Codicology of the Qur’ānic Manuscripts (1) The Qur’ān MS 1200 in Āstān-e Qum Shrine Museum: Left from al-Ma’mūn era or 5th century AH.

The Qur’ān manuscript No. 1200, in the Āstān-e Qum Shrine Museum, contains the 30th juz’ of the Qur’ān, and is written in eastern or New Style Kufic script. Nearly 60 years ago, when the manuscript was restored, a note was discovered in its beginning, stating that the manuscript was written in 198 AH, in time of Abbasid caliph, al-Ma’mūn. Therefore, some consider it to be the oldest dated Qur’ān whose diacritic is original. Having a codicological and textual overview of the work, the article shows that the date 198 AH, which was assigned to the copying of this MS is too early, and was probably
added to the beginning of the MS later. The manuscript handwriting follows Kufic style and belongs to the school of a Ghaznavid scribe, Uthmān b. al-Hussain al-Warrāq, but in some ways it is not sufficiently precise including the fact that the scribe made many mistakes in writing the Qur’ānic text. Furthermore, the orthography and syllables of the words follows Qiyāsi orthography (a complete or non-Uthmānīc rasm), and the manuscript’s variant readings (qirā’āt) is mainly based on Abū ‘Amr (from Basra). These are all the features that justify the dating of the original version of book in the late fifth century AH.