La Transmission ecrite du Coran dans les debuts de l'islam: Le Codex Parisino-petropolitanus.

• Author: Rippin, Andrew
• Position: Book review

La Transmission ecrite du Coran dans les debuts de l'islam: Le Codex Parisino-petropolitanus. By FRANCOIS DEROCHE. Texts and Studies on the Qur'an, 5. Leiden: BRILL, 2009. Pp. ix + 208 (French) + 383 (Arabic). $295.

The ancient Paris manuscript of the Qur'an, Bibliotheque nationale de France (BNF) Arabe 328, is well known. It has long been thought to be one of the oldest copies of the scripture, and its script (commonly now referred to as hijazi) and readings have been studied intensively (see, for example, Yasin Dutton, "An Early Mushaf According to the Reading of Ibn 'Amir," Journal of Qur'anic Studies 3.1 [2001]: 71-89). Despite the earlier efforts of Deroche himself to examine the text in his catalogue of the BNF Qur'an manuscripts published in Paris in 1983 (Les Manuscrits du Coran: Aux origines de la calligraphie coranique) and then in his work with the late Sergio Noja Noseda in producing the facsimile edition, Le Manuscrit arabe 328 (a) de la Bibliotheque nationale de France (Lesa: Fondazione Ferni Noja Noseda, 1998), the challenges of this copy of the Qur'an were not fully overcome. It was not until 2006, when the national library decided to restore the manuscript (removing the interwoven pages from the nineteenth-century binding that were harming the original parchment due to acidity), that a full study could be done. Along with this new examination of Arabe 328 also came the opportunity of bringing the text into conjunction with an investigation of various pieces of what appeared to be folios from the same original manuscript now dispersed across Europe. It became clear that it would no longer suffice to think in terms of the simple separation of the text into 328a and 328b, as proposed by Deroche in 1983. The sum total of all of the relevant manuscript pieces are now being termed the "codex Parisino-patropolitanus" because the other major portion of the whole manuscript has been discovered to reside in St. Petersburg.

In telling the story of how the manuscript leaves came to Europe, how they ended up dispersed, and how their contents were studied and publicized, Deroche has shown himself to be an excellent detective. Coming from the ancient mosque of 'Amr in Cairo, various fragments of the manuscript were brought to Europe during the first part of the nineteenth century. Deroche has established a text of fourteen segments of the Qur'an when all the elements--BN Arabe 328, ft. 1-70, and St. Petersburg Marcel 18, ff. 1-24 and...