THE WRITING PROCESS IN A 7 TH CENTURY QUR'ĀN MANUSCRIPT: THE UPPER TEXT OF THE 'SANAA PALIMPSEST' AS EXAMPLE

Since the 80s, the manuscript 01-27. 1, Dār al-Makhtūfāt, Sanaa, Yemen, commonly known as 'the Sanaa palimpsest' continues to inspire the academic discussion about the paticularities of the script and the reasons behind the storage of the leaves in the false ceiling of the Great Mosque of Sanaa. In this paper, I study the multiple layers of texts in the manuscript with a focus on the upper text. I demostrate that the writing process of the upper layer has been interrupted and this might be one of the reasons behind the storage of the text in the false ceiling of the Great Mosqe of Sanaa.