The last Qur’an from al-Andalus?

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to improve upon the description of MS 2 of the Escuela de Estudios Árabes de Granada, and to propose a new dating based on the material analysis of the document carried out by Sonsoles González in 2014 and my subsequent rereading and translation of its colophon. If one accepts my proposed revised dating, this manuscript would be the last known Qur’an from the Iberian peninsula, copied as late as the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, in the city of Cordova. Moreover, this copy is heir to an Andalusian tradition stretching back to the theoretical treatises of Abū ʿAmr ʿUthmān al-Dānī, transmitted faithfully from generation to generation through the Andalusi, Mudejar, and Morisco periods, down to the period of this manuscript. Lastly, it contains marginal notes with chapter numbers, and Latin translations of sura titles, which are clear evidence of its later use among Christian intellectual circles.