A large illuminated Qur'an on one page in nasta'liq, copied by Mir Khani, Iran, dated 1321 SH/1942-43 AD

The scribe of this impressive page is Sayyid Hassan Mir Khani, also known as Siraj al-Katib. He was a highly celebrated calligrapher in his own right, as well as a teacher of nasta’liq and one of the founders Association of Iranian Calligraphers. The scribe came from a family of calligraphers studying under his father Sayyed Morteza Hosseini Borghani, who studied under Mohammad Reza Kolhar, a calligrapher at the court of Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar (r.1848-96).

Given the training and high caliber of the scribe, he was undoubtedly an expert on earlier traditions of Persian calligraphy. This impressive Qur’an appears to be a variation of the tradition of writing Qur’an manuscripts in thirty folios, a phenomenon of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Persia and India. In this impressive page, the scribe has regulated the text by allocating a single panel to each juz’. Despite the constraints of the space, he showcases an elegant and easily legible nasta’liq on minute scale.

Although the use of nasta’liq was typical for secular Persian manuscripts, it is unusual to find entire Qur’ans written in nasta’liq. Only relatively few examples are known, the earliest of which was copied by Shah Mahmud Nishapuri, now in the Topkapi library, Istanbul (Lings 1976, no.91 and Blair 2006, p.433). A further Safavid example was sold at Christie’s, London, 8 April 2008, lot 200.