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Lot Essay
The text of this Qur'an, refurbished in the 19th century, was copied in the late Turkman period. The naskhi script, gold thuluth sura headings, and compact size of the manuscript are often seen in manuscripts attributed to the great Abbasid scribe, Ya'qut al-Musta'simi. Codicologically, there are resemblances between this and a Qur'an manuscript in the Khalili Collection, cautiously attributed by David James to Iran or Iraq, between 1250 and 1450 AD (The Master Scribes, Oxford, 1992, no.12). Our manuscript has no such scribal attribution, and there is no reason to doubt the date given in the colophon, given the overall consistency of the paper with other manuscripts from the 15th century.
The end of the text is followed by two versified Falnamas, the first in Ottoman Turkish, the second in Persian. The Turkish Falnama appears to be the same one or at least contains some of the same verses, as a Falnama found at the end of a copy of the Qur’an containing Muhammad bin Hamza’s early 15th century Turkish translation of the Qur’an, though the editor of the printed edition of the that text believes the Falnama was added later (Mehmet Selim Ayday, ‘Fortune-telling, Qur’anic Fortune-Telling and the Approaches of the Commentators to the Subject’, Journal of Kocatepe Islamic Sciences, 5⁄2, December 2022, pp. 587-588). The presence of a Turkish and Persian falnama in tandem is highly unusual, but evokes the linguistically complex world of late Turkman Iran.
The manuscript has subsequently been renovated on at least two occasions. The paper used for the margins is likely to be 18th century in date, possibly from the late Safavid period. Illumination was then added in a typically Qajar style: the marginal illumination on the frontispiece somewhat resembles that on a Qur'an dated to AH 1317 / 1899 AD in the Khalili collection (Manijeh Bayani, The Decorated Word, volume II, Oxford, 2009, p.152). Other renovated Qur'ans from this period include one with an added Ya'qut colophon and Safavid illumination which sold in these Rooms, 27 April 2023, lot 39. Another manuscript that sold Sotheby's London, 1 May 2019, lot 32 also had Qajar illumination around a text copied in Timurid Samarqand and dated to AH 885 / 1480 AD.
The end of the text is followed by two versified Falnamas, the first in Ottoman Turkish, the second in Persian. The Turkish Falnama appears to be the same one or at least contains some of the same verses, as a Falnama found at the end of a copy of the Qur’an containing Muhammad bin Hamza’s early 15th century Turkish translation of the Qur’an, though the editor of the printed edition of the that text believes the Falnama was added later (Mehmet Selim Ayday, ‘Fortune-telling, Qur’anic Fortune-Telling and the Approaches of the Commentators to the Subject’, Journal of Kocatepe Islamic Sciences, 5⁄2, December 2022, pp. 587-588). The presence of a Turkish and Persian falnama in tandem is highly unusual, but evokes the linguistically complex world of late Turkman Iran.
The manuscript has subsequently been renovated on at least two occasions. The paper used for the margins is likely to be 18th century in date, possibly from the late Safavid period. Illumination was then added in a typically Qajar style: the marginal illumination on the frontispiece somewhat resembles that on a Qur'an dated to AH 1317 / 1899 AD in the Khalili collection (Manijeh Bayani, The Decorated Word, volume II, Oxford, 2009, p.152). Other renovated Qur'ans from this period include one with an added Ya'qut colophon and Safavid illumination which sold in these Rooms, 27 April 2023, lot 39. Another manuscript that sold Sotheby's London, 1 May 2019, lot 32 also had Qajar illumination around a text copied in Timurid Samarqand and dated to AH 885 / 1480 AD.