OTTOMAN EMPIRE, FIRST HALF 16TH CENTURY

This Qur'an manuscript comes from the descendants of an Albanian soldier, Demir 'Ali Arza, who travelled to Istanbul in 1905 with the Ottoman army. There, he acquired a number of manuscripts which he brought back to his family home in Korçë, South East Albania. Since the 15th century, the Balkans in general - and Albania in particular - had provided much of the manpower for the Ottoman Empire's army and its administrative elite through the operation of the devshirme. Those hailing from there include the Köprülü dynasty of Viziers, who dominated the politics of the Empire throughout the 17th century, and later governors/rebels like 'Ali Pasha of Tepelana and - of course - the Egyptian ruler Muhammad 'Ali.

Demir 'Ali Arza remained in Albania after its independence in 1912. He served in the army of King Zog (r.1928-39) and died in 1942. The manuscript also remained with the family, who by then had moved to a town near Durres, after 1967 when the brutal Stalinist-inspired government of Enver Hoxha attempted to banish all forms of religion from the country. Those with religious surnames were forced to change them, men were forbidden to grow beards, and historic mosques and tekkes were demolished or repurposed. The large 16th century mosque of Berat, for example, became a facility for training acrobats. Religious manuscripts could be confiscated, and their owners sentenced to ten years' hard labour. This small manuscript, however, was concealed by the family until after the end of the regime in 1991.

The unusual opening illumination of this manuscript may be compared with that of other manuscripts dated to the first half of the 16th century. These include a manuscript in the Khalili Collection (David James, After Timur: Qur'ans of the 15th and 16th Centuries, Oxford, 1992, no.55, p.228) and another which sold in these Rooms, 31 March 2022. These two manuscripts were dated to AH 912⁄1506-7 AD and AH 933⁄1526-7 AD respectively. Another, which had a very different overall conception to the opening illumination but similar spiralling devices in the thumb-rest, was dated to AH 822⁄1419 AD, further anchoring our manuscript in the early Ottoman period.