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Lot Essay
Mamluk Qur’ans are amongst the most lavishly decorated Qur’ans produced by mediaeval Islam. The Mamluks were great patrons of the arts and Qur’ans with magnificent geometric frontispieces were commissioned for use in the numerous religious institutions built by the sultans in their territories in Egypt and Syria. This exploitation of geometric forms is particularly characteristic of Mamluk [and Mongol] frontispieces and in his discussion of 14th century Mamluk Qur’ans, Martin Lings evokes ‘the spider’s web’ particularity of this style (Martin Lings, The Qur’anic Art of Calligraphy and Illumination, London, 1976, p.116 and pl.74).
A Qur’an in the National Library, Cairo, copied by Ya’qub bin Kahlil al-Hanafi in AH 757/1356 AD offers a close comparable to our manuscript. Both opening frontispieces with their double page of heavily gilt panels are arranged as impressive compositions of stars and polygons. This style fully develops under Sultan Sha’ban (r.1363-77) and Qur’ans produced for him and his mother Khwand Barakah ‘contain the most developed form of the typical Mamluk frontispiece [..] a star polygon that repeats itself in the four corners of the rectangle [..] in which it is constructed’ (David James, The Master Scribes, vol. II, Oxford, 1992, p.150).
However it is the left page of a frontispiece in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection, dated to circa 1330-50, that offers the most accurate comparison for the geometric decoration of the present manuscript (James, op.cit., cat.42, pp.168-169). It is probably the work of Ahmad al-Mutatabbib, a well-known illuminator who was active in Cairo in the 1330s. On both manuscripts the central 12-pointed star is inscribed within a dodecagon, itself encroaching on four squares at either corner, each of the panel’s corners are formed by quarter sections from another dodecagon. These lines intersect to form six three-pointed stars and other smaller polygons filled in with palmettes. According to James, this composition also appears on a Qur’an by the same artist in the National Library, Cairo, dated 1334 (Ms.81). It is very likely that our Qur’an was illuminated during the same decades in Cairo.
A Qur’an in the National Library, Cairo, copied by Ya’qub bin Kahlil al-Hanafi in AH 757/1356 AD offers a close comparable to our manuscript. Both opening frontispieces with their double page of heavily gilt panels are arranged as impressive compositions of stars and polygons. This style fully develops under Sultan Sha’ban (r.1363-77) and Qur’ans produced for him and his mother Khwand Barakah ‘contain the most developed form of the typical Mamluk frontispiece [..] a star polygon that repeats itself in the four corners of the rectangle [..] in which it is constructed’ (David James, The Master Scribes, vol. II, Oxford, 1992, p.150).
However it is the left page of a frontispiece in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection, dated to circa 1330-50, that offers the most accurate comparison for the geometric decoration of the present manuscript (James, op.cit., cat.42, pp.168-169). It is probably the work of Ahmad al-Mutatabbib, a well-known illuminator who was active in Cairo in the 1330s. On both manuscripts the central 12-pointed star is inscribed within a dodecagon, itself encroaching on four squares at either corner, each of the panel’s corners are formed by quarter sections from another dodecagon. These lines intersect to form six three-pointed stars and other smaller polygons filled in with palmettes. According to James, this composition also appears on a Qur’an by the same artist in the National Library, Cairo, dated 1334 (Ms.81). It is very likely that our Qur’an was illuminated during the same decades in Cairo.