A QUR'AN LEAF IN KUFIC SCRIPT ON VELLUM, NORTH AFRICA OR NEAR EAST, LATE 8TH-EARLY 9TH CENTURY

Text: Surat Al-'Araf (vii), vv.38-46
Ink, colours and gold on parchment, Arabic manuscript folio with 16 lines per page written in neat Kufic script in dark brown ink, letter-pointing (i'jam) used only on the terminal nun, vocalisation marked with red dots, verse divisions marked with a row of three diagonal dashes in brown ink

Adrienne Minassian, New York, 1955

This Qur'an leaf originates from a manuscript which displays interesting features associated with the relatively early stages of Kufic script and illumination. Certain letter-forms are slightly archaic, including the terminal qaf, curving back under the line in a hook shape (seen here on the fourth line of the verso in the word bi-l-Haqq) and the high angle and short length of the medial ha, which juts below the line (seen here in lines six and seven in the word ashab). The script is similar, though not identical, to style B.ii of Déroche's categorization (see Déroche 1992, pp.38-9).

A manuscript of 67 folios with a very similar script, formerly in the Hagop Kevorkian Collection (sold in these rooms 18 April 1983, lot 5), showed the decoration of a sura heading to be archaic, with a single horizontal panel of stylized foliate forms under a repeating arch-shaped motif, with no use of the sura title or verbal indication of the sura division.

Two folios from the present Qur'an are in the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, while single folios are in the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Musée de Bardo, Tunis. Others have been sold in these rooms 9 July 1979, lot 2, 22 November 1985, lot 272, 27 April 1994, lot 5, 23 April 1997, lot 39 (formerly with P and D Colnaghi, London) and 18 October 2001, lot 6; and at Christie's, London, 23 May 1986, lot 78.

For an illustration of the Cincinnati folio see A.Welch 1979, no.5, pp.50-51; for an illustration of the Bardo folio see Paris 1982, no.344, p.261.