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Lot Essay
Among the most impressive surviving examples of early Islamic calligraphy are the monumental kufic Qur'ans produced under the Umayyads and early Abbasids. Probably the most famous manuscript from this group is the Great Umayyad Codex of Sana’a, noted for its architectural illumination (Dar al-Makhtuttat, Sana’a, DAM 20-33.1). That manuscript has 20 lines to a page, and the largest fragments measure around 51 x 47cm. A second manuscript is preserved mainly in Tunisia, with 210 folios in the Musée des arts Islamiques, Kairouan (R.38, published François Déroche, Qur'ans of the Umayyads, Leiden, 2014, p.121). That manuscript has a slightly smaller folio size of around 50 x 43cm., and 20 lines to the page, but is executed in a more upright script than the Sana'a codex. Alain George argues that these manuscripts were produced in the early years of Umayyad caliphate, around the time when al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf is recorded to have circulated copies of the Qur’an around the major cities of the caliphate (Alain George, The Rise of Islamic Calligraphy, London, 2010, p.86). Later monumental kufic manuscripts were copied in slightly different hands, and often in horizontal formats.
This folios comes from a slightly smaller - but still monumental manuscript, recently designated the 'Codex Amrensis 24' by the Paleocoran project of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaft. The largest portions of the manuscript are the 49 folios in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris (acc.no.Arabe.332) and the 42 folios preserved in the National Library of Russia, St Petersburg (acc.no.Marcel.2). Another 10 folios are in the Vatican Library, Vatican City (acc.no.v.at.ar.1784). Damage to the manuscript means that later folios have partial losses, as seen on a fragmentary folio in the Khalili Collection (François Déroche, The Abbasid Tradition, Oxford, 1992, no.71), which features parts of suras LXIV and LX, only a few folios before our own. A folio in a still more advanced state of wear in the Penn Museum, Philadelphia (acc.no.E16264D). The complete pages in Paris are around 42 x 35cm. in size, and have 21 lines to the page. They also have the sura titles added in the same hand as those on each side of this folio.
The similarities are strongest with the Kairouan manuscript mentioned above. On both manuscripts, verses are marked with three stacked thin diagonal lines, and every fifth verse by a bold red circle. Both are also written in a script closest to what François Déroche termed group C.1a. Particularly distinctive is the final qaf with a neatly hooked curve below the eye. Apart from this flourish, the script has a distinct angularity in the straight-backed ta' and the upright lam-alef ligatures. Déroche identifies similarities between this script and the epigraphy to the inner band around the interior of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, an inscription dated AH 72 / 691 AD. Similarities with Hijazi script also lead him to postulate that the script was used through the 8th century (Déroche, op.cit. 1992, p,36). A C-14 date of the Kairouan manuscript gave a 95.6% probability that the parchment dated from between 648 and 691 AD (Déroche, op.cit., 2014, p.125). Even among the corpus of kufic folios, this lot comes from a particularly early and significant manuscript.
This folios comes from a slightly smaller - but still monumental manuscript, recently designated the 'Codex Amrensis 24' by the Paleocoran project of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaft. The largest portions of the manuscript are the 49 folios in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris (acc.no.Arabe.332) and the 42 folios preserved in the National Library of Russia, St Petersburg (acc.no.Marcel.2). Another 10 folios are in the Vatican Library, Vatican City (acc.no.v.at.ar.1784). Damage to the manuscript means that later folios have partial losses, as seen on a fragmentary folio in the Khalili Collection (François Déroche, The Abbasid Tradition, Oxford, 1992, no.71), which features parts of suras LXIV and LX, only a few folios before our own. A folio in a still more advanced state of wear in the Penn Museum, Philadelphia (acc.no.E16264D). The complete pages in Paris are around 42 x 35cm. in size, and have 21 lines to the page. They also have the sura titles added in the same hand as those on each side of this folio.
The similarities are strongest with the Kairouan manuscript mentioned above. On both manuscripts, verses are marked with three stacked thin diagonal lines, and every fifth verse by a bold red circle. Both are also written in a script closest to what François Déroche termed group C.1a. Particularly distinctive is the final qaf with a neatly hooked curve below the eye. Apart from this flourish, the script has a distinct angularity in the straight-backed ta' and the upright lam-alef ligatures. Déroche identifies similarities between this script and the epigraphy to the inner band around the interior of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, an inscription dated AH 72 / 691 AD. Similarities with Hijazi script also lead him to postulate that the script was used through the 8th century (Déroche, op.cit. 1992, p,36). A C-14 date of the Kairouan manuscript gave a 95.6% probability that the parchment dated from between 648 and 691 AD (Déroche, op.cit., 2014, p.125). Even among the corpus of kufic folios, this lot comes from a particularly early and significant manuscript.