Irankoran was launched within the Corpus Coranicum
department of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
(Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin/Potsdam). The
BMBF-funded project phase ran from 2017 to 2020, with generous support from the
German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF). Its
primary objective was to research and digitally publish
ancient Quranic manuscripts held in public and private museums, libraries, and
collections in Iran, together with corresponding fragments preserved in
collections around the world. The digital scholarly resource created during
this funded phase continues beyond 2020 as an online catalogue and digital
edition. Irankoran builds on and extends the digital infrastructure and
editorial methods developed within
Corpus
Coranicum
, particularly the digital catalogue
Manuscripta
Coranica
(developed by Michael Marx), which has
been available to researchers since 2009 as a comprehensive online catalogue of
the earliest Quranic manuscripts.
Over
the past three decades, significant progress has been made in the study of
Quranic manuscripts, particularly in codicology, palaeography, and manuscript
dating. Research has nevertheless concentrated largely on manuscripts from the
western part of the Islamic world, including al-Fusṭāṭ (Old
Cairo), Kairouan, parts of the large Damascus collection (Qubbat al-khazna,
today preserved in TIEM, Istanbul), and a smaller number of manuscripts from
Sanaa. Access to the manuscript microfilms produced by the German-Yemeni
project (1981–1989) is also being prepared
through Qalamos and
Manuscripta
Coranica
. By contrast, large numbers of Quranic manuscripts
preserved in Afghanistan, India, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and the former
Soviet Union remain difficult to access and are consequently underrepresented
in scholarship. In Iran, existing catalogues, although valuable, are often
incomplete or outdated. The number of early Quranic manuscripts dating to the
first three centuries of Islam and preserved in Iranian libraries, museums, and
private collections is therefore likely considerably greater than the
catalogues currently indicate.
The
project was structured around three primary goals:
First,
to create a comprehensive catalogue of Quranic manuscripts in Iran by gathering
and systematising information about them and, in cooperation with museums,
libraries, collections, and private collectors, to provide researchers
worldwide with access to the manuscripts and their associated data.
Second,
to produce digital editions of Quranic manuscripts, with particular attention
to manuscripts written in Kufic scripts. In collaboration with Iranian
researchers, Irankoran has produced digital editions that include
transliterations of the Quranic codices and documentation of variant readings.
The transliteration system developed within Irankoran extends and refines the
digital edition system of Manuscripta Coranica. It records not only the basic
text of each manuscript, including orthography and diacritical dots, but also
verse separators, verse numbering, and surah headings as they appear in the
manuscript. The digital editions also record readings indicated by vocalisation
marks, including colour-coded dots used to distinguish the basic reading from
variant readings. These structured data provide a basis for detailed analysis
of the textual history of the Quran, including processes of canonisation and
the regional development of Quranic readings.
Third,
to improve the dating of early Quranic manuscripts, which usually lack
authentic colophons. Because dating estimates based on codicology and
palaeography may vary considerably, Irankoran complemented these conventional
methods with radiocarbon analysis. In collaboration with the Laboratory of Ion
Beam Physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in
Zürich (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, ETH Zürich),
selected parchment samples from manuscripts held in the
National Museum of Iran (NMI) and the Central Library of the University of
Tehran (CLUT) were analysed. The project published radiocarbon dating results
for seven parchment Quran manuscripts and one Syriac Bible preserved in the
NMI, as well as for a selection of manuscripts from the CLUT. By bringing
scientific dating into dialogue with codicological and palaeographical
evidence, Irankoran has provided an independent chronological framework and new
evidence for the dating of manuscripts preserved in Iranian collections.
Irankoran
combines philological and scientific approaches and was the first project to
apply radiocarbon dating systematically to Quranic and non-Quranic manuscripts
in Iran. Beyond its individual research results, the project established a
digital infrastructure for cataloguing, editing, and publishing early Quranic
manuscripts and created a framework for collaboration between Iranian and
international researchers. Although the BMBF-funded project phase concluded in
2020, Irankoran continues as an online scholarly resource: its catalogue and
digital editions remain accessible and can be expanded, while the digital tools
and editorial methods developed through the project continue to support further
research. Irankoran encourages Iranian institutions, libraries, and collections
to make Quranic manuscripts available for scholarly research and invites
Iranian researchers to contribute to their cataloguing, digital editing, and
study. In this way, the continuing resource seeks to integrate manuscripts from
Iranian collections more fully into international research on the history of
the Quranic text and to foster sustained collaboration across scholarly
communities.