Saadian Qur’ans

The oldest dated Saadian Qur’an with a known owner that we have found. Its script is a fine Maghribi hand leaning towards mabsūṭ; the vowels are in red, shadda and sukūn sometimes in blue and sometimes in green, the hamza in yellow, and al-Habti’s pausal marks in bright green. The verse separators are gilded rosettes of different shapes for single verses, fifths and tenths.

At the end is a colophon in gold on lapis blue in six lines within a gilded frame, and two gilded pages. Mohamed Abdelhafid Khabta finds its decoration closest among Saadian Qur’ans to that of her brother ʿAbd Allah al-Ghalib’s Qur’an.

The sources available to us do not give its place of copying, and it is not digitised. Khabta published images of it.

Its colophon is one of the longest in Maghribi Qur’ans: five pages of Maghribi thuluth on a decorated blue ground within gilded frames. It is a rhymed text in praise of the prince, ending with two verses spoken by the Qur’an itself: «أيا ناظراً رقمي وحسن صنائعي، ومستنشقاً عرفي وأذكى بدائعي، لك الله فادعُ للمعلّم إنه إمامٌ له دانت جميع الصنائعِ», “O you who look upon my script and my fine craftsmanship, and breathe my fragrance and my finest wonders: God be with you; pray for the master, for he is an imam to whom all the crafts have bowed.” Then: «وكان الفراغ منها أوائل رمضان... وتسعمائة», “it was finished in early Ramadan... and nine hundred”.

The colophon, as far as it has been published, does not give the place of copying, and the Qur’an is not digitised. Mohammed al-Manuni published the colophon in 1969, and Khabta later reconstructed it in colour from a black-and-white image.

A luxury Qur’an, vocalised with red for the vowels, yellow for the hamza and green for the waṣla, shadda and sukūn. Its margins mark every division of the Qur’an, from halves, thirds and quarters down to tenths, the sixty ḥizbs, and twenty-seven sections for the nights of Ramadan. The sura headings are in gilded Kufic.

Its colophon, in an ornamental white script on a blue ground, runs over four pages (397v–399r), followed by two pages of geometric decoration in gold and colours. The first twelve leaves are modern replacements for those lost at the beginning.

We found no published digitised copy. It is described in Rieu’s catalogue of the supplement of Arabic manuscripts in the British Museum (1894), and Bongianino and Cellard drew attention to its pink leaves.

It is known as the Qur’an of Mawlay Zaydan, because it was in the library of al-Mansur’s son, Sultan Zaydan, when the Spanish seized it in 1612 CE, and entered the Escorial with the rest of his books.

Its colophon is a full page in gold on a lapis blue ground, and describes the ink: «بالمداد المقام من فائق العنبر المتعاهد السقيا بالعبير...», “with ink made of the finest ambergris, steeped again and again in perfume...”. François Déroche and Nuria Martínez de Castilla see a clear Ottoman influence in its binding and decoration. Between its lines, small gold ṣāds mark the places of pause set out by Muhammad al-Habti (d. 930 AH).

Al-Sufyani was one of the great bookbinders of the late Saadian period. Four years after copying this Qur’an he wrote his treatise Sinaʿat tasfir al-kutub wa-hall al-dhahab (The art of bookbinding and the dissolving of gold, 1029 AH), one of the most important works on the craft of the book in Morocco. This Qur’an is thus in the hand of a man who was both copyist and binder. In it al-Sufyani departs from the custom of his time and does not use blue for shadda and sukūn.

Not digitised, and Khabta did not publish the full text of its colophon.

Mentioned in a note of the study of the Pink Qur’an, among the manuscripts that left Marrakesh in the early twentieth century.

Dated, but we know neither its copyist nor its present whereabouts.

Khabta counts it as Saadian, written in the year Muhammad al-Mutawakkil came to power, and one of the few examples in which parchment was still used in the Saadian period after paper had prevailed.

The date and the copyist are known, but we do not know the place of copying, and cannot be sure that it is Moroccan rather than Tunisian.

One of the few Qur’ans written on coloured paper, pink among it. Bongianino and Cellard consider it Saadian; Mohamed Abdelhafid Khabta considers it Marinid. It was in the Saadian period that the Almohad Pink Qur’an was restored in Marrakesh, with leaves added in a hand imitating its original script.

It was copied before 1020 AH / 1611 CE, and the sources available to us give neither its exact date nor its copyist.

One of the remnants of al-Mansur’s treasures that did not go with Zaydan’s library to the Escorial. ʿAbd al-Hadi al-Tazi published black-and-white images of it in his book Jamiʿ al-Qarawiyyin (1972), p. 601, and Khabta reproduced them.

It is the endowment that is dated, not the copying; the copyist is unknown, and its script is eastern, not Maghribi.

The two are close in script and page layout, and each has more than fifty different designs for the ḥizb and prostration ornaments, in many colours. They were probably copies for personal use from the circle of Sultan Zaydan.

Their origin is disputed: Déroche and Martínez de Castilla think they come from the Iberian Peninsula, while Arias Torres thinks they are Moroccan, because their markers for ḥizbs 15 and 22 follow the new Maghribi practice.

Copied seven years after the seizure of Zaydan’s library, so it did not enter the Escorial with it; it most likely came from the library of the Count-Duke of Olivares in 1656 CE. The vowels, sukūn and shadda are in red, the waṣla in green and the hamza in orange. Its margins mark the eleven prostrations counted by the Malikis.

Its date and copyist are explicit, but the colophon does not give the place of copying.

Khabta published its illuminated opening as evidence of the continuity of the Maghribi decorative style in Qur’ans from the Saadian period into the Alaouite.

Dated, but the sources available to us name neither its copyist nor its owner, nor its place of copying.

A small Qur’an in Maghribi script, written by a captive from Fez in Malta, who calls himself in the colophon “the captive who confesses his sin and shortcoming”. Its sura headings are in gold on yellow, and at the end is a colophon in a red and yellow frame.

In a study of 2024, Luca Berardi argues that its copyist is Muhammad al-Tazi, captured in 1651 CE, who later converted to Christianity and became a Jesuit under the name Baldassarre Loyola Mandes (1631–1667 CE); European sources call him a prince of Fez.

Its date and copyist are explicit, but it was copied in Malta, not in the Saadian lands.

Its copyist finished it before sunrise, according to the library’s description, in the year the Saadian state ended with the killing of its last sultan in Marrakesh.

Its date and copyist are explicit, but the place of copying is not stated, and the Draa was then outside Saadian rule.