The Quran of Bellús (1518)
This is a complete handwritten copy of the Quran text finished in the town of Bellús in the Vall d'Albaida region near Xàtiva (Valencia) in the year 1518. This manuscript is currently preserved in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich under the reference Cod. Arab 7.The three main aspects that give exceptional value to this manuscript are the following:
- It is one of the last complete copies of the Quran made by Valencian Muslims in the Mudéjar period. Finished copying in 1518, it is the most modern preserved Quran copy of Mudéjar origin.
- The presence of trilingual comments and translations in Catalan, Spanish and Latin contained in this manuscript is testimony to its use as a work of study of the Arabic language, the Quran and Islam by preachers, theologians and humanists from both Spain and Europe. This manuscript is one of the most important documents we possess for understanding the process and method of studying the Arabic language and the Quran by Christian intellectuals (theologians and polemicists) at the beginning of the 16th century.
- The geographical journey of the manuscript which, finished copying in Bellús in 1518, ended up forming part in 1558 of the collection of manuscripts from which the initial corpus of the Munich court library was constituted.
- The numerous glosses in the margins of the manuscript. Most of these glosses are in Latin, some of them very extensive, up to twenty lines. It also contains glosses in Catalan and Spanish.
The great importance of the manuscript was highlighted by Casassas Canals in "El Alcorán de Bellús: un Alcorán mudéjar de principios del siglo XVI con traducciones y comentarios en catalán, castellano y latín." published in the journal Alhadra, 1 (2015), Almería, pp. 155-177.
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Subsequently, Casassas Canals presented the manuscript at a conference at the Collège de France in Paris within the framework of the Symposium "History of the Qur'an. Text and Transmission" (2015) organized by François Déroche and
Nuria Martínez De Castilla Muñoz. The title of the conference was "The Quran of Bellús: A Mudéjar Quran from the early 16th century with translations and commentaries in Catalan, Spanish and Latin". Watch the full video of the conference.
Within the framework of the Workshop "The Latin Qur'an, 1143-1500: translation, transmission, interpretation" organized by the project EuQu The European Qur'an in Barcelona (2020), Casassas Canals presented the conference "The Islamic sources of the Latin glosses in the Quran of Bellús: works and authors".
José Martínez Gázquez and Xavier Casassas Canals have published a complete edition of the Latin glosses of the Bellús manuscript, "Scholia Latina, Arabica et in uulgari lingua ad Alphurcanum Mahumedis. BSB-Hss Cod.arab. 7 (Corán de Bellús)" in Medieval Encounters, 27 (2021), 1-49.
On the use of the Quran of Bellús by Christian scholars of the Crown of Aragon, see Xavier Casassas Canals, "The Bellús Qur'an, Martín García, and Martín de Figuerola: The Study of the Qur'an and Its Use in the Sermones de la Fe and the Disputes with Muslims in the Crown of Aragon in the Sixteenth Century" in Cándida Ferrero Hernández and John Tolan (eds.), The Latin Qur'an 1143-1500, pp. 455-473.
In German, see the article "Cod.arab. 7 - Ein Koran auf der Reise von Valencia nach München" by Casassas Canals, Xavier, and Wiedemann, Felix, published in the journal Bibliotheksmagazin, Mitteilungen aus den Staatsbibliotheken in Berlin und München, number 51, pp. 40-44. This article summarizes the journey of the Bellús Quran manuscript from Valencia to Munich, and proposes a hypothesis about who its different owners were and how they came to acquire it.
In Catalan, Xavier Constant Almiñana has written a popular article about the Quran of Bellús, which can be read at: L'Alcorà de Bellús: un Llibre excepcional
Within the framework of the Workshop "The Latin Qur'an, 1143-1500: translation, transmission, interpretation" organized by the project EuQu The European Qur'an in Barcelona (2020), Casassas Canals presented the conference "The Islamic sources of the Latin glosses in the Quran of Bellús: works and authors".
José Martínez Gázquez and Xavier Casassas Canals have published a complete edition of the Latin glosses of the Bellús manuscript, "Scholia Latina, Arabica et in uulgari lingua ad Alphurcanum Mahumedis. BSB-Hss Cod.arab. 7 (Corán de Bellús)" in Medieval Encounters, 27 (2021), 1-49.
On the use of the Quran of Bellús by Christian scholars of the Crown of Aragon, see Xavier Casassas Canals, "The Bellús Qur'an, Martín García, and Martín de Figuerola: The Study of the Qur'an and Its Use in the Sermones de la Fe and the Disputes with Muslims in the Crown of Aragon in the Sixteenth Century" in Cándida Ferrero Hernández and John Tolan (eds.), The Latin Qur'an 1143-1500, pp. 455-473.
In German, see the article "Cod.arab. 7 - Ein Koran auf der Reise von Valencia nach München" by Casassas Canals, Xavier, and Wiedemann, Felix, published in the journal Bibliotheksmagazin, Mitteilungen aus den Staatsbibliotheken in Berlin und München, number 51, pp. 40-44. This article summarizes the journey of the Bellús Quran manuscript from Valencia to Munich, and proposes a hypothesis about who its different owners were and how they came to acquire it.
In Catalan, Xavier Constant Almiñana has written a popular article about the Quran of Bellús, which can be read at: L'Alcorà de Bellús: un Llibre excepcional