Beyond the Cairo Edition On the Study of Early Quranic Codices

Abstract

This essay reviews two recent volumes containing editions of important early quranic codices. One of these is the so-called Sanaa Palimpsest, whose lower text at present remains our only known material witness to a recension of the quranic text that is different from the canonical one; the other is the Codex Amrensis. The essay devotes particular attention to the question of the textual relationship between the Quran’s standard text and that documented by the lower layer of the Sanaa Palimpsest, and to Asma Hilali’s claim that the Sanaa Palimpsest never constituted a full quranic codex but only “a collection of disparate leaves.”