NEAR EAST OR NORTH AFRICA, 11TH/12TH CENTURY

The demise of a codified kufic script around the 10th century gave rise to a great diversity of 'New Style' scripts, which gave scribes more flexibility with letter forms. Here, the lam-alef ligatures appear in such a way that the letters cross over one another, as the tails of final nun and mim swoop into the line below. Though this script is often referred to as 'Eastern' kufic, François Déroche points to two manuscripts in the Khalili Collection to indicate that 'by the end of the 10th century, the Qur'an was being copied in the same style at two extremities of the Muslim world: Isfahan and Palermo' (Déroche, The Abbasid Tradition, Oxford, 1992, p.134). A further folio from this manuscript sold in these Rooms, 15 October 1998, lot 249, and two more were sold Dreweatts, London, 12 June 2020, lot 74. These show that the distinctive features of this folio - the horizontal crease line, the marginal annotations, and the extremely long sura titles - are consistent through the manuscript.