HUMSS - Ervan Nurtawab

Qur’an Manuscripts in Southeast Asia:
Differences, Diversities and Standardisation

The Quran is placed as the first major source for Islamic practices in the Muslim world. However, its history of copying and how the texts were transmitted into codices as early as the early 17^th century up to their first appearances in print in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries have as yet been poorly understood in the Southeast Asian context. In this project, Ervan Nurtawab examines differences and diversities in the production of the Qur’ans in Southeast Asia, with a special focus on the systems employed for marking the ends of the verses. At this stage, Ervan’s presentation is about how this project is going: its background, problems and why it is significant towards a better understanding of how specific regional traditions of the Qur’an manuscript developed up to the emergence of the 1924 Egyptian Standard.