François Déroche

François Déroche, member of the Institut and Professor at the Collège de France, is a specialist in Arabic manuscripts, with a particular interest in the written transmission of the Koran. He was a resident at the BnF, a member of the Institut français d’études anatoliennes, then director of studies at the Ecole pratique des hautes études. His publications focus on codicology (Manuel de codicologie des manuscrits en écriture arabe, 2000), the history of the Arabic manuscript book(Le livre manuscrit arabe, 2004; Les livres du sultan, 2022) and early Islamic Qur’anic manuscripts(La transmission écrite du Coran, 2009; Qur’ans of the Umayyads, 2014; Le Coran, une histoire plurielle, 2019).

 

François Déroche is Professor at the Collège de France, Paris where he holds the chair “History of the Qur’an. Text and Transmission.” He previously taught at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. The world-leading expert on early Qur’anic manuscripts and Islamic codicology, Déroche has published extensively. Among his books are Qur’ans of the Umayyads (Brill, 2014), The One and The Many: The Early History of the Qur’an (Yale University Press, 2022)/Corano, una storia plurale (Carocci, 2020) and with other authors Islamic codicology. An introduction to the study of manuscripts in Arabic script (al-Furqan, 2006; Les livres du sultan, 2022).

Volumes that once belonged to a 20-volume Koran are preserved in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. This copy is clearly important: its dimensions (in folio), calligraphy and binding suggest that it was a luxury copy. The project aims to answer questions about its date and origin, but more broadly about the context of its production and its history up to its arrival in Rome. The project will involve meticulous examination of the text itself, the illumination, the writing surface, the binding and any marks that might provide information on the history of the manuscript.