‘An Arabic Qurʾān, That You Might Understand’

Abstract

The Arabic-script Qurʾān fragments of the Cairo genizah collections have not yet drawn much interest among Arabic and genizah scholars. This paper aims to bring them to the attention of a broader audience by presenting the palaeographic features (§ 3) and vocalisation systems (§ 4) of eleven Arabic-script Qurʾān fragments from the Cambridge University Library’s Taylor-Schechter Arabic collection. While the focus of this paper is the physical appearance of these Qurʾān leaves, their presence in the Cairo genizah (§ 1.1)—a Jewish ‘storeroom’ for retired sacred texts—is also tentatively explored (§ 1.2, § 5).