The Quran of Uthman (St. Petersburg, Katta-Langar, Bukhara, Tashkent)

Efim A. Rezvan's study of The Quran of Uthman, published in Manuscripta Orientalia, the journal Rezvan himself edits at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St Petersburg, examines the great Kufic script Qur'an codices traditionally attributed to the caliph Uthman and now dispersed across St Petersburg, Katta-Langar, Bukhara and Tashkent, including radiocarbon results placing the parchment of the Tashkent and Samarkand leaves in the eighth to ninth centuries CE. Rezvan is a leading specialist in early Qur'anic manuscripts and deputy director of the Kunstkamera in St Petersburg. Its strength is direct codicological and radiocarbon analysis of the actual manuscripts. Its limit is that the radiocarbon range postdates the traditional attribution to Uthman's own seventh century reign, so the manuscripts' traditional name records a later devotional attribution rather than the codex's actual production date, which the science itself has revised.