Bonhams 1793 : A Qur'an leaf written in kufic script on vellum Near East or North Africa, 9th/10th Century

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2 Oct 2012 10:30 BST London, New Bond Street
Islamic and Indian Art
Back to auction 20020

A Qur'an leaf written in kufic script on vellum
Near East or North Africa, 9th/10th Century

Arabic manuscript on vellum, seven lines to the page written in bold and elongated kufic script in black ink, vowel points marked with red dots, small pyramids of gold dots marking verses, a gold inverted comma to indicate every fifth or tenth verse, later pagination (20-21), cover papers, some flaking verso
229 x 323 mm.

Estimate:

£8,000 - 12,000
€9,300 - 14,000
US$ 12,000 - 19,000

Footnotes

Text:
sura LXVII, al-Mulk, Dominion, part of verse 3-part of verse 6.

This very fine leaf is one of several surviving from the same Qur'an manuscript. One of its distinctive features, reflecting the highest quality of calligraphy, is the horizontal stretching of the letters (mashq).

Other leaves from this Qur'an manuscript are in the Iran Bastan Museum, Tehran (inv. 4289; illustrated in M. Lings, The Qur'anic Art of Calligraphy and Illumination, Westerham 1976, no. 5). Others appeared in these rooms, Bonhams, Islamic and Indian Art, 24th April 2012, lot 1; at Christie's, Islamic Art and Manuscripts, 27th April 2004, lot 14; Sotheby's, Doha, 19th March 2009, lot 303; and more recently, Christie's, Arts of the Islamic and Indian Worlds, 6th October 2011, lots 1-3.