The Leaves That Went Missing

There is the matter that arose in England concerning the Tashkent Qurʾān, some of whose leaves are said to have been taken and to have ended up in private possession. It is said that a few of the leaves were stolen. And interestingly enough, in the Treaty of Versailles — article 246 — one of the conditions of surrender imposed on the Germans was that they would return the ʿUthmānic copy of the Qurʾān that was in their trust from the Ottomans; and that is a text that apparently just disappeared. One of them was destroyed in a fire in Syria, in 1898.^***** And some of them showed up at Sotheby's — some of them showed up for sale at Sotheby's, which caused a scandal.