by working with actual manuscripts from Cambridge University Library and images from collections in Berlin, Birmingham, Kairouan, Paris, and Tübingen. During the course, participants will be assigned homework that will generate a joint publication in their names to be printed by Brill Academic Publishers.
The day after the course, participants are invited to attend the Symposium on the Codicology and Palaeography of Early Quran Manuscripts.
The course will be taught by Prof. François Déroche, holder of the Chair of History of the Quran: Text and Transmission at the Collège de France and a leading scholars of Islamic codicology and palaeography, .rce: IslamicManuscript.org
