NEAR EAST OR NORTH AFRICA, 9TH/10TH CENTURY

This Qur'an folio comes from one of the finest kufic Qur'an manuscripts of its type. The elegant kufic calligraphy is characterised by the strong horizontal stretching of the letters (mashq). The confident use of the stretching technique is indicative of "perfect mastery of the pen" (François Déroche, The Abbasid Tradition, London, 1992, p.69). A section from this Qur'an is in the Iran Bastan Museum, Tehran, (inv.4289, Martin Lings, The Qur'anic Art of Calligraphy and Illumination, Westerham, 1976, no. 5).

Further folios from this Qur'an have sold recently including Sotheby's Doha, 19 March 2009, lot 303; and two folios in these Rooms, 6 October 2011, lots 1 and 2.