Mushaf Al-Sharif Attributed to "Uthman bin "Affan
This book contains the facsimile edition, accompanied by a scholarly study, of a copy of the Holy Quran which is located in Cairo and attributed to the time of Caliph Othman. Thus among the copies dating from that period, this one is known as the “Cairo Mushaf ”. It belonged to the collection of the Library of Imam Hussain in Cairo but it was later transferred to the Central Library of Islamic Manuscripts affiliated to the Ministry of Awqaf of Egypt for restoration purposes. The study of this copy, accompanying the facsimile edition, and its preparation for publication, have been done by a leading scholar in Quranic studies, ex- President of Religious Affairs in Turkey, Dr. Tayyar Altıkulaç.
This publication comes in the same line of editions the first of which was a facsimile edition of the copy attributed to the same period, that of Caliph Othman, and located in the library of Topkapı Palace Museum in Istanbul, accompanied, similarly, by a study by Dr. Tayyar Altıkulaç, published in 2007. A similar work, relating to the copy of the Quran attributed to the same period and kept at the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum (Istanbul), by the same author, was published in 2008 by ISAM (Istanbul).
The study on the Cairo copy is a meticulous analysis of the copy comparing it to the other copies which date from the same period and are preserved in different cities of the world, namely the Topkapı copy, the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum copy, the Tashkent copy (preserved at the Khazrati Imam Mosque in Tashkent, Uzbekistan) and the copy of the Great Mosque of Sana’a (Yemen).
IRCICA is thankful to the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage for the financial contribution to the printing of the book and to the Ministry of Awqaf of Egypt for facilitating the work conducted on basis of the copy.
Earlier, IRCICA had published two other historical copies of the Quran. The first one was the copy known as the “Fazıl Pasha Mushaf ”, written in the name of the Seljukid Sultan Tugrul Bey in the year 1186 and kept in Gazi Hüsrev Bey Library in Sarajevo, which was published by IRCICA in a facsimile edition. The second one was the reprint of the first Quran copy printed in the Muslim world, that is, the copy printed in Kazan, Tatarstan, in 1803; this copy was reprinted in Istanbul in 2005 at the initiative of the Municipality of Kazan, on the occasion of the millennium of Kazan City, following a technical revision by IRCICA in preparation for printing.
