QUR'AN

COPIED BY MUHAMMAD TAHIR BIN SHEIKH TAQI SHIRAZI AL-KHALAJANI, MUGHAL INDIA, DATED RAJAB AH 1082/NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1671 AD

Details

QUR'AN
COPIED BY MUHAMMAD TAHIR BIN SHEIKH TAQI SHIRAZI AL-KHALAJANI, MUGHAL INDIA, DATED RAJAB AH 1082/NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1671 AD
Arabic manuscript on gold-sprinkled paper, 302ff. plus 6 fly-leaves, each folio with 14ll. of clear black naskh, gold and red verse roundels, text panels outlined in gold, black and blue, sura headings in gold thuluth, sajda, 'ashr, khams and juz' marked in similar gold thuluth in the margins, further occasional commentary written in the margin, opening bifolio with gold and polychrome illumination surrounding 6ll. of text in clouds reserved against gold ground, colophon signed Muhammad Tahir bin Sheikh Taqi Shirazi al-Khalajani and dated Rajab 1082, first folio with later owner's notes and a seal impression reading Abu Hamid Bahanuri (?), the Judge of al-Bukhari, in contemporaneous lacquer binding with flap, decorated with floral sprays and grape-bearing vines on black ground, doublures of plain red morocco, some losses
Text panels 6 7/8 x 3¼in. (17.5 x 8.2cm.); folio 10½ x 6in. (26.5 x 15.6cm.)

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Lot Essay

Although the illumination of the frontispiece of this Qur’an is unmistakeably Indian in design and colour, from the nisba al-Khalajani, the scribe Muhammad Taher bin Sheikh Taqi Shirazi al-Khalajani, must originally have hailed from the town of Khalajan near Shiraz. He may well have come from a family of scribes who were resident of Khalajan – a Qur’an copied in fine naskh was written there by a certain ‘Imad al-Din Hassan bin Ibrahim in AH 1036/1626-27 AD (Manijeh Bayani, Anna Contadini and Tim Stanley, The Decorated Word, Part I, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, Oxford, 1999, no.42, pp.132-33). Another Qur’an, copied by a Karim bin Ibrahim was also copied there (sold Sotheby’s, 26 April 1982, lot 31). This suggests a family of scribes of which our member may have emigrated to India, seeking employment in the Muslim courts.

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