9 Abbasid Qur’an Leaf in Kufic Script Surah 87 (Al-A’la), verses 11-15 verso, verses 16-19 recto Late ninth or early tenth century CE / late third or early fourth century AH Near East or North Africa Vellum, Dimensions: 13 x 20 cm Portland State University Library, Special Collections, Mss 36 This manuscript bears many of the hallmarks of the Qur’anic manuscript tradition of the late ninth and early tenth centuries CE. This style of Kufic script, termed by renowned Islamicist Francois Déroche as “mature Abbasid,” was widely employed from the mid-ninth through mid-tenth centuries, during the height of the Abbasid dynasty (750-1258 CE).1 Despite the development and common use by the ninth century of a system of diacritical markings that aided the reading of Arabic, only one instance of letter pointing can be found in this present example (in the second line).2 Vocalization, the indication of specific vowel sounds, is aided by red and green dots throughout the text. It is difficult to know with certainty whether these marks are original to the script, as many contemporary texts minimized the use of letter pointing and vocalization markers in favor of an overall aesthetic of austerity.3 The provenance of this manuscript is difficult to trace, although the style of Kufic resembles that of other contemporary manuscripts produced in Syria and Egypt. The ruling of the script is only slightly imperfect, indicating a practiced and competent hand. The exaggerated horizontal stretching of Arabic characters, known as mashq, appears on every line except for the first. The horizontality of the script is punctuated intermittently by the sweeping verticality of some characters, several of which cross into neighboring lines of text. Characters are evenly spaced, providing a sense of regular rhythm to the script. However, the seven lines of text appear rather tightly packed, giving the sense of a compact block of text, the dimensions of which bear the same geometrical ratio (2:3) to those of the page. The scribe’s use of mashq to elongate certain words coupled with the arrangement of the text suggests a conscious attempt to achieve a unified geometric aesthetic. Many early Qur’anic texts from the eighth and ninth centuries demonstrate similar sensitivity to geometrical ratios.4 Verses are separated by a kind of floral rosette composed of red and green dots with an extremely fine line of brown ink linking each to a central gold dot. The fineness of the lines and the shape and color of these dots—especially the tint of green used—suggests that these were made by a different pen than that used to
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