🔥 Ancient Antique 8th c Islamic Muslim Arabic Quran Papyrus Fragment Manuscript

Description

This is Very Rare and ancient Islamic Arabic papyrus manuscript manuscript, from the very earliest centuries of Islam (circa 798 - 835 CE) These types of document fragments would have originated from the early Caliphate after the conquered Egypt. I believe it is possibly a piece of a very early Quran, or religious text, but I cannot read Arabic. It might possibly be written in Kufic script, or another early form of Arabic. It is ink on papyrus. The Papyrus is extremely old, and thus there is fraying at the edges and wear from over 1,000 years of age. It is remarkable that this piece of Islamic history survived so long. This artifact was acquired from the office of an old Rug Dealer in West Los Angeles who passed away, it hung in his office. Approximately 9 1/2 x 12 1/8 (including frame.) Actual artwork is approximately 3 1/2 x 5 3/4 inches. Please check my other listings for more wonderful and unique artworks!
About Ancient Arabic Papyri:
For over 4000 years the main type of writing material used in Egypt was papyrus. It was manufactured from the plant
Cyperus Papyrus L
, which is a native to Egypt. Papyrus was easier to make and handle than other alternatives such as wood, skin and clay tablets. Also it could be made in a range of thickness and qualities and this contributed to its widespread use. The use of papyrus was taken over by Arab Muslims when they conquered Egypt in the 7th century CE, and it continued as the main writing material of the country until the 10th century when paper started to become more common.
It is hard to estimate the extant Arabic papyri. Adolf Grohmann estimated that there were approximately 16,000 Arabic papyri in the various collections that he was familiar with in Europe, North America and Cairo (A. Grohmann
, 1952, Royal Society of Historical Studies, Al-Maaref Press: Cairo, p. 2). This figure refers to moderately preserved documents. It can be said with fair certainty that the total extant papyrus fragments exceeds this number. The vast majority of the documents include accounts, legal deeds, administrative documents, private letters, etc.
A large number of Arabic papyri were found at various sites in the Fayyūm as well as at sites lying further south including al-Bahnasā (Oxyrhynchus), al-Ushmūnayn (Hermapolis Magna), Kom Eshqaw (Aphrodito), Ikhmīm (Panopolis), al-Gabalayn (Pathyris), Edfū (Apollinopolis), Dandara and Aswān. Several thousand pieces were also found in the ruins of Fustāt. In 1901, a cache of papyrus letters written by Qurra bin Sharīk, the Umayyad governer of Egypt from 90-96 AH / 709-714 CE, was discovered in the Upper Egyptian village of Kom Eshqaw, 7 km south-west of Timā, formerly known as Aphrodito in the Greek sources. Some of these letters are written in Arabic, some in Greek, and some are bilingual (Arabic and Greek). They subsequently found their way into various papyrus collections. These letters cast a great deal of light on the otherwise poorly documented Umayyad administration in Egypt.
Several other Arabic papyri have been discovered at sites outside Egypt, such as in Damascus; a small number were unearthed at Sāmarrā' by the German excavations of 1911; thirteen Arabic papyri from the period 52-70 AH / 672-689 CE were discovered at ʿAwjā' al-Hafīr (Nessana) by the H. Dunscombe Colt expedition of 1936-7; and a large number of papyri, most of which date from the first two centuries AH and nearly all of which are in a fragmentary condition, were discovered in Khirbat al-Mird in the Judaean desert in 1950s.
The discipline of Arabic papyrology was given a sound foundation by a series of careful and masterly studies of selected papyri documents from the Erzherzog Rainer Collection by Josef v. Karabacek. Adolf Grohmann, who had published and edited more Arabic papyri present in various museums and collections, dominated the field of Arabic papyrology for years.
Our aim here is modest. We will deal with some of the examples of the Arabic Papyri originating from the 1st century of
hijra
. The Arabic Papyri is perhaps one of the most obscure fields of Arabic palaeography and hopefully the material below would help understand the field of Arabic palaeography.