Arts of the Islamic World & India including Fine Rugs and Carpets

Arts of the Islamic World & India including Fine Rugs and Carpets

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 407. A FINE LARGE ILLUMINATED QUR’AN, EGYPT, MAMLUK, MID-14TH CENTURY.

A FINE LARGE ILLUMINATED QUR’AN, EGYPT, MAMLUK, MID-14TH CENTURY

Auction Closed

October 27, 04:55 PM GMT

Estimate

100,000 - 150,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

A FINE LARGE ILLUMINATED QUR’AN, EGYPT, MAMLUK, MID-14TH CENTURY


Arabic manuscript on paper, 301 leaves plus 5 flyleaves, 13 lines to the page, written in neat black naskh script, replacement final page, verses separated by gold florets, catchwords, fifth verses marked by pear-shaped florets emanating fronds, tenth verses marked by gold foliate roundels outlined in blue within the text, surah headings in large gold thuluth spaced between the text, with filled-in interstices, textual divisions marked in the margin, sometimes in gold within a gold-outlined panel against a feintly-lined ground, ff.1b-2a with double page illuminated frontispiece composed of interlocking geometric motifs enclosed within strap-work borders, the text above and below in white thuluth script within gold cloud bands against a blue vegetal ground, following double page with text within cloud bands against a ground of large scrolling vines resting on feint lines, text above and below in large gold ornamental Eastern Kufic script, further illuminated double page at the beginning of juz' XVI (surah al-Kahf, vv.75-78), modern binding and bespoke box


34 by 27cm.

Ex-collection Jafar Ghazi (d.2007), Munich. 

The decoration of the two double pages found at the beginning and middle of the Qur'an is indebted to the illuminator Sandal, and his decorative tradition as practised by Ahmad al-Mutatabbib. For a Qur'an exhibiting similar decorative modes see James 1988, pp.132-8, fig.92.


Two other manuscripts, thought to have been produced circa 1330 can also be compared with the present. The first, a single-page frontispiece from a Qur'an attributed to the calligrapher and illuminator Ahmad Ibn al-Muttatabbib, is in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art (see James 1992, p.168-9, no.42), and the second manuscript, a Qur'an signed by the same scribe in the National Library, Cairo, also shares a similar double page frontispiece (see James 1998, pp.132-4, cat.17).