.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The scribe of this elegant Qur'an folio, and that of the following lot, plays with the kufic, accentuating the horizontal letters in order to conform to the format of his text block. Red dots are used as vowel markers, a use that was abandoned after the 11th century, when dashes took over the role, and dots became diacritical marks.
The sura headings of both this folio and the next are finely worked with geometric bands extending to palmettes that issue into the margins. Déroche writes that palmettes such as these, which were orientated towards the edge of the page, marked the presence of the rest of the illumination within the text area, thus emphasising the information that the main illumination carried (François Déroche, The Abbasid Tradition, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, London, 1992, p.23).
The sura headings of both this folio and the next are finely worked with geometric bands extending to palmettes that issue into the margins. Déroche writes that palmettes such as these, which were orientated towards the edge of the page, marked the presence of the rest of the illumination within the text area, thus emphasising the information that the main illumination carried (François Déroche, The Abbasid Tradition, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, London, 1992, p.23).