The Topkapi Mushaf (Collectors)

A complete facsimile of the early Qur'an manuscript kept among the Sacred Trusts of Topkapi Palace, traditionally attributed to the Caliph Uthman ibn Affan, may Allah be pleased with him.

Inside the facsimile: the Kufic text and red-dot vocalisation of the original, reproduced folio by folio.

The manuscript known as the Topkapi Mushaf is one of the oldest and most complete copies of the Qur'an in existence. Written in Kufic script on parchment, it runs to 408 folios, of which only two are missing, so that the surviving text is very nearly whole. Its verses carry the red-dot vocalisation of the earliest system of marking, with illuminated rosettes at every fifth and tenth verse and ornamented bands between the surahs. In 1811 the codex was sent to Istanbul as a gift from Mehmed Ali Pasha, governor of Egypt, to Sultan Mahmud II, and it has rested with the Sacred Trusts of Topkapi Palace ever since.

Tradition holds that Uthman, may Allah be pleased with him, was reading the Qur'an when he was martyred in the year 35 after the Hijra, and that his blood fell upon the words "So Allah will suffice you against them, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing" (al-Baqara 2:137). The Topkapi codex bears stains at that very verse and has long been venerated as the Caliph's own Mushaf. The scholars who have studied it most closely, among them Dr. Tayyar Altikulac, who prepared this facsimile, place the copy in the generations immediately after the Companions, and value it as a faithful witness to the text set down under Uthman's commission.

Photographs do not do it justice. The volume is very large and carries real weight in the hand.

In 2007 the Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA), the research centre of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in Istanbul, published this complete facsimile of the Topkapi Mushaf. The edition was prepared by Dr. Tayyar Altikulac, former President of Religious Affairs of Turkey, after a decade of study of the manuscript, with a preface by Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, IRCICA's founding Director General. The printing was funded by H.H. Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Muhammad al-Qasimi, Ruler of Sharjah.

Every folio of the original is reproduced in order, with its parchment tone, stains, corrections and illumination intact, on specially selected paper and in a binding made to follow the original as closely as possible. An introduction in English, Turkish and Arabic accompanies the volume. In 2009, at the reopening of the Holy Relics section of Topkapi Palace, IRCICA presented a copy of this facsimile to the Prime Minister of Turkey.

Each copy is delivered in its own leatherette carrying case.

The binding and outer cover, finished to an exceptionally high standard.

A volume of this kind belongs on a lectern. It is suited to the library of a mosque, a university or a research institute, to the centrepiece of a private collection, and to a gift made in someone's name, placed in a madrasa or a library where students of the Qur'an will open it for generations.

May Allah make it a means of nearness to His Book, and a lasting reward for the hands it passes through.