A Close Reading of Sura 49:16

Enter “Umayyad Period” into the Harvard Art Museum database and you’ll find a cup, a small sculpture, and an encyclopedic array of coins. Enter “Abbasid Period” – the reign of the next Islamic caliphate – and you’ll find more coins and pottery, but also a few manuscripts. Presented above is a page from one such manuscript. Dating back to the 9th Century, it may, in fact, be one of the oldest Islamic manuscripts in the Harvard Art Museum’s collection.

            Looking at this page one can begin asking a number of questions. What is the ink made of? What material is this written on? Why is the material surrounding the letters whiter than the rest of the page? What are all those dots for, in particular the triangular array of six dots in the lower left corner? Who wrote this?

            Most interesting to me, however, is the most obvious question: what does this text say? According to the description provided by the Art Museum, this page contains a portion of the 16th verse of the 49th chapter (sura) of the Quran. A simple Google search yields the following translation of this verse: “Say, ‘Would you acquaint Allah with your religion while Allah knows whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth, and Allah is Knowing of all things?’”

            With this translation, and with some further research, I would like to not only understand what this verse means, but to also understand the scribe’s writing itself. I would like to be able to look at this page and read it (from right to left) in the original Arabic. Given the remarkably clear nature of this writing, this should be a reasonable task. Indeed, observe the regularity of the “backwards e” appearing on the far right side of the second, fourth, and sixth lines, and the “L” appearing on the second, third, fifth, and sixth lines. The scribe provides us with a mechanically precise, flourish-free transcription of this verse. His text is inviting to newcomers, such as myself.