NEAR EAST OR NORTH AFRICA, 9TH/10TH CENTURY

The script used for this folio most closely conforms with what Déroche classifies as type D.IV: that is to say, each independent alif has a flat lower return ending in a blunt point; mim tends to stray slightly below the base line; and there is a frequent use of elongated letter forms, or mashq. Examples of this script are found in all four of the major caches of folios found in Damascus, Sana’a, Kairouan, and Cairo. These finds include two dated samples, the one from AH 270/883-4 AD, the other from AH 329/940-41 AD. It is also similar to the script used on the Blue Qur’an, which is generally believed to date from the same period (for a fuller discussion of the features of this script, see Francois Déroche, The Abbasid Tradition, Oxford, 1992, pp.36-8).

A folio from the same manuscript with a matching blue and gold Ottoman illuminated frame is in the Khalili collection (Déroche, op.cit., p.87, cat.36). Further examples of folios with Qajar-era mounts include those sold in these Rooms, 11 April 2014, lot 237 and 28 October 2020, lot 60. Like those, the present lot attests to the long history of collecting and displaying kufic folios in the Islamic world, which has ensured the survival of so many today.