An early Kufic Qur'an leaf, North Africa or Near East, late Umayyad or early Abbasid, circa 700-750 AD

Formerly in the collection of a Middle Eastern Ambassador to the U.K., early 1970s

This important leaf is from an impressive manuscript of the Qur’an written in a vertical format. The largest section of its parent codex is in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (MS Arabe 332), which comprises forty-nine leaves. A smaller section comprising ten leaves is in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vat. ar.1784), a leaf of comparable preservation as the present lot is in the Khalili Collection (KFQ 49, Déroche 1992, pp.128-9, no.71), and a considerably smaller fragment is in the Pennsylvania Museum Philadelphia (E 16264 D). Both the Khalili leaf and the present lot retain approximately eighty per cent of the text. Here, it ends in surah al-taghabun verse 11 and the Khalili leaf begins in surah al-taghabun, verse 15. Accounting for their shared losses, the Khalili leaf must have immediately followed the present lot in the parent manuscript.

The section preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France includes a handful of almost complete leaves revealing the grand scale of the manuscript. The leaves are large, each measuring approximately 43 by 35cm., with twenty-one lines to the page, the text area measuring approximately 36 by 31cm. The illumination is typically restrained, the verses separated by clusters of dashes, with red circles denoting ‘ashr. A space was left to demarcate a change in surah and an early cursive hand has added the names of the surahs, a feature also found in the other known preserved sections.

Early Qur’an codices such as this example are powerful in their restraint, the focus centred on the balance of the calligraphy. The hand here is elegant, the subtle use of mashq establishing a gentle rhythm throughout the page. Déroche categorised the script of this manuscript as ‘unclassified.’ The hand displays certain features shared with the B.I style (see the jim/ha which cross the base line diagonally) and the C.Ia style (see the alif and mim letter forms), but others that don’t relate to a classified style.

The B.Ib style is thought to be an early derivative of the Hijazi script documented by architectural inscriptions in a similar style in the second half of the seventh century (Déroche 1992, pp.34-37). The style also figures in a large Qur’an section in vertical format in the Institute of Oriental Studies, St. Petersburg attributed to the last quarter of the eighth century (inv. no.E20, 50 by 32cm, see Déroche 1999, p.70). The C.Ia style was similarly in use by the eighth century, and letter forms close to C.Ia are found on the Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem (691 AD). The lack of vocalisation and illumination, and the scarcity of diacritics, are a shared feature of these early vertical Kufic Qur’ans. The verse markers are denoted by clusters of dashes, the red circles marking ‘ashr breaks the monochromaticity of the leaf but the surah division is marked by a blank space, both features of the St Petersburg manuscript mentioned above.

The vertical format was less frequently used in Kufic manuscripts, which had generally shifted to a landscape format by the 9th century as Kufic took over from Hijazi as the more dominant hand. In addition to the manuscript concerned here and the St Petersburg codex, a group of early, large-scale vertical codices from the late Umayyad and early Abbasid period are known, including the Great Umayyad Sana'a Qur'an, (Dar al-Makhtutut, Ṣanʿaʾ, Yemen, inv.no. 20-33.1), and a manuscript in the Musée des arts islamiques, Qairawan (inv. no. R38) from which other leaves are in the David Collection, Copenhagen (inv. no. 26/2003) and the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha (inv. no. MS 213). Both of these manuscripts had been attributed to the first decades of the 8th century, and carbon dating indicated a late 7th century date of the parchment (Déroche 2014, p. 125). Together, this group of grand manuscripts of large scale and elegant calligraphy occupy an important transitional period in Qur'an production during the last decades of the Umayyad rule.

For another early Kufic leaf in vertical format, see Sotheby’s, London, 25 October 2023, lot 10.