FOUR ILLUMINATED LOOSE QUR’AN FOLIOS AND A MAGHRIBI BIFOLIO
Morocco, Syria, Iran and India, 15th to 18th centuries

Arabic manuscripts on paper, comprising a loose folio from a Safavid Herat Qur'an, ca. 1580, with the last ayat of Sura al-Qalam (68) and the first few ayat of Sura al-Haqqah (69), with 15ll. of alternating black, gold and white ink thuluth and naskh scripts to the page, with full diacritics and vocalisation, gold wheel-shaped aya markers, with marginal illumination; a small-sized Timurid Qur'an folio, with 14ll. of black ink naskh script to the page and golden and cobalt blue medallions with vegetal sprays on the margins, set within gold and blue rules, and with catchwords, mounted, glazed and framed; a Mamluk Qur'an folio, with 13ll. of black ink thuluth script to the page, gold rosettes as aya markers, corrections in red ink, on a white cardboard mount; an Indian Qur'an folio, with 9ll. of black ink riqa' script to the page, with marginal illumination containing the Arabic letter 'ayn, mounted, framed and glazed; and lastly, a Maghribi manuscript bifolio, with 19-20ll. of sepia, red, and blue ink maghribi script, extracted from the last chapters of Awḍaḥ al-masālik ilā Alfiyyat Ibn Mālik (The Clearest Pathway to the Alfiyya of Ibn Mālik) by Ibn Hishām al-Anṣārī (d. 761 AH / 1360 AD), on the right the chapter on apocope (hadhf), on the left the sections on metathesis of ṭāʾ and dāl, set on a white cardboard mount.

Dimensions of the respective text panels:

22.5cm x 14.5cm

11.5cm x 7cm

24cm x 18.5cm

21.5cm x 13cm

14cm x 9cm

Provenance: all recently purchased at auction in the UK (2022 - 2024), including Mallams; Lacy, Scott & Knight, and Chiswick Auctions.