A hand-illuminated Ottoman-era Quran manuscript, photographed and submitted from a private collection by Ziya Danishmend, with gold-illuminated surah headings and Ottoman Turkish marginal annotations.
This Oedio exists because a reader offered to share it. Ziya Danishmend photographed 70 pages from an illuminated Ottoman Quran manuscript in his own collection and submitted the scans to be added here -- our thanks to him for making a genuinely rare, privately-held historical document publicly accessible for the first time. The submitted pages run from Surat al-An'am (chapter 6) through the end of the Quranic text and into a section of appended prayers, including the Du'a al-Adhan (the supplication recited after the call to prayer) -- consistent with the way complete Ottoman Quran manuscripts were traditionally bound with devotional material attached. Each surah opens with a gold-illuminated headpiece in a distinctive Ottoman decorative style, and the margins carry additional annotation in Ottoman Turkish alongside the Arabic Quranic text. Ziya has noted that these 70 pages represent roughly a third of the complete manuscript, with further sections to be submitted later -- this Oedio will grow to reflect that as more arrives.