Dr Alba Fedeli, an Honorary Fellow and collaborator of ITSEE, has published an online edition reconstructing the Qur'anic text of the Mingana-Lewis palimpsest in Cambridge University Library
Dr Alba Fedeli's edition of the Mingana-Lewis palimpsest Qur'an has been published online.
Following her discovery of the early date of the Birmingham Qur'an, Dr Alba Fedeli has now published her reconstruction of the Qur'anic undertext of the Mingana-Lewis palimpsest held in Cambridge University Library. This manuscript contains portions of two other early Qur'ans, probably copied in the seventh or eighth century CE, which were later overwritten with a Christian Arabic text.
At ITSEE, Dr Fedeli painstakingly worked at with digital images of the manuscript, removing the later writing and enhancing and reconstructing the undertext. Images of each stage in the history of the manuscript have now been published online in the Cambridge University Digital Library. They are accompanied by Dr Fedeli's diplomatic transcription of the Qur'anic text, enabling it to be read alongside the images. A lengthy introduction to the manuscript is also provided, and Alba has contributed to the Cambridge University Special Collections blog with an illustrated description of her work.
Alba is now undertaking postdoctoral research on using computers to explore the textual relationship of early Qur'anic manuscripts at the Central European University in Budapest. The technical support for this work is being provided by members of ITSEE. Alba's doctoral thesis, completed at ITSEE in 2014, includes a full discussion of the history and text of the Mingana-Lewis palimpsest and has been deposited on the University's etheses website.
