chapter 1

Was the Ṣanʿāʾ Qurʾān Palimpsest a Work

in Progress?1

Asma Hilali

ms Ṣanʿāʾ, Dār al-Maḫṭūṭāt 01–27.1, the so called “Ṣanʿāʾ palimpsest”, has been
the subject of a great deal of discussion since its discovery in 1981.2 The manu-
script contains two superimposed Qurʾānic texts: an upper text dated to the sev-
enth century or the first half of the eighth century ce, and an earlier lower text.3
I have recently completed an edition and analysis of the Ṣanʿāʾ palimpsest’s two
layers.4 My edition is based on the natural light and ultraviolet light images of
the upper text and the post-processed photos of the lower text. These images
were produced by a French-Italian collaborative project between 2002 and

1 My thanks go to Alba Fedeli, Sarah Novak, Heather Sweetser, Dr. Stephen Burge, Dr. David
Hollenberg, and Prof. Sabine Schmidtke, for their feedback on an earlier version of this paper.
My work on ms 01–27.1 started within the project “Matériaux pour une edition critique du
Coran” at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (cnrs) in Paris, between September
2008 and February 2009. I thank Christian J. Robin who made available to me copies of
the natural light and ultraviolet photos of the upper text and the post-processed photos
of the lower text of the manuscript. Since 2010, my research has been independent of the
French project. For earlier results of this project, see Asma Hilali, “Le palimpseste de Sanʿa
et la canonisation du Coran: Nouveaux éléments”, Cahiers du Centre Gustave Glotz 21 (2010),
pp. 443–448; eadem, “Coran, hadith et textes intermediaries: Le genre religieux aux débuts de
l’ Islam”, Mélanges de l’ Université Saint-Joseph 64 (2012), pp. 29–44.
2 For a journalist’s view of scholarship on the Ṣanʿāʾ palimpsest, see Toby Lester, “What is the
Koran?”, Atlantic Monthly (January 1999) [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/
1999/01/what-is-the-koran/304024/]. Behnam Sadeghi and Mohcen Goudarzi review prior
scholarship in their “Sanʿaʾ 1 and the origins of the Qurʾān”, Der Islam 87 (2010), pp. 343–436.
3 For the dating of the upper text, see Gerd-Rüdiger Puin, “Observations on early Qurʾān
manuscripts in Sanʿaʾ”, in The Qurʾān as Text, ed. S. Wild, Leiden, Brill, 1996, pp. 107–111;
Elisabeth Puin, “Ein früher Koranpalimpsest aus Sanʿa (dam 01–27.1) [i]”, in Schlaglichter:
Die beiden ersten islamischen Jahrhunderte, ed. M. Groß and K.-H. Ohlig, Berlin, Hans Schiler,
2007, pp. 461–493; Sadeghi/Goudarzi, “Sanʿaʾ 1”, p. 7. The upper text is suppposed to go back to
the seventh century or the first half of the eighth century ce. The lower text dates to “before
662 with the probability of 95 %, and before 646 with a probability of 75%”, according to
Sadeghi/Goudarzi, “Sanʿaʾ 1”, p. 8.
4 Asma Hilali, The Oldest Manuscript of Qurʾān in View of its Transmission History (forthcoming).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi: 10.1163/9789004289765_003

was the ṣanʿāʾ qurʾān palimpsest a work in progress? 13

2008. In December 2012, I visited the Dār al-Maḫṭūṭāt in Ṣanʿāʾ and verified
that the images in question are indeed based on the fragments in the Great
Mosque’s Ġarbiyya library.5
After describing previous scholarship on the Ṣanʿāʾ palimpsest, I present in
this article some of the results of my edition, with a special focus on the lower
text. I then propose two methodological points that, in my view, have implica-
tions for the transmission of religious texts in early Islam. First, I suggest that
when considering early sources, we should focus strictly on the palaeographic
and philological features of the manuscript and resist overlaying it with later
theological considerations. In the study of early Qurʾān fragments, this means
resisting the temptation to link the sources systematically with medieval theo-
ries of Qurʾānic variants (qirāʾāt), which were produced much later and should
not be considered a faithful mirror of the early material. Second, we should con-
sider the early role of the source in situ: in this case, the way that the Qurʾānic
text in the manuscript was used and the institutional context of its transmis-
sion. We must consider how the parchment was first read, recited, and copied
among a specific circle of scholars or students, and then, at a later date, washed
and reused; and why it was placed in a false ceiling in the Great Mosque of
Ṣanʿāʾ.

Previous Research on the Ṣanʿāʾ Palimpsest

Academic interest in ms 01–27.1 began in 1981 with the important research led
by the German scholar Gerd-Rüdiger Puin.6 Elisabeth Puin produced an edi-
tion of selected passages of the upper and the lower text, based on black-and-
white photos produced during the 1980s. Her publications constitute the first
attempt to produce an edition of the manuscript.7 The Italian-French project

5 I am grateful to the Imām Zayd b. ʿAlī Cultural Foundation (IZbACF), Ṣanʿāʾ, Yemen, and, in
particular, its director, Aḥmad Isḥāq, and to ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Naʿīmī and Aḥmad al-Kuḥlānī,
for their technical, professional, and personal support during my stay in Ṣanʿāʾ. My thanks
also to Dr. David Hollenberg for various kinds of assistance and advice during my visit to Dār
al-Maḫṭūṭāt.
6 Many accounts are available about the circumstances of the discovery of the manuscript.
For a complete overview of the German mission, see, e.g. Lester, “What is the Koran?”;
Sadeghi/Goudarzi, “Sanʿaʾ 1”, p. 10.
7 Elisabeth Puin, “Koranpalimpsest [i]”, pp. 461–493; eadem, “Ein früher Koranpalimpsest aus
Sanʿa (dam 01–27.1): Teil ii”, in Vom Koran zum Islam, ed. M. Groß and K.-H. Ohlig, Berlin,
Hans Schiler, 2009, pp. 523–681; eadem, “Ein früher Koranpalimpsest aus Sanʿa ii (dam