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A Safavid illuminated miniature Qur'an in a metal case, copied by Asad 'Ibadi al-Sanziwari Persia, dated Thursday 25th Shawwal 991/Thursday 10th November 1583 image 1
A Safavid illuminated miniature Qur'an in a metal case, copied by Asad 'Ibadi al-Sanziwari Persia, dated Thursday 25th Shawwal 991/Thursday 10th November 1583 image 2
A Safavid illuminated miniature Qur'an in a metal case, copied by Asad 'Ibadi al-Sanziwari Persia, dated Thursday 25th Shawwal 991/Thursday 10th November 1583 image 3
Property from a private collection of Islamic and Indian Art
Lot 96•,R

A Safavid illuminated miniature Qur'an in a metal case, copied by Asad 'Ibadi al-Sanziwari
Persia, dated Thursday 25th Shawwal 991/Thursday 10th November 1583

23 May 2023, 11:00 BST
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £23,040 inc. premium

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A Safavid illuminated miniature Qur'an in a metal case, copied by Asad 'Ibadi al-Sanziwari
Persia, dated Thursday 25th Shawwal 991/Thursday 10th November 1583

Arabic manuscript on thin polished paper, octagonal, 280 leaves, 15 lines to the page written in fine naskhi script in black ink with diacritics and vowel points in black, gold dots marking verse-endings, circular inner margins in blue and gold, catchwords, sura headings marked with gold ruled lines, circular illuminated opening leaf with centre cut out, two leaves just after beginning misbound upside down, contemporary dark red goat-skin binding with small tooled floral motifs, in a Qajar silver octagonal case with loops for securing bands, in modern cloth-covered slipcase of the Newberry Library, Chicago
45 x 46 mm.; case 51 x 49 mm.; slipcase 154 x 123 mm.

Footnotes

Provenance
Edward E. Ayer (1841-1927).
Bequeathed by the above to the Newberry Library, Chicago, December 1920 (label pasted to endleaf, Or. MS. 214).
Probably deaccessioned from the Library in 1994.
Bonhams, Islamic and Indian Art, 16th October 2003, lot 164.
Private UK collection.

See Sotheby's, Arts of the Islamic World, 15th October 1998, lot 27; and more recently, 26th October 2022, lot 19, for other examples of miniature Qur'ans formerly in Ayer's possession and subsequently in the Newberry Library.

Edward E. Ayer was a Chicago business magnate who made his money in railways. In 1911 he donated part of his collection (which was mostly of Western mediaeval manuscripts, though there were also seventeen thousand items relating to Native American and colonial American history) to the Newberry Library, also giving it an endowment, and sitting on the first Board of Trustees. In 1920 he sold the remainder of his collection to the Library.

The scribe is unrecorded.

Additional information