A Persian-Deccani manuscript in Scotland

Last August, I had the pleasure of visiting St Andrews University in Scotland in order to examine one of their most precious and well known Qur'an manuscripts.
Together with Keelan Overton, I was invited to Scotland as part of the University of St Andrews Library Visiting Scholarship Scheme, 2016. The scholarship gave us the opportunity to meet-up in person and continue an interdisciplinary study of the University's Qur'an Manuscript 19 first-hand. Bruce Wannell joined our party adding his linguistic expertise to the mixture of Art Historian and Conservator. 

The study of Manuscript 19 was initiated by Keelan as part of her PhD in 2010,“A Collector and His Portrait: Book Arts and Painting for Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah II of Bijapur (r. 1580-1627).” My role has been to look at the materiality of this manuscript, with the hope of better understanding both its production and travels. 

I am currently writing up my observations and continuing to try and untangle its complex production history, but there is much still to learn! Relevant comparanda are too few, and I am again reminded of the scarcity of study devoted to Islamic manuscript bindings and materials. It seems that even within the field of Islamic codicology India and the Deccan in particular are lesser-known.  

So far St Andrews Manuscript 19 is proving even more fascinating than we might have expected. Keelan has posted a blog introducing the project and highlighting some of the challenges to studying this complex manuscript on the wonderful St Andrews Special Collections Blog, Echoes from the Vault, and some images of the beautiful Qur'an can be seen here. 



I hope there will be more images and thoughts to share on this manuscript as 2017 gets underway.


Overton, Keelan. “A Collector and His Portrait: Book Arts and Painting for Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah II of Bijapur (r. 1580-1627).” PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2011.