COBHUNI Lecture: The Sanaa Palimpsest - Fourty Years AfterLecture bey Dr. Asma Hilali, Institute of Ismaili Studies, London
2 June 2017
Friday, June 2nd 2017 at 12:00 am in Room 136, Universität Hamburg, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1 The "Sanaa Palimpsest" is one of the oldest Qur'an manuscripts yet discovered; it contains two superimposed Qur'anic texts on thirty-eight leaves of parchment, now in the Dar al-Makhtutat, Sanaa, Yemen. The palimpsest's lower text, which has been dated to the first century of Islam, was subsequently erased and the parchment was later reused for writing another Qur'anic text, which remains visible in natural light. This upper text is thought to date from the second century of Islam. In this talk, I offer a new hypotheses concerning the transmission of the Qur'an based on this ancient material, which appears to represent work in progress. In its lower layer, the manuscript offers the oldest witness of a reading instruction in Qur'an text and perhaps even in any Arabic text. Such peculiarities offer rare evidence as to how the Qur'an was transmitted, taught and written down in the first centuries of Islam.