Lot 2
A FINE ILLUMINATED PINK KUFIC QUR'AN BIFOLIUM
PERSIA OR MESOPOTAMIA, 10TH/ 11TH CENTURY
Auction: 10 June 2026 from 14:00 BST
Description
Arabic manuscript on pinkish-brown paper, 6 lines to the page written in elegant Eastern kufic script in sepia ink, comprising Qur'an chapter 2, Al-Baqara, verses 211 to 213, verso with large elegant illuminated gold, red and blue medallion, 'ashr, in the margin marking the 210th verse, diacritics in red and blue
Dimensions
single folio 17.3cm x 14.1cm
Provenance
Acquired from the London art market in circa 1995.
Footnote
The elegant Eastern kufic script used for this bifolium was developed from the chancery hand used by Abbasid scribes of the 10th century, and by the end of that century this style was used for copying Qur’ans across the Islamic world from Isfahan to Palermo. The majestic form of the letters seen here corresponds to Déroche’s NS.I, a monumental type in which the line conforms as far as possible to an underlying geometry and there is a deliberate emphasis on thick and thin lines [see Déroche, F., The Abbasid Tradition: Qur’ans of the 8th to 10th Centuries, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art vol.1, The Nour Foundation in association with Azimuth Editions and Oxford University Press: 1992, pp. 132-37]. Especially noteworthy here is the large ‘ashr marker with its impressive polychrome decoration. Parallels to this can be seen in a fragmentary 11th century Qur’an from the Khalili Collection (inv. no. QUR89 and QUR89A), which features a very similar example on folio 38 [ibid., pp. 156-65 no. 84, esp. p. 163].