AN ILLUMINATED OTTOMAN QURAN SIGNED AL-SAYYID ISMA’IL NAJIB (NECIB), PROBABLY SHUMEN, OTTOMAN BULGARIA, DATED 1266 AH/1849 AD

Arabic manuscript on cream paper, each page with 15 lines of black naskh script, tajwid in red, within gold and black rules, gold and polychrome roundel verse markers, catchwords, surah headings in white thuluth on gold and polychrome illuminated panels, gold and polychrome marginal motifs, opening folio heavily gilt with rococo-style polychrome decoration framing 7 lines of black naskh in clouds reserved against a pricked gold ground, final folio with rococo-style polychrome decoration, colophon signed Ismail Najib student of Ahmed Al-Zarifi and dated 1266 AH/1849 AD. In brown morocco with flap decorated with gold painted central medallion and border with a case.

CATALOGUE NOTE
Sayyid Isma'il Najib was a student of Ahmed Zarifi, and the teacher of Tentene-zade Sayyid Hassan Vahebi. He is recorded as one of the few Ottoman calligraphers active in Shumen, in north-east Bulgaria between 1820-70s. The surviving examples of Ottoman Qurans produced in Shumen reflect the cities role as a leading provincial centre for the production of Qurans of much of this period.
The illumination of our Quran is typical of the Shumen style which features an opening bifolio in the traditional layout, but filled with a well-modulated combination of modified Ottoman and novel European motifs. The colour pallets used in our copy such as white, pink, pale-blue, purple, orange and green are another feature of Shumen Qurans which were far more prominent than in traditional illuminations, in which gold and blue grounds played a dominant role (Stanley, 2009, pp.248 and 227). Other copies of Qurans written by Najib were sold at Christie's, London, 12 October 1978, lot 7 (a copy executed in Shumen in AH 1264/1847-48), 16 June 1987, lot 82, 26 October 2017, lot 229 and at Sotheby’s, London, 21 November 1985, lot 390.