The Echoes of a Dispute Over the Inimitability of the Qur’an in Ms Riccardiano 217 (Florence)

Abstract

The paper focuses on a short text copied in the thirteenth-century manuscript Ricc. 217, preserved in Biblioteca Riccardiana (Florence), known by the title Fragmentum disputationis de Alcorani eloquentia inter Muslimum et Christianum. It is a brief Christian polemical argumentation over the eloquence of the Qur’anic language and the Islamic dogma of the inimitability of the Qur’an ( iʿjāz) in which the Dominican missionary Ramon Martì is named. Some historical, linguistic, codicological, and philological aspects will be taken into account to contribute to the discussion related to the possible genesis of this text, and the authorship of the Vocabulista in Arabico, the famous Arabic – Latin/Mozarabic lexicon preserved in the same codex. The short text of the Fragmentum is examined with a particular focus on its Qur’anic quotations, which are put in relation with other echoes of the similar disputes between Christians and Muslims and reported in different sources.