An early decorated Qur'an leaf in kufic script on vellum, LATE UMAYYAD / EARLY ABBASID CALIPHATE, PROBABLY DAMASCUS, mid-eighth century

Text: surat al-Fatihah (I) part of verse I; surat al-Baqarah(II),vv.: 1-5



Arabic manuscript on vellum, 8 lines to the page written in elongated kufic script in brown ink, diacritical strokes and red dots indicating vocalization added later, clusters of 4 to 5 strokes indicating verse markers, sura title written in kufic script in red ink above decorated band, knotted borders richly decorated with six bands incorporating geometric and vegetal motifs in green, brown, yellow and some blue, lacking gold, palmettes extending into outer borders, that of the inner border now lost, double rosettes extending into cornerpiece.

minor losses around the text, some rubbing of text, colours bright, as viewed.
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Decorated opening pages or frontispieces from Qur'an manuscripts of the 8th century are extremely rare. This decorated leaf is one of only a few to appear on the open market in the last fifty years. Although numerous leaves from the  dispersed Qur'an from which this leaf originates are to be found in museums, libraries and private collections (see below), apart from a handful of leaves with decorated bands between suras, this is probably the only known fully decorated leaf to have appeared to date. Not only is this leaf of tremendous religious significance as a relic written just over a century after the Prophet Muhammad's death, but also an important landmark in the evolution of Arabic as a written language, the Arabic script and early Islamic manuscript decoration.

the script
According to Déroche the leaves originating from this Qur'an belong to category F. He describes the script as an independent script, although some of its letter forms may be compared with those of other styles especially the alif which resembles those in category D. The vertical shaft is relatively extenuated but the lower return sometimes recalls that of D.1 but it is sometimes flatter. Moreover, the script is characterized by a strong degree of horizontal stretching (mashq), and the final nun is very rounded and almost a semicircle, whereas the form of the ayn is interesting: at the beginning of the word, it has a wide rounded opening, while a short "v" is set on top of a thin shaft in the medial form. The calligrapher often finished some letters (final nun, ya, waw) with an enlargement of the stroke (Déroche 1992, pp.46-47; no. 66, pp.120-122).

Fraser observes that the sura titles of this Qur'an, written in red kufic script and squeezed in above or below the decorated panels were probably written by the same original scribe since the red lettering is exactly the same as the brown script of the main text. He concludes that this points to an earlier date of production than in later kufic Qur'ans of the ninth and tenth century when sura headings were more often designed with the sura title as the main feature (Fraser and Kwiatkowski 2006, p.28).

Sheila Blair, in her monumental tome on Islamic Calligraphy, states that "there is, as yet, no absolute method for dating any Koran manuscript before the ninth century CE. No manuscript contains an authentic colophon with a date. No manuscript contains an authentic signature of a known calligrapher. Some manuscripts are said to have been in the hand of 'Umar , the second caliph, or 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth , but Salah al-Munajjid  proved these claims to be unfounded. The most secure type of internal evidence for dating these manuscripts is a notice of  pious endowment (waqfiyya) or other similar note recording a birth, attestation, or other event, and the earliest of these date to the ninth century. Several scholars have compiled lists of these dated manuscripts; the best is that by Déroche" (Blair 2006, p. 105). However, Déroche concludes in his study of group F, to which this leaf belongs: "Mashq is a constant feature of this style, which seems to be present only in material from Damascus. None of the manuscripts or fragments in this group are dated, although there are similarities with a milestone in Tbilisi dated about A.H.100/A.D.718-19, and the treatment of horizontal endings recalls those in an inscription of the Caliph al-Mahdi which is dated A.H.160/A.D.776-7. We can therefore venture a dating to the second century A.H. for this style"( Déroche 1992, p.42).     

the decoration
The decoration of this Qur'an leaf has all the characteristics of early Islamic manuscript production and can be considered among the earliest surviving manuscript decoration alongside those carpet pages in al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the Grand Mosque in Sana'a and the Khedival Library in Cairo. A striking feature is the restriction of the use of colours to brown, yellow, green, and some blue and red. There is a noticeable absence of the use of gold which indicates that this manuscript must have been produced before gold became fashionable in the late eighth century onwards. Another reason for not using gold would have been that at the time of producing this manuscript priority would have been given to the faithful copying of the text over aesthetic considerations.

Careful examination of the layout of the decoration recalls the patterns in mosaic decoration of Umayyad mosques such as the Great Mosque of Damascus and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. The intricate vegetal, floral and geometric decoration incorporated in the bands around the borders can be found in mosaics decorating Umayyad desert palaces such as Khirbat al-Mafjar. Most of these patterns are derived from Hellenistic, Roman and Sassanian prototypes through Byzantine architectural decoration and Syriac and Coptic manuscript illumination. Marilyn Jenkins, in her study of Umayyad ornament, places the centres for the production of similar early Islamic manuscripts in Greater Syria (Jenkins 1985, pp. 19-23). Moreover, the knotted border motif bears a striking resemblance to a second half of a Qur'an written in kufic in the al-Haram al-Sharif Islamic Museum, Jerusalem (Salameh 2001, no. 5, pp.47-55).

Three leaves with sura headings were sold in these rooms on 20 November 1986, lot 255 and 29 April 1998, lot 2; Christie's, London, 15 October 1994, lot 47.

For a list of leaves sold at auction rooms see (James 1992, p.120), Sotheby's catalogues 29 April 1998, lot 2 and 24 October 2007, lot 2.

For comparison with a similar Qur'an fragment including a decorated carpet page and sura headings from the same period see Christie's, London, 18 October 1994, lot 37.

For further reading see (Déroche 1992, pp. 42, 46-47), (Blair 2006, pp.101-140) and (Fraser and Kwiatkowski 2006, pp. 26-29).