Corpus Coranicum

Corpus Coranicum (2007–2024) was a digital research project of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

The project made sources accessible that are relevant for the history of the Quran. These primary texts include Jewish, Christian, and other textual remains from the world of Quran. To trace its oral and written transmission further, early manuscripts of the Quran were catalogued and made available through the project’s database. A literary commentary on the Quranic text completes the project.

Begun in 2007, the initial three-year database project was headed by two project leaders: Senior Professor of Arabic Studies Angelika Neuwirth (Freie Universität Berlin) was responsible for the commentary. The research centre was managed by Michael Marx, who is editor-in-chief of the "environmental texts" and the text documentation.

Since 2025, M. Marx has continued the adaptation, maintenance and digital publication of the databases under the roof of Corpus Coranicum e.V.

The project will document the Quran in its handwritten form and oral tradition, and include an extensive commentary interpreting the text in the context of its historical development.

In the Manuscripta Coranica, the earliest surviving handwritten witnesses to the text of the Quran are made available; in addition to images of the manuscripts preserved in libraries and private collections worldwide, the database contains various metadata on the documents. This includes palaeographic and codicological information, provenance, and current location (as far as known). Each entry displays the corresponding Arabic text of the 1924 Egyptian edition (Cairo) alongside the selected manuscript.

Some 2000 pages are transliterated in a markup system developed by the project. For date estimates of manuscripts, the project conducted carbon dating analysis of more than 40 documents.

Since early Arabic texts are often ambiguous because the script contains no or few diacritical marks (rasm), various interpretations of the Quranic text (variant readings) developed, some of which were subsequently treated as authoritative. These variants include consonantal mutations, and encompass the addition and removal of whole words. To follow the differences between the interpretations, the database Variae Lectiones Coranicae provides a synopsis of the readings used in different exegesis traditions. Each word of a surah can be selected for this purpose and its variants displayed. Both catalogues together aim to serve the research of written and oral transmission of the Quran.