On the 19th, Shaker and el-Khatib released some real scholarship, may it serve as an example to other Arabs. This attaches Cairo MS 247 "Maṣāḥif" to another muṣḥaf, Berlin 4313. The latter was known to Bergsträsser (as "Qāf 47") and photographed, although only its photos have survived the wars and Ideologies.
Cairo ends at Q. 4:137, where Berlin picks up v. 138. Corpus Coranicum makes use of Berlin.
The paper takes the opportunity to run some textual analysis. The reading of both is more-or-less Ibn ʿĀmir (d. 118/736), often opposed to the Warsh or the "Cairo" each of which north Africans use today. The reading which interests the authors most is Dūād (sic; ḥamza) for Dāwūd, which they argue is ancestral, with "Dāwūd" being "ʿajamī" (Iran?). I take further that the sura order of the two reünited MSS is 3-4-5-6 against Ibn Masʿud 4-3-etc; and that the variants are nondramatic. So, generally Umayyad; as befits a MS of Umayyad Egypt.
The parent MS is dated even to ʿUthmān himself. I am unsure of that much; the text runs 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, and 21 and I don't think sura 21 nor even 14 be this early. But: it lacks the sura headers and dividers of (say) the Birmingham MS. It could well be copied from a Sufyānid basis with others brought in under ʿAbd al-Malik.
BACKDATE 8/28
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