The Qur’an (literally ‘the recitation’) is the holy book of Islam and contains the revelations that the prophet Muhammad received directly from God through the angel Gabriel in the course of his life. Transmitted orally at first, such revelations were only written down in the decades following the death of the prophet (632 A.D.). 

Copying the Qur’an does not only satisfy the religious need to give access to the word of God, but also represents an act of piety and devotion. Thus, practical and spiritual motivations lie behind the production of hundreds of different copies of the Qur’an through the centuries, a fact that contributed to the establishment of a refined tradition of book arts in the Islamic world.

The Qur’an to which this leaf originally belonged was one of the most beautiful religious manuscripts produced in the first centuries of Islam. The folio exhibits a masterful execution of the Arabic script known as Kufic, a style traditionally associated with Kufa (Iraq), but used to copy early Qur’ans in various parts of the Islamic world. A sump-tuous gold illuminated band at the center of the page marks the title of the new sura, or Qur’anic chapter. This folio carries the final verse of sura 89 (Al-Fajr, “The Dawn”) and the beginning of sura 90 (Al-Balad, “The City”).