An illuminated Qur'an bifolium in Eastern Kufic script, Persia or Central Asia, 11th century

This bifolium written in a striking variant of Eastern Kufic script belongs to an important group of Qur’an sections and folios which were produced between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, in an area under the influence of the Samanid dynasty, between present-day Iraq and Afghanistan. Four other folios from this manuscript are known to us: one in the Library of Congress, Washington D.C. (acc. no.1-93-154.179), two in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (acc. nos.24.413 and 20.1621) and a fourth sold in Rosebery’s London, 23 April 2018, lot 3.

Most of the Qur’an leaves in the Library of Congress were purchased from the group of New York Persian/Armenian dealers in the 1920-30s, and the Boston leaves have accession dates in the 1920s, suggesting that there must have been several leaves from this Qur’an in the U.S. market at that time.

The bifolium bears only five lines of text per page because of the large scale of the writing. The calligraphy is characterised by acute angularity and an almost ethereal attenuation. The tall, slim vertical letters contrast with the compact and tightly controlled sequence of letters that sit along the line, out of which the sub-linear tails of letters such as terminal nun extend, urging the eye of the reader along the line of script with rhythmic elegance. The tall, strong verticals of letters such as alif and lam also set up a beautiful contrast with the more subtle circular scrolling tendrils of the background decoration on the illuminated folio, which is the left-hand page of a double-page frontispiece. The style of calligraphy and illumination are consistent with other examples from this group. Of these, the most well-known and luxuriously decorated manuscript, is a Qur’an dated to circa 1075-1125 AD, with every page featuring this style of script against a background of scrolling foliate decoration. For a full account and analysis of the manuscript, see B. Saint Laurent, ‘The Identification of a Magnificent Koran Manuscript’, in Les manuscrits du Moyen-Orient. Essais de codicologie et de paleographie; Actes du Colloque d’Istanbul, Varia Turcica VIII, F. Derouche (ed.), Istanbul and Paris, 1989, pp.115-124. Two leaves from this Qur'an were sold in these rooms, 22 April 2015, lot 61, and 6 April 2011, The Stuart Cary Welch Collection, Part One, lot 15.

It has been suggested that the manuscript to which this bifolium originally belonged comprised sixty volumes. Based on the characters per page on our example and the other known folios, the manuscript is thought to have contained a total of 2,350 leaves. In addition to the Qur’anic text, the illustrated folio includes a waqf inscription in black naskh in the upper margin. The date mentioned in the inscription provides us with a terminus ante quem for the production of this manuscript. It also mentions the nisba al-Nishapuri, indicating that the scribe of the inscription was from Nishapur, in the Khurasan province of Persia.  

Khurasan or Central Asia is often suggested as the most likely geographical origin of these manuscripts. The production of ceramics featuring elegant varieties of Eastern Kufic script in brown or black on cream grounds (known as Samanid epigraphic pottery) was a speciality of Nishapur and Samarqand under the Samanid dynasty (see The Arts of Islam, Hayward Gallery, London 1976, nos.279-281). Other related examples of Eastern Kufic and ornamental Kufic scripts occur on Ghaznavid, Ghurid and Seljuk monuments in Eastern Iran and Afghanistan, and it is likely that the popularity of this type of script in the epigraphic tradition of this region was present in the Qur'anic calligraphy of the same period. Central Asian associations are also found in the design of the background decoration of scrolling foliate motifs in the text area. A very similar motif is visible in one of the registers of the Minaret of Jam in Afghanistan, built during the second half of the twelfth century (H. Haussig, Archaeologie und Kunst der Seidenstraase, Darmstatd, 1992, p.85).

For illustrations of pages from other manuscripts related to this group, see M. Lings, Splendours of Qur’an Calligraphy and Illumination, Vaduz, 2005, pp.57-59, pls.12-24.