Ashmolean Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

From oral to written revelation: The Qur’an in the first centuries of Islam

The Qur’an (from the Arabic qara’a, ‘to read aloud’ or ‘to recite’) gathers the revelations received by the Prophet Muhammad from God during his life. At first transmitted orally, the revelations were later written down by the Prophet’s closest companions, who aimed to guarantee the integrity of God’s word and standardize its reading. The resulting text, completed under the caliph Uthman (AD 644-656) and still in use today, consists of 114 sections (surat) arranged in order of descending length, and comprising a varying number of verses.

Kufic, a term describing various Arabic angular scripts, emerged very early on as the preferred hand for copying the Qur'an, and continued to be so until the early 12th century. Titles were also added to the sections and the whole text was divided into parts (most commonly 4, 7, and 30) so that its full recitation could be divided over an equivalent number of days. While headings and divisions helped the believer to navigate the text, neither of them were part of the original revelation. For this reason, scribes and illuminators marked them in different colours and scripts, a practice that gradually aestheticized the holy book and transformed it into an attractive object to behold.

Double page from a Qur’an in kufic script (EA1996.54)   Page from a miniature Qur’an in kufic script (EA1993.16)

Page from a large Qur’an in kufic script (EA2009.18)   Page from a Qur’an in eastern kufic script and with Persian translation in naskhi script (EA2012.73)   Page from a Qur’an in maghribi script (EA1993.395)