PROBABLY IRAN, 13TH CENTURY

The mise en page of our manuscript, which uses a combination of gold thuluth with black naskh is comparable to a folio in the Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg, signed by Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-'Amid al-Imam Awhad al-Din al-Khattat and dated to AH 630 / 1232-3 AH. That folio has been attributed to Eastern Iran (acc.no.C-189, published Sheila S Blair, Islamic Calligraphy, Edinburgh, 2006, fig.6.14, p.219). The script in this manuscript is also comparable to that in two Qur'an volumes in the Keir Collection signed by a certain 'Ali ibn Ja'far ibn Asad al-Katib, which was endowed to a foundation in Damascus by the Zengid ruler Abu'l-Qasim Mahmud in the year AH 562 / 1167 AD (Basil Robinson et al., Islamic Painting and the Arts of the Book, London, 1976, no.VII.3 and 4, pp.287-8). The illumination in this manuscript can also be compared to the frontispiece of a Qur'an in the Khalili Collection, which has a similar knotted border and has been attributed to Iran (David James, The Master Scribes, Oxford, 1993, no.9, p.52). Although naskh scripts were used across the Abbasid caliphate, from Damascus to Ghazni, this manuscript is most likely to originate from the eastern Islamic world.