Matthew Thomas
Senior Specialist
Lot 125•
A Qur'an leaf written in kufic script on vellum Near East or North Africa, 9th/10th Century
8 October 2013, 10:30 BST
London, New Bond Street£6,000 - £8,000
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A Qur'an leaf written in kufic script on vellum
Near East or North Africa, 9th/10th Century
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.
229 x 323 mm.
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.