A QURAN FOLIO IN KUFIC SCRIPT ON VELLUM, NEAR EAST OR NORTH AFRICA, 9TH-10TH CENTURY A QURAN FOLIO IN KUFIC SCRIPT ON VELLUM, NEAR EAST OR NORTH AFRICA, 9TH-10TH CENTURY

A QURAN FOLIO IN KUFIC SCRIPT ON VELLUM, NEAR EAST OR NORTH AFRICA, 9TH-10TH CENTURY

Reference: ART3003183

Quran manuscript folio on vellum, 16 lines to the page written in Kufic script in brown ink with diacritics and vowel points in red and green, possibly later punctuation, gold petalled roundels marking verse-endings, and two gold and polychrome rosette verse markers. The text surah Al-Muminoon (The Believers), verses 74 – 83, on the first side, continue the surah to the rest of verse 96, on the other side. 27 by 18 cm.

CATALOGUE NOTE The origins of this particular dispersed Quran have never been definitively identified as Near Eastern or North African. Its script follows many characteristics of North African Kufic scripts from the period, however the elongating of letters to this unusual form is a characteristic much attributed to leaves copied in contemporary Damascus (see F. Déroche, The Abbasid Tradition: Qurans of the 8th to the 10th Centuries, 1992, pp. 44-47). For other leaves from the same Quran have been for sale on several auction houses.