AN ILLUMINATED OTTOMAN QUR’AN
Ottoman Turkey, dated 1260 AH (1844 AD)

Arabic manuscript on lined paper, 260ff., 2 fly-leaves and 2 endpapers, with 15ll. of black ink naskh script to the page, the opening bifolio lavishly illuminated in a typical 19th-century Ottoman style with burnished gold leaf and polychromes, the top border with cusped arches infilled with rosette sprays, the first two suras (al-Fatiha,1 and al-Baqara, 2) grouped in circular medallions with cloudbands against gilt ground, with vegetal arabesques and strapwork on the corners of the text panel, gold roundels as ayat markers, full diacritics and vocalisation, marginal notes and corrections in red, catchwords, illuminated polychrome marginal markers for specific passages and sections, sura headings left incomplete with gold ground (and no sura title usually in white ink), the last page dated 1260 and inscribed by the calligrapher Muhammad Rashid, one of the students of the Master Muhammad Tahir al-Hamid Bey, with profuse gold floral illumination, in a gilt brown calf leather binding with chequered grid panels.

The text panel 17cm x 10cm, the folio 23.6cm x 17.5cm