Treasures of St John’s College Library

Muḥammad ibn Ismā‘īl al-Bukhārī, Kitāb al-Jāmi‘ al-ṣaḥīḥ (Iran, 1496)

Second only to the Quran, the Hadith shapes Islamic belief and practice

The Hadith occupies a central place in Islamic theology and religious life. While the Quran records divine revelation, much of Islamic belief and practice is shaped by the remembered sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad. These memories were transmitted orally by his contemporaries and later generations before eventually being gathered, assessed by scholars, and preserved in authoritative written collections known as Hadith.

The Islamic scholar Emilie Savage-Smith has described St John’s College’s manuscript as a fine, illuminated, and highly annotated copy dated to 901/1496. The names of the copyists suggest that it was probably produced in Iran, although aspects of its illumination show affinities with manuscripts made in Istanbul in the late fifteenth century.

The volume is richly decorated. The table of contents is introduced by an illuminated headpiece, and the main text opens across two facing illuminated folios (3b–4a). The manuscript also contains extensive marginal and interlinear annotations in Arabic and Persian, added by several hands, attesting to sustained scholarly engagement with the text over time.

The manuscript has been in the possession of St John’s College since 1932. Unfortunately, nothing is known about its earlier provenance, leaving its journey to the College an intriguing but unresolved chapter of its history.

The Conservation of MS 369

by Jasdip Singh Dhillon (Conservator, Oxford Conservation Consortium)

In the printed catalogue, Emilie Savage-Smith described the binding as a ‘European binding of leather over pasteboards’. While this is understandable at first glance, closer examination during conservation treatment revealed that both the materials and structure are more consistent with a traditional Islamicate binding, probably produced in Asia and possibly in colonial India.

Several key features support this reassessment. Most striking is the endband: a twined structure sewn over a rolled leather or paper core, a form characteristic of Islamicate bindings from the late first millennium CE into the modern period, and extremely unlikely to have been produced by a European binder. The relatively thick rolled cores seen here are also typical of South Asian bindings. In addition, the boards are lined with leather extending onto the first textblock leaf to form an inner joint, and the spine is lined with textile whose extensions are adhered to the outer leaves – both pan-regional features of Islamicate bookbinding.

The original description as ‘European’ was largely based on the presence of squares (boards extending beyond the textblock) and coloured leather strips on the spine, elements derived from European binding practice. Such features were, however, adopted by Islamicate binders in regions where European influence was strong.

All papers used in repairs are Asian handmade papers. As hand papermaking had largely ceased outside South Asia by the nineteenth century, this strongly suggests a South Asian context. It remains possible that the rebinding was commissioned by a European patron, who requested the inclusion of European stylistic features.