Almohad Qur’ans

The first known dated Qur’an of the Banu Ghattus after Valencia came under Almohad rule, and so the only one of theirs that meets the criteria here. Martin Lings published two of its pages (1976).

Not digitised for the public.

Copied in Ceuta in the reign of the Caliph Yaʿqub al-Mansur (580–595 AH), it is one of the oldest dated Almohad Qur’ans whose copyist is known. The Topkapı Palace Library holds a group of large Maghribi Qur’ans, among them this one and the rabʿa of Prince Abu Ishaq described below.

Not digitised. It is described in the CALLFRONT database of the Institut national d’histoire de l’art in Paris, after Umberto Bongianino’s book (2022).

A complete Qur’an in a single volume, in a fine Andalusi script, with one-line sura headings in gilded Kufic. Its colophon fills two pages in gilded Maghribi thuluth and names the copyist and the man for whom the Qur’an was made.

Images on the collection’s website; not fully digitised.

A princely Qur’an whose colophon says it was made to celebrate the birth of Prince Abu Yaʿqub, son and heir of the Caliph al-Nasir, who succeeded his father and took the title al-Mustansir. The dedication is in Maghribi thuluth reserved on a ground of gold leaf, and its wording, “among what [the copyist] made... for [the prince]”, puts the copyist’s name before the prince’s. A copyist and an illuminator worked on it together, as in the Almoravid Qur’an in Munich.

Not digitised. Martin Lings published two of its pages in his book on Qur’anic calligraphy and illumination (1976); the images here are from Bongianino’s thesis (2017).

The oldest surviving Qur’an of the Islamic West written by a ruler in his own hand. Volume 1 is dated 20 Jumada II 654 AH and volume 3 6 Rajab of the same year: sixteen days separate the completion of the first from that of the third.

The verse separators are gilded roundels divided into triangles by fine black lines. The markers of every fifth and tenth verse are gilded roundels, some topped by a pyramid-like form. The sura headings are in coloured Kufic within rectangular frames decorated with gold inlaid with red and blue, joined to ornaments in the margin. In the basmala the kashīda of «الرحمن» stretches between the ḥāʾ and the mīm in the Andalusi manner. Al-Murtada sometimes splits a word between the end of one line and the start of the next, as in «أبصـ/ـارهم» (al-Baqara 20), following the habit of early Qur’ans that al-Qalqashandi criticised.

The colophon of volume 1 is in Maghribi thuluth, its letters gilded and outlined in black, with a touch of eastern thuluth. Ibn ʿIdhari reports that al-Murtada wrote three scripts, and that after his deposition in 665 AH he settled on Jabal Saksawa near Marrakesh and “lived by copying”.

The Qur’an remained complete in the Ibn Yusuf Library in Marrakesh until 1149 AH (1736–1737 CE), when the city’s muḥtasib borrowed it; its volumes were then dispersed. Volume 2 in Rabat was only identified when Mohammed al-Manuni described it and assigned it to the set, comparing its script with that of the other volumes and noting that its date agrees with theirs.

No volume has been digitised for the public. Two pages were published in the exhibition Le Maroc médiéval at the Louvre in 2014.

Al-Maqqari saw it in Tlemcen in the hands of the descendants of Ibn Marzuq the Grandfather (d. 781 AH), with his handwriting on it; it later reached Morocco.

Its copyist and date are known, but it was copied in Valencia under Ibn Mardanish, before the city came under Almohad rule.

Among the oldest known dated and signed Qur’ans of al-Andalus. Their colophons were in Maghribi thuluth, and Ibn Ghattus the son was said to have copied a thousand Qur’ans. His Qur’an dated 578 AH was copied after Valencia came under Almohad rule, so it is listed in the first group.

Dated and with known copyists, but Valencia was then ruled by Ibn Mardanish, independent of the Almohads, and only came under their rule in 567 AH / 1172 CE.

A very small Qur’an in two volumes, of which this is the first. Its colophon, in gilded Maghribi thuluth within a frame, says that the copyist also vocalised and illuminated it: all three crafts in one hand.

Its date and copyist are explicit, but the colophon does not say where it was copied.

All nine of these Qur’ans are on Bongianino’s list of dated Maghribi Qur’ans, all are from the Almohad period, and most are small square Qur’ans. We have grouped them on one card because none of them names a copyist or an owner.

Dated, but the copyist of none of them is known, and the place of copying of most of them is unknown.

Copied and illuminated in Malaga in 1223 CE and later taken to Marrakesh, most likely in the Marinid period.

We found no mention of its copyist or of the person it was made for in the sources available to us.

One of the few surviving dated Andalusi Qur’ans, copied in Seville, the Almohad capital in al-Andalus, shortly before the Almohads lost it. It is complete in one volume, and its colophon is written in Kufic within a gilded roundel (shamsa).

The date and the place are explicit, but the colophon names neither the copyist nor the person for whom it was made.

Bongianino transcribed the endowment deed, in which Abu Ishaq entrusted its supervision to the jurist Abu Muhammad ʿAbd al-Wahid b. Makhluf. The Marinid Sultan Abu Yaʿqub Yusuf then re-endowed it in Fez on 20 Rabiʿ I 696 AH and had a colophon added in gold at the end of volume 4.

The Qur’an itself is undated and names no copyist. It was probably written by one of the two calligraphers of the Pink Qur’an.

The only surviving object that can be linked with certainty to the shrine of Tinmal. The endowment deed stands at the head of the volume, marked with the Almohad motto «والحمد لله وحده», “Praise be to God alone”.

It was copied in Seville in 632 AH, when the city was ruled by Ibn Hud, who had rebelled against the Almohads. It is therefore not an Almohad work, and became one only through its endowment. The sources do not name its copyist.

A Qur’an in a monumental script on pink paper, made by two calligraphers and two illuminators in Marrakesh in the last decades of the Almohad state. At the top of its leaves, pinpricks spell the word «حبس», “endowed”, made when the Marinids re-endowed it.

Undated, and no copyist is named. Its latest possible date comes from its endowment deed.