A Corpus of Illuminated Qurʾāns from Coastal East Africa

Abstract

This article examines a little-known corpus of illuminated Qurʾān manuscripts that were produced between ca. 1750–ca. 1850 in the Swahili city-states of Pate, Siyu, and Faza on Pate Island in the Lamu archipelago (Kenya). Now dispersed in collections in Kenya, Tanzania, Oman, the UK, and the USA, the manuscripts have many distinctive features: decorative frontispieces, sūra titles, basmalas, and division and prostration markers; locally developed Arabic script styles; colophons containing names of copyists and completion dates; endowment dedications; northern Italian-made paper; and, blind-stamped, leather covers. The list of known manuscripts presented in the appendix is aimed at encouraging the identification, digitization, and study of other manuscripts in the corpus. The study of their content, materiality, and contexts of production can advance scholarship on the histories of Islamic manuscript production in coastal East Africa and provide comparative material for manuscript studies in other regions of Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean.