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Arabic MS 760 (The John Rylands Research Institute and Library, The University of Manchester)

Arabic Manuscripts

Summary of Contents: The first of fourteen large volumes of an illuminated Quʾranic manuscript with interlinear literal translations in Persian and Qarakhanid Turkic. The set would originally have comprised 30 volumes. This volume contains parts of Juzʾ 4.

Title: al-Qurʾān

Title: القران

Language(s): Arabic, with interlinear translations in Persian and Qarakhanid Turkic

Title: Juzʾ 4

Title: جزء 4

1b-29a

Title: Sūrat al ʿImrān

Title: سورة ال عمران

Contains surah 3:119-200. Several lacunae.

Incipit: قالوا امنا واذا خلوا

Explicit: واتقوا الله لعلكم تفلحون

29b

Title: Sūrat an-Nisāh

Title: سورة النساه

Contains surah 4:1. Several lacunae.

Incipit: بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

Explicit: واتقوا الله لعلكم تفلحون

Physical Description

Form: codex

Support: White and cream glazed paper.

Extent: 29 folios

Dimensions (leaf): 365 × 300 mm.

Layout

1 column with three lines of large Arabic thuluth script, the Persian and Turkic translations written in miniscule naskh script below.

Hand(s)

The Arabic text is in large Naskh characters fully vowelled, perhaps of the fourteenth century. The Persian and Turkic translations are both written in smaller characters in the same hand.

Decoration

Divisions are marked with illuminated pages and ornaments.

History

Origin: second half of the 13th or first half of the 14th century CE, possibly produced in ; Transoxiana (A. Ata narrows it down to the Ispicab region; see Ata 2020).

Provenance and Acquisition

3) Endowed by Aytamish al-Bajasi (killed in Aleppo, 802 AH/1400 CE) to his madrassah in Cairo before his death.

Formerly in the collection of Alexander Lindsay, 25th Earl of Crawford (1812–1880).

Purchased by Enriqueta Rylands (1843–1908) in 1901 from James Ludovic Lindsay, 26th Earl of Crawford (1847–1913).

Bequeathed by Enriqueta Rylands (1843–1908) in 1908 to the John Rylands Library.

Record Sources

Catalogue information compiled by Elizabeth Gow from Alphonse Mingana, Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library, Manchester University Press, 1934.

Availability

To book an in-person or online appointment to consult the manuscript, visit Using the Special Collections Reading Rooms. For any other enquiries please email uml.special-collections@manchester.ac.uk.

Digital Images

Manchester Digital Collections (full digital facsimile)

Bibliography

Eckmann, János. "Ein Ostmitteltürkische interlineare Koranüberseztung." Ural-Altaische Jahrbücher 31 (1959)

Eckmann, János. "Two Fragments of a Kuran Manuscript with Interlinear Persian and Turkic Translation." Central Asiatic Journal 13 (1969): 287-290.

Eckmann, János. "Eastern Turkic Translations of the Koran." Studia Turcica 17 (1971): 149-159, especially 153-155.

Ata, Aysu. "The Rylands Manuscript: The First Translation of the Koran into Turkic". Man and Nature in the Altaic World: Proceedings of the 49th Permanent International Altaistic Conference, Berlin, July 30 – August 4, 2006, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2020, pp. 14-23.

Subjects

Qurʼan

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