SULTANATE INDIA, 15TH CENTURY

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A SECTION OF A QUR'AN COMMENTARY (TAFSIR)
SULTANATE INDIA, 15TH CENTURY
Comprising the Qur'an and tafsir from Qur'an XXI (sura al-anbiya) to Qur'an LXXV (sura al-qiyama), Arabic and Persian manuscript on paper, 281ff. plus 1 fly-leaf, each folio with 29ll. of elegant black bihari, important words highlighted in red, occasional gold and polychrome rosette verse markers, sura headings in gold naskh in white clouds reserved on red hatched ground flanked with white vegetal shapes on red ground, text panels within red and green rules, the margins with occasional large medallions and drop-shaped juz' markers containing large gold roundels surrounded by bands of strapwork, incomplete, in later binding
Text panel 8 5/8 x 5 1/8in. (21.8 x 12.8cm.); folio 13¼ x 9in. (33.6 x 23cm.)

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Lot Essay

This manuscript represents part IV of a commentary on the Qur’an which includes sura XXI, al-anbiya’ through to sura LXXV, al-qiyamat. Unusually the text of the commentary is written inside the text panel interspersed with quotations from the Qur’an. The illumination and the distinctive use of the bihari script is closely comparable to a 15th century Qur’an in the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art in Istanbul (TIEM 264, The 1400th Anniversary of the Qur’an, exhibition catalogue, Istanbul, 2010, pp. 350 – 351, cat. no. 92).
For further reading on bihari script see S.A. Blair, Islamic Calligraphy, Edinburgh, 2006, pp. 386-390, and J.P. Losty, The Art of the Book in India, London, 1982.

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