Important Safavid Koran. - Lot 137

Important Safavid Koran. Ink, polychrome pigments and gold on paper, stamped and gilded leather. Western Iran, Shiraz, first half of the 16th century. 34 x 22 x 6 cm. This handsome 16th-century complete Qur'an, large in size and of remarkable quality, opens with a double-page flyleaf decorated with illuminated polychrome shamsa (medallions), centered with inscriptions in white thuluth script (including verse 88 of Sura XVII). It is followed by another richly ornate and illuminated bifolio, containing the first Sura al-Fâtiḥa (The Prologue), inscribed in gold in poly-lobed central cartouches on a sky-blue background, themselves surrounded by registers of interlaced friezes forming mandorles, decorated with fine polychrome scrolls on a gold or cobalt background. The contours of the central mandorles are outlined in orange, and garlands evoking tchi clouds are painted in green. On the following folios and throughout the book, the text is framed in polychrome and gold. It is spread over seventeen lines per page, the first, ninth and seventeenth of which are systematically written in thuluth jeli calligraphy in blue or gold ink, inscribed in reserve clouds on a gold background. The intermediate lines are written in smaller black naskh script, and are bordered by vertical cartouches decorated with floral scrolls. Sura titles are inscribed in illuminated polychrome cartouches in white or gold thuluth script, on a blue or gold background. The vignettes separating the verses are indicated by a gold sequin. The page margins are also dotted with polychrome illuminated vignettes. The middle of the volume is marked by a richly illuminated double-page in polychrome and gold, with the beginning of Sura Maryam (Mary, XIX). The final double-page, equally decorated, features a final oration inscribed in cartouches, in white and gold thuluth script, on gold, brown and blue backgrounds. It should be noted that eight folios - beginning with verse 13 of Sura at-Taghâbun (The Disappointment, LXIV), and ending with verse 20 of Sura al-Muzzammil (He Who Wraps Himself, LXXIII) - have been reassembled upside down. The (damaged) binding, from the same period and probably original, is in red leather with a flap, with an embossed decoration on each cover of a large central mandorla framed by spandrels, the whole surrounded by a frieze of cartouches with foliate motifs. The embossed scrolls and palmettes are silvered on the reliefs (oxidation) and gilded on the backgrounds. On the first part of the flap covering the edge, an embossed and gilded calligraphic cartouche features verse 79 of Sura al-Wâqi'a or L'Evènement (LVI), "which only the purified touch". (The endpapers were later covered with marbled paper). This Qur'an is a fine example of the luxury manuscript production of the Safavid period. Its large format, the quality of the illumination of the opening pages and final prayers, and the fact that each of the body pages is also illuminated, confirm the importance of this manuscript, probably intended for a high-ranking patron and demonstrating the virtuosity of Persian book craftsmen in this period. A similarly decorated Safavid Koran is kept at the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts in Istanbul under inventory number TIEM 247. It is published in: Farhad M. & Rettig S. (20116), The Art of the Qur'an, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, n°49, pp. 293-295. Expert : Alexis RENARD