Lot 8
  • 8

Large Qur'an leaf in Kufic script on vellum, North Africa or Near East

Estimate
10,000 - 15,000 GBP
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Description

Text: Surat al-Baqarat (II), vv.197-198



7 lines per page written in Kufic script in dark brown ink on vellum, occasional letter-pointing of thin brown ink dashes, vocalisation in red and yellow, single verse divisions marked with triangular clusters of gold dots

Catalogue Note

The script on this large Qur'an leaf is close to that of the so-called Amajur Qur'an, a manuscript in Kufic script that was donated as a waqf endowment to a mosque in Tyre in 875-6 A.D. by Amajur, the Abbasid givernor of Damascus. Although this waqf date gives us a terminus quem rather than an exact date of production, this date is considered to be a good indication of the approximate production period of Kufic scripts of this mature style , termed category D by François Déroche (Déroche 1992, pp.36-37,44-45). The script is an elegant and well-executed example, with balanced use of horizontal stretching (mashq) and the vertical punctuation of the letter-forms alif and lam

Two folios from the same are in the Musée des arts Islamiques de Kairouan (Carthage, no.328), and a bifolium was exhibited in Berlin in 2006 in the exhibition Ink and Gold, (Fraser and Kwiatowski, no.7).