Qur’anic exegesis manuscripts and the sciences of the Qur’an between the Islamic world and the West: A foundational study of reality and impact.

Abstract

This study examines the current state of manuscripts on Qur’anic exegesis and the Qur’anic sciences held in three major Western institutions: the British Library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and Princeton University Library. It analyzes a purposive sample of six manuscripts dating from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries, while also drawing on the resources of the Corpus Coranicum project in Berlin and the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at the University of Hamburg. The digital catalogue records were reviewed through 25 July 2026. Without claiming comprehensive coverage, the study adopts a critically grounded approach that integrates historical and methodological perspectives and considers the impact of these manuscripts’ transfer to the West on contemporary Qur’anic studies. The research addresses the lack of a comprehensive assessment that balances Western contributions to manuscript preservation, cataloguing, and digitization against the critical approaches applied to these materials and their compatibility with the foundational principles of Qur’anic exegesis and the Qur’anic sciences. Methodologically, the study employs descriptive-analytical, comparative, historical, and inductive codicological approaches to examine acquisition histories and the manuscripts’ material and cataloguing features.The findings indicate that the transfer of these manuscripts resulted from interconnected historical, political, and scholarly factors. Western institutions have contributed significantly to their preservation, cataloguing, and digitization, thereby expanding opportunities for critical editing and comparative research. However, while historical-critical and philological approaches have advanced the technical study of manuscripts, some have detached the Qur’anic text and its interpretation from their doctrinal and normative contexts and subjected them to epistemological assumptions incompatible with Islamic methodological foundations. The study recommends strengthening critically grounded Islamic scholarship, developing specialized cataloguing, digitization, and critical-editing projects, establishing balanced academic partnerships with Western institutions, and preparing researchers to employ modern research tools while preserving the methodological integrity of the Qur’anic sciences.