Bulgarie

63854 — Ottoman Empire dated 1266 AH/1849-50 AD. Arabic manuscript on paper 308 leaves plus 4 fly-leaves 15 lines to the page written in naskh in black ink verses separated by gold and polychrome illuminated rosettes within gold and black rules hizb sajda and juz' marked by illuminated floral marginal devices surah headings in white thuluth on gold and polychrome illuminated panels f.1b and 2a illuminated in gold and polychrome with rococo floral decoration against a gold ground pin-pricked with cintamani motifs the colophon within similarly illuminated panels in Ottoman gilt dark brown leather binding with flap with fitted box. Text panel: 8 by 5.1cm. Leaf: 12.5 by 8.2cm. Isma'il Najib is recorded as a pupil of Ahmed Zarifi and teacher to Tentene-zade Seyyid Hasan Vehbi Stanley 2009 p.248. Further Qur'ans by the scribe have sold in Christie's London 26 April 2018 lot 177; 26 October 2017 lot 229 and 12 October 1978 lot 7 and another was sold at Sotheby's London 21 November 1985 lot 390. The latter example is illuminated in a very similar manner to the present lot in a fully Rococo style unlike the typical Shumen style of illumination. In the 19th century one of the most important places of Ottoman manuscript production was Shumen a strategically-important fortress in what is today Bulgaria. Tim Stanley and Süheyl Ünver have independently worked on the corpus of manuscripts there identifying more than fifty Qur'anic scribes from the town apparently divisble into three groups according to their original teacher: Seyyid Mehmed Nuri Ahmed Zarifi and Ahmed Nazifi Tim Stanley The Decorated Word volume II. Oxford 2009 p.226. By the 1850s Qur'ans from Shumen had come to be remarkably homogenous: all observe the principle of ayet ber kenar in which every page ends with a completed Qur'anic verse; all are written with 15 lines of text to a page; all have between 300 and 310 pages. The dimensions of these manuscripts are also fairly constant. Although these manuscripts were produced in quantities to make them available to many relatively prosperous subjects of the Ottoman Empire Shumen Qur'ans were presented by Ottoman sultans to important figures including Ali Rif'at Pasha the Khedive of Egypt and al-Husayn Sharif of Mecca. The production of Qur'ans in Shumen came under increasing pressure with the rise of lithographic printing and came to a complete stop with Bulgarian indepedence in 1878. For a fuller discussion of the Shumen school of calligraphy see Tim Stanley "The Shumen Phenomenon" The Decorated Word volume II. Oxford 2009 pp.222-51. The illumination of Shumen manuscripts - though united by a Baroque idiom and a bright pastel colour palette - exhibits some variety suggesting that there were several different schools of illumination in the city alongside the numerous calligraphers. Ottoman Empire, dated 1266 AH/1849-50 AD. hardcover