Lot 21
  • 21

Qur'an leaf in muhaqqaq script on paper, probably Anatolia or Central Asia, c.1300-1350

Estimate
6,000 - 8,000 GBP
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Description

Text: Surat al-Ma'ida (V), vv. 59-60



3 lines per page written in strong muhaqqaq script in black ink on cream paper, interlinear Persian translation written diagonally in small black nakhshi script, single verse divisions marked with a gold rosette with a central green dot, tenth verse marked with a larger gold floret containing the word "aya", sura title written in white ornamental kufic on an illuminated panel and added vertically along outer edge of the recto, margins with extracts from the Hadith in red and blue kufic decorated with scrolling floral tendrils and geometric corner pieces

Exhibited

Exhibited: "Treasures of Islam" , Musee d'art et d'histoire, Geneva, 1985

Literature

Published: Geneva 1985 no.116 p.143 (reproduction of the verso)

Catalogue Note

Leaves from this well known Qur'an section have been convincingly linked to a thirty volume manuscript of circa A.D. 1335 of Anatolian or Central Asian origin (James 1988, pp.173-4, cat. nos.58-60) which, although devoid of the decorative border and surrounding kufic script, has an interlinear Persian translation arranged in the same manner and in the same hand. Previous to that attribution, these leaves had often been ascribed to Sultanate India (eg this leaf, Falk 1984, no.116). The kufic script and decorative schemes around the edge are not contemporary with the muhaqqaq script of the Qur'anic text.

Other leaves from the same Qur'an are now in Museums and private collections including the British Library, the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass., the Rietberg Museum, Zurich, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Nasser D Khalili Collection, London. For further discussion see Arberry 1967, pl.48; Losty 1986, no.5; James 1992a, no.51.