QUR'AN SAFAVID IRAN, 16TH CENTURY

QUR'AN
SAFAVID IRAN, 16TH CENTURY
Arabic manuscript on burnished cream paper, 339ff. with six flyleaves, with 15ll. of black naskh, text within red, blue and gold rules, gold, red and blue roundel verse markers, Qajar sura headings in gold thuluth on blue ground, marginal hizb, sajda, nisf juz' and juz' markers in Qajar cartouches, catchwords, double shamsa inscribed with the names of the ten readers (qari'un) and their transmitters, illuminated double frontispiece with sura al-fatiha and the beginning of sura al-baqara, followed by a bifolio with black naskh on a gold ground with an illuminated border, later ownership inscriptions and seal impression on first and final folio, the earliest dated AH 1295/1878 AD, in brown morocco with Qajar lacquer central medallion and spandrels, light brown morocco doublures, in modern fabric bag
Text panel 8 ¼ x 2 5/8in. (13.9 x 6.7cm.); folio 9 x 5 ¼in. (23 x 14.2cm.)

Provenance
Private collection, UK, since the 1970s, thence by descent