Finished on Friday

Claim (verbatim)

Finished on Friday. This connects the colophon's weekday with devotional time-keeping in the workshop. Completion of a copy was an event, and the khatma carried blessing; a scribe nearing the end of the final quire could steer the finish to a blessed day, and had reason to when the book itself was sacred. If completion was steerable, the weekday distribution in colophons should be non-uniform with a Friday peak, and the steering should be strongest for Qurʾans, prayer books, and hadith, weakest for grammar, medicine, and commercial jobs, giving a measurable piety gradient running straight through the copying trade.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

Among colophons recording a weekday, Friday's share is at least 1.7 times the uniform expectation (at least 24.5% against 14.3%). Primary clause: the Friday share at or above 1.7x uniform; the verdict follows it. Secondary: the Friday excess for Qurʾans and devotional works is at least double the Friday excess for grammar, medicine, and secular poetry.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

Kill: FIHRIST colophon transcriptions and the FiMMOD corpus (Fichier des manuscrits moyen-orientaux datés), which record complete colophon dates including weekdays.

Novelty / leakage triage

provisional — model-triaged, shepherd review pending

A provisional first pass authored by the model (Opus), not yet confirmed by the shepherd. It carries the same dated-search requirements as an authoritative verdict but is excluded from every headline figure and cannot underwrite a prediction until a shepherd confirms it. Provisional reading: Leaked (already exists in the literature).

The item's surprising connection -- that scribes steered completion of a copy toward the blessed day, so colophon weekdays cluster on Friday -- is already stated in the colophon literature: the standard account observes that completing a text was an event 'not seldom planned on a Friday', with the closing blessing attached. The verdict follows the item's primary clause (a Friday peak), and that clause restates a documented scribal tendency rather than a new join. Genuinely fresh, and unrun, is only the quantification and the piety gradient (Friday share >=1.7x uniform; the Friday excess for Qurʾans/devotional works at least double that for grammar/medicine/secular verse), which does not carry the verdict.

• Standard colophon handbook literature (Gacek; Quiring-Zoche) -- completion 'not seldom planned on a Friday' for the closing blessing — The Friday-completion/devotional-timing connection stated in the literature
• FIMMOD (Fichier des manuscrits moyen-orientaux dates) and FIHRIST colophon transcriptions (weekdays) — The kill dataset for the (unrun) quantified Friday peak and piety gradient

Predictions

No prediction registered yet.