Five Qur’anic Papyri from the Michaelides Collection at the Cambridge University Library

Abstract

The Michaelides manuscript collection at the Cambridge University Library contains approximately 700 papyrus fragments collected by George Michaelides in Egypt in the middle of the twentieth century. While a preliminary handlist exists for this collection, most of the papyri have not been fully described. Among them are five Qur’anic papyri that have thus far evaded analysis by scholars of Qur’anic history. Of those five, one is an an amulet, one is a longer text that quotes the entirety of Sūrat al-Fātiḥa, and three contain passages from one or two other suras. Of particular note is the fifth papyrus, CUL Mich.Pap.D.1415, which contains two whole suras, approaches the size of model codices, and may have once been bound. This article more fully describes these five manuscripts and transcribes their contents to provide new data for the textual and material transmission of the Qur’an during the second/eighth and third/ninth centuries.