Manuscripts of Quranic Muṣḥafs (11) Regular and Organized Writing of the Qur'an in Iran from the Fifth to the Tenth Century AH, and its Influence on the Writing of the Qur'an from the Ottoman era to the Present day

The writing of Quranic Muṣḥafs today has special artistic features. One of the most important features is the regular and organized writing of Quranic verses in each part, page and line. Today's most famous name is the Qur'an written by Uthmān Ṭāhā, a Syrian scribe whose work has been distributed in recent decades in various Islamic countries under the title "Muṣḥaf al-Madinah al-Munawarah" by the King Fahd Collection. The pages of this Qur'an contain 15 lines, and the end of each page ends with the end of a verse. Also, each of the thirty parts of this Qur'an has been carefully designed and written in 20 pages or 10 sheets. But in fact, this style of writing, which is tied to the name of Uthman Ṭāhā, has had many examples among the scribes of the Qur'an during the Ottoman period, and after that, during the last hundred years. This article, by reviewing the history of this style of writing the Qur'an, shows that the Ottoman scribes did not invent this artistic style during the tenth to fourteenth centuries AH, but the history of this type of regular and organized Qur'anic writing dates back to much older times, and in Iran to the 5the century AH. The Muṣḥaf of Muhammad Zanjānī (dated 531 AH), and the Zarrīn Qalam Muṣḥaf (dated 582 AH), are two very advanced examples of this art in the sixth century AH. In the beginning, the number of rules and patterns of Iranian scribes for the regular writing of the Qur'an was about 30, but gradually before the tenth century AH, it was expanded to about 470 cases. Almost all Ottoman scribes in recent centuries have paid attention to only two things: first, ending each page at the end of the verse, and second, starting each part of the Qur'an from the beginning of the page and ending it at the bottom of the page.