‘An Arabic Qurʾān, that you might understand’: Qurʾān fragments in the T-S Arabic Cairo genizah collection

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).