AN IMPORTANT ILLUMINATED PRAYER SCROLL, TURKEY, OTTOMAN, 15TH CENTURY

This magnificent prayer scroll attests to Ottoman calligraphic mastery of the fifteenth century. More than seven metres long, it is a balanced combination of muhaqqaq, thuluth and naskh, finely inscribed horizontally and vertically within roundels, ovals and cartouches.

The scroll opens with a bismillah written in thuluth against a black background with the letters intersticed in green within a cartouche in the shape of a cypress tree. It is then followed by an almond-shaped roundel containing an intricate blessing in the centre in yellow muhaqqaq outlined in black, which reads ya khafi al-altaf najjina mimma nakhaf ('Oh possessor of hidden kindnesses, save us from that which we fear'). White muhaqqaq against a black ground. 

The first verse of surah al-Tawbah (IX), in white muhaqqaq against a black ground, follows, within a cartouche surrounded by text in yellow and black. The same technique in reverse is used for the next roundel which bears surah al-Ikhlas (CXII). After these four intricate plates are listed the Beautiful Names of God and eight prayers, each with a coloured title in thuluth.

The prayers read as follows:

- al-hirz al-yamani

- The Accepted Prayer

- The Prayer of the Light

- The Great Prayer

- du’a al-mir’at (?)

- The Prayer of the Prophets

- The Prayer of the Messenger

- The Prayer of the Seven Verses

Although no patron or scribe is named in the scroll, this impressive exercise of calligraphy must surely have been commissioned by an important pious individual, a fine connoisseur of the art of the pen. A close comparable, with similar roundels, alternating muhaqqaq and thuluth and a large palette of colours, including yellow, is a scroll signed by ‘Ata’allah ibn Muhammed al-Tabrizi, dedicated to the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, dated 4 Rabi’ I 862 AH/20 January 1458 AD, now in the Topkapi Palace Library, Istanbul, inv.no.E.H.2878 (published in Blair 2006, p.378-9 and Roxburgh 2005, pp.288-9).

The scroll format enjoyed great popularity in the Ottoman world and many examples dated to the seventeenth and eighteenth century have survived. Earlier specimens of this quality are rarer, and few have come to the market. Below are listed the most recent examples:

A talismanic prayer scroll, Turkey, Ottoman, 16^th century. Christie’s London, 17 June 1999, lot 70, now in the Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore.

A rare illuminated Qur’anic prayer scroll, Turkey, Ottoman, 16^th century. Sotheby’s London, 5 October 2010, lot 20.

A fine calligraphic scroll, Turkey or Persia, Ottoman or Timurid, mid-15^th century. Sotheby’s London, 7 October 2015, lot 201.

The use of white calligraphy set in reserve against a black ground, as well as the inventive use of other black and red grounds, recalls two fifteenth century calligraphic album leaves from an alcbum of Sultan Bayezid, formerly in the possession of Jafar Ghazi, sold in Christies London, 31 March 2009, lots 136 and 137.