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Lot Essay
This kufic section is a remarkable survival. Unlike most of the kufic folios which appear on the market – either as single pages or as small sections – the lot offered here retains 67 consecutive folios. All are remarkably clean and well preserved and give us some idea of what these kufic manuscripts would have been like when they were first conceived.
The script relates to that found on a folio in the Khalili collection, which is attributed by François Déroche to the end of the 9th or beginning of the 10th century. He terms the scripts style ‘D.Va’ (Déroche, 1992, p.98, no.45). Déroche describes his ‘group D’ scripts as the most numerous and various. The D.Va group he dates on the basis of a manuscript in Istanbul which contains a waqf deed dated Jumada II AH 299/January-February 912 AD (Déroche, 1992, p.37). Like ours the Khalili folio has 7ll. to the page, but the script there, whilst stylistically very similar, is somewhat more condensed than that found here where the calligrapher has taken great care to leave space between each line and word, allowing a sense of space and elegance. A single folio from a similar Qur’an, but with 8ll. of kufic, sold Christie’s, South Kensington, 23 April 2012, lot 108.
The script relates to that found on a folio in the Khalili collection, which is attributed by François Déroche to the end of the 9th or beginning of the 10th century. He terms the scripts style ‘D.Va’ (Déroche, 1992, p.98, no.45). Déroche describes his ‘group D’ scripts as the most numerous and various. The D.Va group he dates on the basis of a manuscript in Istanbul which contains a waqf deed dated Jumada II AH 299/January-February 912 AD (Déroche, 1992, p.37). Like ours the Khalili folio has 7ll. to the page, but the script there, whilst stylistically very similar, is somewhat more condensed than that found here where the calligrapher has taken great care to leave space between each line and word, allowing a sense of space and elegance. A single folio from a similar Qur’an, but with 8ll. of kufic, sold Christie’s, South Kensington, 23 April 2012, lot 108.