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Lot Essay
This is a very rare example of a Qur'an produced in the Arab world before the Mongol conquest of the region. Mosul in the year 647 hijra was under the rule of the Atabeg Badr al-Din Lu'lu' (631/1234-657/1259), a former slave of Arslan Shah II, the Zangid ruler of Mosul and Aleppo. He extended his authority into the Jazira region until Mongol raids on Iraq forced him to flee. During his sovereignty, he was the most powerful ruler in Northern Iraq and Syria.
Very little remains of pre-Mongol book production from this part of the world. An important manuscript, with which this may be compared, is the Kitab al-Aghani of Abu-l Faraj, the Book of Songs, which was presumably copied in Mosul and is dated 614/1217. One volume bears a frontispiece, which depicts a ruler seated on a throne; his tiraz bands are inscribed Badr al-Din Lu'lu'.
Only two other Zangid Qur'ans have so far been identified, one in the Keir colection with a waqf inscription dated 1167 from Damascus, and one in the Nasser D. Khalili collection dedicated to Qutb al-Din Muhammad who ruled Sinjar in the Jazira from 1198-1219. No other Qur'an from Mosul from the period of Badr al-Din Lu'lu' is known, making this a discovery of great importance.
The Sinjar Qur'an bears some similarity in illumination to the present lot. It too has a double page illuminated frontispiece which contains oval format elements with purely drawn gold arabesques on a lapis ground. It is written throughout in the same gold thuluth used in the present lot for sura headings.
James, D.: The Master Scribes, Qur'ans of the 10th to 14th centuries, Oxford, 1992, pp. 22-3, 44-9, no. 7
Rice, D.S.: The Aghani miniatures and religious painting in Islam, in Burlington Magazine, 1953, pp. 128-134
Very little remains of pre-Mongol book production from this part of the world. An important manuscript, with which this may be compared, is the Kitab al-Aghani of Abu-l Faraj, the Book of Songs, which was presumably copied in Mosul and is dated 614/1217. One volume bears a frontispiece, which depicts a ruler seated on a throne; his tiraz bands are inscribed Badr al-Din Lu'lu'.
Only two other Zangid Qur'ans have so far been identified, one in the Keir colection with a waqf inscription dated 1167 from Damascus, and one in the Nasser D. Khalili collection dedicated to Qutb al-Din Muhammad who ruled Sinjar in the Jazira from 1198-1219. No other Qur'an from Mosul from the period of Badr al-Din Lu'lu' is known, making this a discovery of great importance.
The Sinjar Qur'an bears some similarity in illumination to the present lot. It too has a double page illuminated frontispiece which contains oval format elements with purely drawn gold arabesques on a lapis ground. It is written throughout in the same gold thuluth used in the present lot for sura headings.
James, D.: The Master Scribes, Qur'ans of the 10th to 14th centuries, Oxford, 1992, pp. 22-3, 44-9, no. 7
Rice, D.S.: The Aghani miniatures and religious painting in Islam, in Burlington Magazine, 1953, pp. 128-134