QUR’AN FOLIO IN KUFIC SCRIPT

Arabic manuscript on vellum, each side with 7 lines strong and elegant sepia kufic, verses marked with pyramids of gold dots, a gold khams marker in the form of a gold ha, diacritics and vowels points indicated by red dots, numbered in the outer margins in Arabic numerals, framed.

Text:

The Qur’an 92:5-10 (Surah al-Layl Middle of verse 5 to end of verse 10)

Translation:

“[As for the one] who is charitable, mindful of Allah, and firmly believes in the finest reward, We will facilitate for them the way of ease.”

The horizontally elongated letters seen here are characteristic of early kufic Qur’ans on vellum, and the elongations are thought to be a response to the rectangular page format. The angular script is moderated by the roundness of several letters -such as fa, qaf, waw - that look like large black dots; their inner blank spaces reduced almost to a needlepoint.

This Qur’an folio comes from one of the finest Qur’an manuscripts in kufic script. A section of this Qur’an is in the Iran Bastan Museum (Inv. No. 4289), Tehran. Please see, Martin Lings, The Qur’anic Art of Calligraphy and Illumination, Westerham, 1976, no. 5.

A folio from the same manuscript, in the Ithra Archive, is published in The Art of Orientation - An Exploration of the Mosque through Objects, Edited and Written by Dr. Idries Trevathan et al, Ithra, Hirmer, Munich, 2020, p. 119.

Provenance: Private UK Collection

Timurid Empire

Circa 1425

Dimensions:

Painting 14 x 25.5 cm. Page 43 x 33 cm.