LATE UMAYYAD OR EARLY ABBASID, PROBABLY DAMASCUS OR JERSUSALEM, MID-8TH CENTURY

The Qur'an from which this folio comes must have been one of the most impressive Qur’ans produced on vellum in the early Islamic period. The folios are large and the script demonstrates a marked opulence in approach with individual letters frequently elongated such that on some known folios a single word can occupy a complete line. The script was termed by Déroche F.1, which is an individual one, with various features not found elsewhere. So idiosyncratic is the script, that he identifies only two other manuscripts which use it - one in the Topkapi Palace Library and another, unpublished, in the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, Istanbul (Francois Déroche, The Abbasid Tradition, London, 1992, pp.120-122, no.66).

The Qur’an is dated to the 8th century, partly on the basis of the archaic illumination. Another early feature is that verse endings are indicated by groups of five diagonal lines – as seen also on the Tashkent Qur’an and the Sana’a Qur’an. Comparison has been drawn, both by Déroche and by Alain George, with architectural inscriptions and the mosaics in the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (Alain George, 2010, pls.50-51, pp.76-77).

Numerous other folios from the same Qur’an are in public and private collections including the Tareq Rajab Museum, Kuwait, the Al-Sabah Collection, the Brooklyn Museum, the LACMA, the Nasser D. Khalili Collection, London and the David Collection, Copenhagen. Other folios have sold through the auctions. Another large section sold in these Rooms, 24 October 2019, lot 19. Most recently, an opening folio from the Qur’an sold in these Rooms, 1 May 2025, lot 1.