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Al-Zanjānī’s Qur’ān, Iranian Masterpiece in Kufic script from 531/1137: MS 44 in Al-Khizānat al-Gharawiyya (Imām Alī’s Shrine) in Najaf, and its Isolated Leaves in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Qur’ānic codex, MS 44 in Al-Khizānat al-Gharawiyya (Imām Alī’s Shrine) in Najaf, copied by Muḥammad al-Zanjānī in 531/1137, is one of the masterpieces of Qur’ān inscription in the Kufic script. Missing are eight illuminated leaves from the beginning and end of the manuscript, including the colophon. Those leaves were probably taken out of the library in the 1990s during the rule of Saddam Hussein, and have been kept at the Metropolitan Museum of Art since 1996.
Some key features of the manuscript are: transcribing in a kind of the Kūfic script which may be called kūfi-naskhī (New Style of Eastern Kūfic), ending each 27-lines page with the conclusion of a verse, covering each of the 30 parts (juz’) of the Qur’ānic text in seven leaves, beginning every part at the beginning of the page and ending it at the bottom of the page, the closeness of the reading to that of Abū ʿAmr al-Baṣrī, its departure from the seven well-known systems of numbering the verses, the naming of some sūras in ways different from the common nomenclature, the use of ordinary standard Arabic orthography, and avoidance of the Uthmānic pattern.
The artistic features of this manuscript include: very sophisticated and geometrical illuminations, the use of golden ink in transcribing of certain Qur’ānic terms and phrases, beautiful geometric and bold embellishments and elaborate Islamic motifs at the head of each sūra, verse-ending signs in the form of golden octagons, use of decorated almond-shaped motifs for signs used to mark clusters of five and ten verses, markers of each of the seven subsections of the Qur’ān (sub‘) and of their half-parts (niṣf sub‘), markers of the places for prostration (sajda), markers of the beginnings of each juz’, and the use of the star of David along with the eight-pointed stars, both of which are common elements in old Islamic decoration. At the end of the codex, the scribe has described in both Persian and Arabic his 33 rules in transcribing this Qur’an.
The features of calligraphy and artistic illumination of the manuscript show that the scribe-illuminator was master of style, original and imaginative person with a mathematical and geometric bent of mind. He carried out his work with precise mathematical calculations, and used in the illuminations almost all elements of geometric and floral decorations. At the end of the article, mention is made of a number of other Qur’ān codices similar in respect of Kufic script and systematic muṣḥaf writing, all of which end their pages with verse endings and cover each part (juz’) of the Qur’ān in a specific number of leaves.

Keywords: Copying of Kūfic Qur’āns, Qur’ān of al-Zanjānī, Muḥammad al-Zanjānī (6th/12th Century), Qur’ānic orthography, New Style Kūfic, Modern Kūfic, al-Khizānat al-Gharawiyya, Maktaba al-Rawḍa al-Ḥaydariyya, Library of Imām Alī’s Shrine (Najaf), Metropolitan Museum of Art, systematic muṣḥaf writing, Iranian Qur’ān transcribing.