Codicology of the Qur’ānic Manuscripts (13) Qur’ānic Codices Attributed to the Shiite Imāms: Reality or Forgery?

 There are indications that from around the fourth century AH, the inscription and handwriting of some Qur’ānic manuscripts in the Kufic script have been attributed to Imām Ali or other Companions, such as the third caliph, ‘Uthmān b. ʻAffān. On the other hand, a search of private collections, museums, and libraries in Iran and around the world reveals that there are now nearly 200 complete or incomplete copies of the Qur’ān attributed to Imām Ali or other Shiite imāms. This article presents two categories of apparent reasons or historical evidence for the unreality of these attributions. First, based on ancient historical texts, it tries to sufficiently show that the oldest written historical documents from the first three centuries AH, all lack such attributions. In addition, mentioning the name of the scribe at the end or middle of a copy of the Qur’ān was uncommon in the first three centuries; therefore, the existence of a colophon at the end of a part of the Qur’ān and the attribution of it to one of the Shiite Imāms in the first century, leads to historical anachronism. The second set of reasons and evidence for the falsity of these attributions goes back to the typological aspects of these codices. In this section, the author describes some of the features in these manuscripts, such as the type of calligraphy (e.g., the Eastern Kufic script), the material of the manuscript (e.g., paper), the Qur’ānic content (e.g., the use of various canonical and non-canonical readings), the existence of errors and inaccuracies of the scribe (according to the Shiites, Imāms do not make mistakes), as well as clear signs of forgery of colophons in Kufic script. These features evidently convince us that the attribution of these codices to the Shiite Imāms is incorrect and unreal.