NORTH AFRICA OR NEAR EAST, 9TH CENTURY

Details

A KUFIC QUR'AN FOLIO
NORTH AFRICA OR NEAR EAST, 9TH CENTURY
Qur'an LXIX (sura al-haqqa), vv.40-48, Arabic manuscript on paper, each side with 7ll. of elegant black kufic script with fine elongations (mashq), each verse marked by a cluster of six gold roundels, outlined in black, one khams marked in the form of a gold ha, a marker for a group of 40 verses in gold kufic script outlined in black within an illuminated roundel in gold, green and red, added diacritics in red and green, reading marks in yelllow and red, mounted, framed and glazed
Text area 6 ¾ x 9 1/8in. (17.3 x 23.3cm.); folio 8 ¾ x 11 ½in. (22.3 x 29.3cm.) (visible)

Lot Essay

A section from this Qur'an is in the Iran Bastan Museum, Tehran (inv.4289), illustrated in Martin Lings, The Qur'anic Art of Calligraphy and Illumination, Westerham, 1976, no. 5. A section from this Qur'an sold at Christie's King Street, 27 April 2004, lot 14 and a single folio sold in Sotheby's, Doha, 19 March 2009, lot 303. More recently two folios sold in Christie's, 6 October 2011, lots 1 and 2; Sotheby's, 5 October 2011, lot 54 and 24 April 2013, lot 3 and another was offered at Christie's, 25 April 2013, lot 60.

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