IRAN, 13TH CENTURY

Although only a part of a once complete Qur’an, the 35 sura headings and 70 folios of this section give a good idea of how magnificent the original manuscript would have been. This section is written in wonderfully elegant muhaqqaq, the favoured script of larger format Qur’ans in Iran and Iraq under the Ilkhanid Mongols. The sweeping horizontal sublinear extensions of the letters give a real impetus to muhaqqaq that is not found in other scripts. Probably because of this, the script was also widely used by the Mamluks. Martin Lings and Yasin Hamid Safadi note that considerably more Mamluk Qur’ans exist today than Ilkhanid due to both the style being quickly superseded but notably due to the rapidity and destructiveness of the Timurid invasions of the late 14^th century which Mamluk Egypt escaped (The Qur’an, exhibition catalogue, London, 1976, p.68). For a recent and comprehensive study of the muhaqqaq script see Nasser Mansour and Mark Allan, Sacred Script: Muhaqqaq in Islamic Calligraphy, London 2011.

Stylistically this section relates to a 14th century Qur’an in the Islamic Museum in Jerusalem which was endowed to the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron (K.Salameh, The Qur’an Manuscripts in the al-Haram al-Sharif Islamic Museum, Jerusalem, 2001, no.16, pp.90-94).