- Illuminator and binder
- Zakariyya b. Muhammad b. Zakariyya al-Qurashi: «مما ذهّبه وسفّره», “among what he illuminated and bound”
- Copyist
- Not named
- Owner
- «تهمَّم بإقامة هذا المصحف لنفسه ثم لابنه من بعده», “he took care to have this Qur’an made for himself, then for his son after him”; his name was later scraped from the colophon
- Place
- Not stated; probably Andalusi
- Today
- Munich, Bavarian State Library, Cod.arab. 4, from the books of the orientalist Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter (d. 1557 CE)
- Format
- Parchment; 130 folios; 17.3 × 16 cm; 23 lines; two quires missing between folios 26 and 27 (al-Maʾida 12 – al-Anʿam 77)
Its date was long disputed: it was assigned to the early fourteenth century CE, then to the thirteenth, then to the twelfth or thirteenth, and the library catalogue placed it around the eleventh. In 2020 Umberto Bongianino read its colophon and found in it the year 533 AH and the name of the illuminator. Its present binding is later, of the fifteenth century CE.
At the beginning is a note in gold in which the writer says that he has marked the places of pause throughout the Qur’an with small letters in lapis blue, following al-Dani’s al-Muktafa: tāʾ for a complete pause, kāf for a sufficient one and ḥāʾ for a good one. At the end are the counts of the verses, letters and words of the Qur’an, also taken from al-Dani, from his al-Bayan fi ʿadd ay al-Qurʾan.
Its date is explicit, but the name it gives is the illuminator’s, not the copyist’s; the owner’s name has been scraped off, and the place of copying is not stated. Even so, it is the clearest Almoravid Qur’an that can be browsed in full today.
The colophon in two gilded panels (folios 127v–128r)
تهمَّم بإقامة هذا المصحف لنفسه ثم لابنه من بعده [موضع مكشوط]... وفي الإطار بالكوفي: بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم، مما ذهّبه وسفّره زكريا بن محمد بن زكريا القرشي، وكان الفراغ منه سنة ثلاث وثلاثين وخمس مائة
He took care to have this Qur’an made for himself, then for his son after him [erased]... And in the frame, in Kufic: In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate; among what Zakariyya b. Muhammad b. Zakariyya al-Qurashi illuminated and bound; it was finished in the year five hundred and thirty-three.
The centre is in Maghribi thuluth on a ground of gold leaf, and we checked it against the image. The Kufic frame follows Bongianino’s reading, since its letters are worn in the image. Completion in 533 AH corresponds to 1138–1139 CE.
The journey of the manuscript to Munich
