A Qur'anic Manuscript From 1st Century Hijra: Part Of Sūrah Luqmān And Sūrah al-Sajda
Islamic Awareness
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First Composed: 4th October 2007
Last Updated: 8th October 2007
(a)
(b)
Figure: (a) Image of the palimpsest showing bold, dark brown writing (scriptio superior), faint light brown traces of an earlier script (scriptio inferior). (b) The ultraviolet photography enhances the washed off earlier script which now forms the scriptio inferior.
Date
First half of the 1st century hijra.
Inventory No.
(a) Inv. no. 00-27.1 (b) Inv. no. 00-27.1 cf. no. [4]
Contents
Sūrah Luqmān, verse 24 to Sūrah Sajda, verse 4 (Inv. no. 00-27.1).
Script
Written in the ḥijazi script, this palimpsest has a few diacritical marks with no vocalization and sūrah titles. Underneath the bold, dark brown writing (i.e., scriptio superior), faint light brown traces of an earlier script (i.e., scriptio inferior) can be seen. This has been washed off to make the parchment reusable once again. The under-writing of palimpsest is, of course, often difficult to read, although modern tools such as ultraviolet photography are useful to highlight them.
The principle of ultraviolet photography to detect under-writings and forgeries in the manuscripts and documents is quite simple. The ink used in writing early documents was iron-gallotannate type or simply "iron-gall". Iron-gall inks absorb long-wave ultraviolet radiation strongly without generation of fluorescence, so the legibility of faded, bleached or erased parts of handwriting can be improved considerably. On the other hand, the parchment exhibits a weak fluorescence under long-wave ultraviolet light. Traces of iron compounds on the parchment quench this fluorescence, and the areas formerly carrying ink (i.e., scriptio inferior) appear dark against a lighter background as observed in Figure (b). Compare Figure (b) with Figure (a) to see the improvement of contrast of the faded writing observed in ultraviolet photography as opposed to what is seen in the ordinary colour photography.
It is unclear if this manuscript belongs to the same codex as the bifolium Inv. no. 01-27.1. Both these manuscripts are tentatively dated to the first half of the 1st century hijra. The script and the number of lines per page in both the manuscripts are nearly the same but the end of sūrah marker is absent here unlike Inv. no. 01-27.1.
Location
Maktabat al-Jami‘ al-Kabir, San‘a' (Yemen).
References
[1] Maṣāḥif Ṣan‘a', 1985, Dār al-Athar al-Islamiyyah: Kuwait, p. 59.
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