QUR'AN

The style of calligraphy in this Qur'an owes much to the tight fine rayhani developed by Yaqut al-Musta'simi such as that of his Qur'an in the Mashhad shrine library (Martin Lings, The Qur'anic Art of Calligraphy and Illumination, London, 1976, p. 55, pl. 28). Our scribe is equally diligent about inserting every single diacritical mark and vocalisation notation symbol. One feature here that is rare to find is the use of three dots under the letter sin in each bismallah. This is a feature seen in a few Qur'ans from Iran and the Mesopotamian region that appears to have died out by the fourteenth century (for example see David James, Qur'ans of the Mamluks, London, 1988, p. 26, fig. 9 and A.J. Arberry, The Koran Illuminated, Dublin, 1967, no. 48, pl.32).

Qur'ans or Qur'anic fragments dated to the thirteenth century are extremely rare. According to one source, excluding the 23 by Yaqut al-Musta'simi and those from Spain and the Maghreb, there are only 31. This example is thus of documentary importance giving as it does both the name of the hitherto unknown scribe, who was conceivably a pupil of Yaqut, and the date.