6b. Material evidence about the history of the Qur’an and its digital representation (Panel 2)

Chair: Michael Marx, Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Corpus Coranicum

The panel is dedicated to material evidence about the early history of the Qurʾān. During recent years, carbon dating, ink analysis, specimen analysis and other techniques have introduced new evidence about the Qurʾān of the 7th and 8th century. Papers of the panel discuss material evidence for the history of the Qurʾān on different levels, including important questions in our research (variant readings, transliteration/transcription of readings and spellings, carbon dating, DNA-analysis, specimen analysis, text divisions, historical context, scripts in Arabia, attributions to caliph ʿUṯmān, catalogues, image rights, accessible collections…). Material and philological evidence need to be “translated” into digital terms, in order to have material sources accessible for the scholarly discussion in Eastern and Western scholarship. This is why the panel includes the discussion digital structures as well. Most of the contributors are from a small network of scholars around the “Corpus Coranicum” project, especially the digital catalogue „Manuscripta Coranica“ which makes a large and growing number of written sources accessible (> 35.000 images of manuscript pages).