Red and Black Marginalia in the Quran from Toledo

Abstract

The Toledo Quran is the only manuscript in Aljamiado containing the full Quranic text. Manuscript T235 differs from others by its significant number of marginalia in Arabic, Spanish and Aljamiado. The text is divided into partsprayers, muqaṭṭaa, brief corrections, notes to the textand features decorated letters and drawings. Marginalia are written in black and red ink. The distinguishing feature of the Toledo Quran is that red ink, while being used for the decorative purposes, has a wider range of significance (for instance, to highlight the suras title and the ayat order). The particularity of Quran in Aljamiado is the inclusion of exegetical comments, usually borrowed from tafsirs, into the text corpus. These comments are highlighted in red in the Toledo Quran.
 Thus, the ink color of marginalia on the whole coincides with that of the text, without taking into consideration the usage of red ink in marginalia on pages 1105r inclusive. The numbers of ḥizbs are in red as well as those of ayats. This color is used for decorative purposes.
 The inconsistent usage of color for juzs numbers allows us to make an assumption that the scribe could have made the decision about using the color in his own manner, without basing its usage on that which is employed in the manuscript he copied. Furthermore, the inconsistency in juzs designation leads to a conclusion that text division was not copied from the original manuscript but introduced by the scribe. The corrections of exegetical comments are written in red as well as the comments.