AN ILLUMINATED DALA'IL AL-KHAYRAT BY MUHAMMAD BIN SULAYMAN AL-JAZULI (D. 1465)
Possibly Balkans, Western Ottoman Provinces, dated 1211 AH (1796 AD), signed by Muhammad Bin Hassan

Arabic manuscript on European watermarked lined paper, 380ff. with 7 fly-leaves, with 27ll. of black ink naskh script to the page, the illuminated and polychrome-painted opening folio with a large, cusped arch in-filled with floral interlace, the text without diacritics, important passages underlined in red ink and marked with gold roundels, illustrated with an illuminated rectangular cartouche depicting a three-quarter aerial view of the two sacred enclosures of the holiest sites in Islam, the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca with the black Ka'ba in the centre and the Masjid an-Nabawi, the Prophet's Mosque, in Medina, the text set within black and red rules, and narrow gold borders, signed by Muhammad Bin Hassan and dated 1211 AH, accompanied by a note in French on one of the final fly-leaves referring to the location of its finding (Serbia), in a gilt printed brown calf leather binding with flap.

16.3cm x 10.2cm the text panel

23cm x 16.5cm the folio

The handwritten French note accompanying this manuscript mentions that the tome was found in Serbia during WWI. It was retrieved by Maurice Guillier, the Lieutenant of the 260th Regiment, during the evacuation of the Serbian villages on the border with Ottoman territories in December 1915. The unusual horizontal format of the illuminated illustration of Mecca and Medina's sacred enclosures together with this provenance note raise interesting questions about the origins of this manuscript. The lack of diacritics in the text and rather plain naskh script point towards a provincial Ottoman production, perhaps in the Balkan regions, well before the rise of Balkan nationalism and independence movements, which triggered revolutions and anti-Islamic sentiments throughout the area from the early 19th century onwards.