Type of description:

From the original

Typology

Translation

Current_location

Institution

Bibliothèque nationale de France

Collection

Nouvelles acquisitions latines

Present shelfmark

NAL 130

Former shelfmark

Total pages

188 fols

Folio measures

Material composition

Homogeneous

Writing support

Paper

Textual composition

Single text

Textual interval

Title on manuscript

Historiae ex alcorano depromptae

Title position

Attributed Title

Language

Latin

Script

Latin

Incipit

(7:54)

Incipit position

p. 1

Explicit

(18:26)

Explicit position

p. 188

Preservation state

Complete

Released date

1694

Released place

Other dates

Other places

Colophon

Colophon position

General decoration

Quranic structure decoration

Quranic reading

Unknown

Illustrations

No

Marginalia

No

Link to library catalogue

(click me)

Bibliographical references

Descriptive card

This manuscript contains a latin translation of narrative sections of the Qur'an cited linearly from the creation of the world ("Historia Creationis") to the various prophetic narratives (Adam, Noah, Hūd, Salih etc.) until the story of the Seven sleepers (18:9-26; "Septem fratrum"). Its author remain unknown. A later anonymous annotation links the manuscript to Louis de Byzance, or Raphaël Levi, a Jewish Ottoman subject who converted to Catholicism who settled in Paris around 1690 and became a priest at the Oratory. While the translation bears no date, it uses Hinckelmann's division of verses in his Arabic edition of the Qur'an (1694) and can therefore be dated to after 1694. NAL 130 exhibits the same hand as BnF Français 25280 (fols 23r-108v). The two manuscripts contain approximatively the same narrative portions of the Qur'an but Français 25280 rewrites them into a fluid narrative where as NAL 130 keeps the different verses and Qur'anic versions of the same narratives distinct.

Entry author

Emmanuelle Stefanidis