MERINID MOROCCO, MID-14TH CENTURY

Comprising approximately the first two and a half juz', this is the opening part of an eight-part Maghribi Qur'an. At least three further volumes from the same manuscript are known, including the volume immediately after this one which is in the Biblioteca de Catalunya, Barcelona (MS2336) and another the Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyya (LNS 193). However, it is the seventh volume in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (MS Arabe 423) which offers the key to understanding this manuscript. In his catalogue of the manuscript, Francois Deroche reads the faded note on f.1r as a waqf deed in the name of the eleventh Merinid sultan Abu 'Inan Faris (r.1348-58).

Abu 'Inan Faris ruled Morocco when the power of the Merinids was at its peak. He was one of few rulers of the dynasty to strike his own name on his coins rather than a series of prayers and benedictory phrases, along with the caliphal title amir al-mu'minin. During his reign, he attempted to consolidate Merinind rule over Ilfriqiya. After conquering the towns of Tlemcen and Tunis, by the year 1357 he looked set to become master of much of the North African littoral before he was murdered by his vizier the following year. The onset of the Black Death, Iberian incursions along the Moroccan coastline, and court intrigues meant that the following years brought slow decline for the Merinids. Amongst Abu Inan's less ephemeral achievements where the construction of a number of madrasas in Fez and Meknes - with which this Qur'an manuscript may be associated - as well as his patronage of Ibn Battuta. In 1354, when Ibn Battuta returned from his final journey, it was Abu Inan who suggested that his secretary Ibn Juzayy record all that Ibn Battuta had seen, a text which remains one of the most valuable sources on 14th century Eurasian history.

Stylistically, the manuscript of which this is part is typical of those produced in Spain and North Africa in the 13th and 14th centuries, including in the use of parchment support, which endured in the Maghreb long after paper had been adopted elsewhere in the Islamic world. The roundel verse markers in our manuscript, with an outer circle of smaller red and blue dots, is employed to mark every fifth verse on a manuscript in the Khalili Collection, which also has a similar interlaced motif around the kufic sura heading (David James, The Master Scribes: Qur'ans of the 10th to 14th centuries AD, Oxford, 1992, p.216, no.54)