A LOOSE FOLIO FROM A MINIATURE QUR’AN IN PROTO-MAGHRIBI SCRIPT
PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT EUROPEAN PRIVATE COLLECTION
North Africa or Andalusia, Arabic Spain, 10th - 12th century

Arabic manuscript on vellum, 25ll. of sepia ink and gold early maghribi script, still showing influences of more angular Arabic scripts like Kufic but the letters appearing less stretched and elongated, red diacritic marks, gold rosette verse markers, chapter heading in bold gold, marginal marks in gold circular marks, 7.7cm x 5.7cm.

The folio is accompanied by a handwritten note from the owner describing the script as ‘Kufic Ghubar with chapter heading’. A very similar loose Quranic folio in proto-maghribi script was successfully sold in the French auction market four years ago (Ader Nordmann, Paris, December 2018).