Talk on 19 MarchCSMC Researchers Analyse Early Qur’anic Manuscripts in Gotha

28 February 2025

A team from the Mobile Lab returns today from a two-week field trip at the Gotha Research Library where they examined early Qur’anic manuscripts in the collection to shed new light on the history of these objects.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the German explorer Ulrich Jasper Seetzen (1767–1811) visited the Mosque of ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ. This mosque, located in the ruins of the ancient city of Fusṭāṭ in the south of present-day Cairo, was one of the main repositories of sacred texts in the Islamic world. From there, Seetzen sent some particularly important Qur’an leaves to the Ducal Library in Gotha. Today, this important collection of fragments of early Qur’an manuscripts is kept in the Gotha Research Library.

Other fragments from the same place of origin can be found in many other places today, including Copenhagen, the Vatican, and Paris. Researchers have been working for some time to reconstruct the connections between these individual fragments and to better understand their respective object histories. At the CSMC, a research project entitled ‘What is in a Scribe’s Mind and Inkwell’, led by Alba Fedeli, is investigating these questions (she has described the history of the collection and her research focus in this article). What’s special about her approach is the combination of historical, philological, and material science methods. In bringing these different aspects together, Fedeli and her colleagues not only want to clarify questions of provenance, but also to explore the history of these historical artefacts in unprecedented depth. In particular, by analysing the pigments and inks used, the researchers want to comprehend the various layers that producers as well as later readers and keepers of these manuscripts have left on the material.

To do this, detailed material analysis is necessary. This February, Fedeli, together with Claudia Colini and Giuseppe Marotta from the Mobile Lab, spent two weeks in Gotha examining the Qur’an fragments using, among other things, XRF analysis and Raman spectroscopy. The researchers also focused on the parchments used, which are the main focus of ‘The Use of Parchment in Arabic Manuscripts of the Early Islamic Centuries’, another cluster project being carried out by Colini and Marotta. The field trip was made possible by Feras Krimsti, curator of the Oriental manuscripts collection, and the staff of the Library.

Insights into this research will be presented in March: As part of the Gotha Manuscript Talks, which begin next week, Fedeli will present her work in a lecture entitled ‘Seemingly Identical and Seemingly Different: Archaeometry and Philology in the Exploration of the Gotha Collection of Early Qur'an Manuscripts’. The Gotha Manuscript Talks are an online lecture series that is open to everyone. The lectures begin at 6:15 pm.