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DIVINE ILLUMINATION ANTHONY TEDESCHI
By the Manifest Book! We have revealed it as an Arabic Qur’ān: perhaps you will understand. It is in the Mother of the Book, with Us, Exalted, All-Wise.
Among the rich holdings of the Alexander Turnbull Library are 15 Islamic manuscripts written in Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Turkish. The majority of these are copies of the Qur’ān, the holy book of Islam believed by Muslims to have been revealed to the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century CE. ‘The Mother of ̇ the Book’ in the verse quoted above refers to a celestial book or tablet kept by Allah. The text of the Qur’ān is organised into 30 ajzā (parts) of different lengths, and further divided into 114 sūra (chapters) composed of āyāt (verses). With one exception, these chapters open with the Basmala, the Islamic phrase meaning ‘in the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful’. As in some other Semitic languages, the text is read from right to left. This particular Qur’ān was deposited in the Turnbull Library on permanent loan as part of the Bible Society in New Zealand collection in 1991. Its text is written on paper using the calligraphic script known as naskh.
MUP004 History 101 200x250 272pp f_a.indd 204
Defined by its smaller, more rounded style, and notable for its clarity and readability, naksh is one of the ‘six pens’ of Islamic calligraphy standardised by the Persian official Ibn Muqla during the tenth century CE. While this Qur’ān is not nearly as old, it is one of the oldest Islamic manuscripts in the collection and one with a precise year of completion. This date is known because the year 1016 in the Islamic calendar was added towards the end by the scribe who copied the manuscript. The date converts to the year 1607 in the Gregorian calendar, making this Qur’ān more than 400 years old. Although the scribe did not record his name or where he lived and worked, decorative elements may provide clues. The style of the lavishly illuminated unwān (headpieces) above the first two pages of the text, embellished with geometric and floral patterns, suggests the manuscript was possibly copied in Turkey during the reign of the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I (1590–1617).
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