The Faza Qur’an: Three Nineteenth-Century Illuminated Manuscripts from Coastal East Africa

Abstract

This article concerns three illuminated Qur’an manuscripts that were produced in coastal East Africa in the first half of the nineteenth century. Two of the manuscripts are currently located in collections in Oman and the third is in a collection in Zanzibar, Tanzania. Analysis shows that these manuscripts comprise three parts of a four-part Qur’an that was copied by ʿAbd al-Karīm b. ʿUmar al-Nawfalī (d. 1274/1857) in Faza, a town located on Pate Island in the Lamu archipelago in Kenya. The article describes the three Faza manuscripts and, using colophon evidence and external sources, situates the copyist and the manuscripts in their historical context. The article also provides a summary of the academic study of illuminated Qur’an manuscripts from coastal East Africa to date and provides a list of these manuscripts.