NEAR EAST OR NORTH AFRICA, CIRCA 9TH CENTURY

This Qur'an folio appears to come from a Qur'an of which a section is in the Bibliothèque Royale in Rabat (inv. 12610, Maroc, Les trésors du royaume, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1999, no. 139, p.101). There the Qur'an is attributed to the Caliph 'Uthman bin 'Affan on the basis of a comparable example also attributed to him in the Topkapi (The 1400th Anniversary of the Qur'an, exhibition catalogue, Turkey, 2010, cat.16, pp. 168-69). The Topkapi Qur'an was brought into the museum from the library of Sultan Mahmud I (r. 1730-54) which had been located in the Hagia Sophia in 1912. On the face of the manuscript's last page is the inscription "Caliph 'Uthman bin 'Affan wrote in the 30th year", taken to mean that it was written by a scribe of the Caliph 'Uthman in the first half of the 1st century AH. Dr. Tayyar Altikulac revisited the Topkapi codex manuscript in 2006 and wrote that even if it had not belonged to 'Uthman it must have been copied from one that did (op.cit., p.17). Other pages from this Qur'an sold at Christie's, 7 April 2011, lot 1 and lot 2.