The light of the day · Friday 11 September
One Qur'an in Ibn al-Bawwab's hand survives, in Dublin
Ibn al-Bawwab worked in Baghdad around the year 1000 and took the proportional system of Ibn Muqla and made it supple. Contemporaries said he was a doorkeeper's son who learned to decorate rooms, then to write, and that he could match another calligrapher's hand well enough to replace a missing volume without anyone noticing. Of everything he wrote, one complete Qur'an survives carrying his name, copied in Baghdad in the year 391 of the Hijra, which is 1000 to 1001 CE. It is the earliest surviving Qur'an in naskh, the cursive book hand that took over from angular Kufic for scripture. It has been in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin since the collector acquired it.
Chester Beatty Library, Dublin · 391 AH
Friday 11 September 2026 · 28 Rabi al-Awwal 1448 AH
The word · Hadith
المُدْرَج
Mudraj
A hadith with words inserted into it, usually a narrator's explanation that later sounded like the Prophet's speech.
Insertions happen in the text and, less often, in the chain. The usual sign is a phrase that explains an unfamiliar word, or that reads like a legal clause in the middle of plain speech. Scholars caught them by finding other versions where those same words appear separately as the narrator's own comment.
The Path · chapter 10 of 71
الذبح
The Sacrifice: Dream of Isma'il
The dream of sacrifice. Isma'il submitted. A ram was substituted.
Surrender is tested at the point of deepest love
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