The "Mahdiyya" Qur'an: data acquisition

The 346 pages of the book and its cover (together with some covering correspondence) were offered to a Solar Imaging Systems Advanced Imaging System.

The system permits careful, high-resolution capture of delicate texts.

Each page was scanned three times at a resolution of 258dpi;

• The page was scanned in the normal manner;
• The page was backlit without being moved, and rescanned;
• The page was turned over and scanned again.

The equipment set-up. This is housed in the laboratories of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Scientific Research in Music.

Thus, there is no issue of registration between the recto and baclit-recto scans, but this does arise if the verso is to be used in anaylsis with the other two. Any page-to-page comparison would also demand registration.

For more information: Prof. Roger Boyle.