![\"\"](\"http:\/\/middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/m1-15-789x1024.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christie\u2019s is pleased to offer the only recorded palimpsest of a Qur\u2019an copied onto a Christian text, which will be offered as part of the Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds Including Oriental Rugs and Carpets auction on 26 April. This is Lot 1 of the sale, which features nine folios coming from a previously unrecorded Qur\u2019an manuscript dating to the earliest period of Islam. With the help of French scholar Dr. El\u00e9onore Cellard, a remarkable discovery was made, as the folios are in fact a palimpsest, which is a manuscript from which the first writing has been effaced so that the vellum could be reused. Beneath the Arabic script an original Coptic text may clearly be seen.<\/p>\n
The leaves from these folios derive from an earlier Coptic manuscript containing passages from the Book of Deuteronomy, which is part of the Torah and the Christian Old Testament. It was very probably produced in Egypt, home to the Coptic community, at the time of the Arab conquest. This appears to be the only recorded example of a Qur\u2019an written above a Christian text. These folios resonate with the historical reality of religious communities in the Near East and as such are an invaluable survival from the earliest centuries of Islam.<\/p>\n
Dr. El\u00e9onore Cellard, Postdoctoral fellowship at Coll\u00e8ge de France, Paris
\n\u201cThis is a very important discovery for the history of the Qur\u2019an and early Islam. We have here a witness of cultural interactions between different religious communities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eleonore Cellard is attached to the College de France, a leading academic institution based in Paris. She works under the supervision of Prof D\u00e9roche, the leading expert in the field of early Islamic scripts and early Islamic codicology.<\/p>\n
Qur\u2019anic palimpsests are extremely rare and only a handful are known:
\nTwo leaves from a 7th century Hijazi Qur\u2019an, sold at Christie\u2019s, London, 8 April 2008, lot 20 (sold
\n\u00a32,484,500) and 01 May 2001, lot 12 (sold for \u00a3163,250). The Qur\u2019anic text is copied above an earlier version of the Qur\u2019an.<\/p>\n
The late 7th \/early 8th century Mingana-Lewis Palimpsest (MS Or.1287) at the Cambridge University Library. The Hijazi script has been erased and the leaves were used for a 9th \/10th century codex of Christian Arabic homilies produced in The palimpsest was acquired by Agnes Smith Lewis in Suez in 1895.
\nA leaf from a 7th century Hijazi Qur\u2019an in San\u2019a (Masahif San\u2019a, exhibition catalogue, Kuwait, 1983,
\ncat.4, p.59). The surviving Qur\u2019anic text is copied above an earlier version of the Qur\u2019an.<\/p>\n
The present folios, dating from the 8th century.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Christie\u2019s is pleased to offer the only recorded palimpsest of a Qur\u2019an copied onto a Christian text, which will be offered as part of the Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds Including Oriental Rugs and Carpets auction on 26 April. This is Lot 1 of the sale, which features nine folios coming from a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6658"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6660,"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6658\/revisions\/6660"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}