SPAIN, CIRCA 1250-1300 AD

The finely illuminated carpet page depicted here distinguishes itself as Maghribi through the absence of a central pointed star which is so often found in Mamluk manuscripts. As Lings suggests, “it is the geometrical figures themselves which attract our notice”, not the focal star design (M. Lings, Calligraphy and Illumination in the Islamic West, 1976, p. 204). Similar examples can be found in the final folios of an Andalusian Maghribi Qur’an in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. That manuscript is dated AH 704 / 1303 AD providing us with a guideline as to when these designs were popular. Intricate illuminations and geometric designs appear as a substitute for the absence of figural art in Islam. Titus Burchhardt suggests that the geometric design is “the purest simile for the manifestation of divine reality (al-hakika)”; this demonstrates the value ascribed to a finely executed carpet folio.

The script itself is similar to that found in a Qur’an bifolio sold in these Rooms on 10 October 2014, lot 271. Though only four lines of script are available for analysis in the present lot, they resemble one another in both script and the use of similar verse markers.