Codex Marshall 691

Codex Marshall 691 is a Mandaic manuscript currently held at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It is the oldest Mandaic manuscript that is currently held at a European institutional library and is a prayerbook containing dozens of Mandaean prayers. The contents of the manuscript remain unpublished. Its colophons have been studied in detail by Jorunn [Jacobsen Buckley].

Description

Codex Marshall 691 is a small leatherbound codex with 116 pages that measures approximately 4 inches by 5 inches. As a prayerbook, it contains various Mandaean prayers, including the rahmia. According to its colophons, it was copied in September 5, 1529 A.D., in Huwayza by Adam Zihrun, son of Bihram Šitlan.
Thomas Marshall's servant had donated the book to the Bodleian Library in 1689 or 1690, after Marshall's death in 1685.
The codex contains three colophons. In the third colophon of the codex, a blessing is given to Sayyid Badran and his family, the Musha'sha' Shi'ite/Ghulat ruler of Khuzestan during the Safavid dynasty. Blessings given to Muslim rulers are rarely found in Mandaean colophons.