The Tashkent and Topkapi Codices: The Manuscripts Said to Be Uthman's Own Qur'an

The Manuscripts That Carry a Caliph's Blood

In a quiet library in Tashkent, behind thick glass and climate control, rests one of the most venerated objects in the Islamic world: a huge, ancient Qur'an written in bold Kufic script on gazelle parchment. Pilgrims come to see it. Tradition says it is one of the original copies commissioned by the third caliph, Uthman ibn Affan — and that the dark stains across some of its pages are his own blood, spilled as he was murdered in Medina in the year 656 CE while reading from it.

It is not alone. In the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul lies another immense Kufic codex, also called a "mushaf of Uthman." In Cairo, at the shrine mosque of al-Mashhad al-Husayni, a third such codex is honoured in the same way. Across the Muslim world, a handful of great early Qur'ans carry the same claim: this is the caliph's own book.