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Stock Features
Featured Islamic Stock
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ON THE ‘HOLY WAR’ IBN HUDHAYL, Abu al-Hasan ‘Ali b. ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Fazari al-Andalusi. Tuhfat al-anfus wa-sh’ar sukkan al-Andalus. Maghreb, Dhu al-Qa’da 1142 AH / June 1730 AD. Arabic manuscript, ff. IV+166, 200 x 150 mm, copied by al-Jilani b. Ahmad b. Muhammad al-Haddad (sic) …, on thick, cream-coloured paper, with 18 lines to the page of dark brown maghribi, headings and certain words and phrases in larger bold hand, catchwords, title indicated on folio 4r, colophon on folio 110r marks the end of Part One on the eighth night of Dhu al-Qa’da 1142 AH, Part Two begins on folio 111v, colophon on folio 166r-v gives the name of the scribe and the date of completion followed by prayers continuing on to the flyleaves, sheets from other manuscripts have been used as doublures on both covers one of which contains a recipe of some type; occasional damp staining at margins not affecting text, edges trimmed; 19th century red morocco with a border of multiple blind tooled fillets and panels of interlacing knot-work design, stamped oval shaped central medallions, flap; neatly repaired.
£12,800 A 18th century copy of a master-work of the highest importance for the knowledge of the equestrian and military arts in mediaeval Islam. Tuhfat al-anfus is a treatise on jihad with detailed discussion on war-horses and arms, including everything that is concerned with the conditions of horses as well as the teaching of riding. The author, Ibn Hudhayl, lived in Granada at the court of the Nasrids during the second half of the 8th/14th century. He wrote Tuhfat al-anfus, at the request of sultan Muhammad V, known as al-Ghani, to convince the ‘Andalusian Muslims of the need to resume the profession of arms and to establish once again a cavalry worthy of comparison with that of their illustrious conquering ancestors’ (EI 1979). There are no ownership inscriptions or stamps to indicate the early provenance of this manuscript. |
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A LOST WORK ON GRAMMAR IBN QUTIYYA, Abu Bakr b.’Umar b. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz b. Ibrahim b. ‘Isa b. Muzahim. Kitab al-Maqsur wa-’l-mamdud. Cairo, 7 Ramadan 650 AH / 11th November 1252 AD. Arabic manuscript, ff. XIII+105, 255 x 180 mm, copied on thick, dark cream-coloured paper, with 17 lines to the page of neat black naskhi, fully vocalised, with certain words picked out in red, colophon on folio 105v indicating place and date of completion, a note to the left of colophon states that this copy was compared with the original, abundant commentaries in different naskhi hands provided in the margins throughout, numerous later notes and commentaries on all 13 flyleaves and pastedowns in different maghribi hands suggesting that this manuscript travelled to the Maghreb at some point; edges trimmed and some reinforced with strips of paper, some folios repaired along the spine edge, missing parts of later marginal commentaries reinstated at the time of repair, some damp staining not affecting text; 19th century brown morocco with a border of multiple blind tooled fillets and panels of floral motifs, stamped oval shaped red central medallions, flap missing; in good condition.
£19,000 A handsome 13th century copy of Ibn Qutiyya’s lost work on grammar, Kitab al-Maqsur wa-’l-mamdud. It is a treatise on words ending with the letter alif in its both shortened and extended forms. The renowned Muslim scholar Ibn Khallikan (d. AH 681/AD 1282) mentions this work as being superior to any similar work composed before or after. There are no records of surviving copies in Brockelmann and modern scholarship, cf. J. Bosch-Vila (EI 1979), confirms this title as one of Ibn Qutiyya’s lost works. Not found in any library catalogues. Ibn Qu†iyya (‘son of the Gothic woman’, d. AH 367/AD 977), a grammarian, lexicographer, poet and historian, was one of the greatest philologists of his time and a descendant of Visigothic nobility, whose works on grammar and lexicography were highly esteemed by later generations. Born in Seville and later settled in Cordova, Ibn Qutiyya taught grammar, law and hadith. He was later appointed qadi (judge) and enjoyed great prestige. The Andalusian biographer al-Faradi (d. AH 403/AD 1013), who wrote Kitab Tarikh ‘ulama’ al-Andalus (History of the learned men of al-Andalus), calls Ibn Qutiyya the most learned grammarian of the time. There are no ownership inscriptions or stamps to indicate the early provenance of this manuscript.
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AMONG THE EARLIEST EXAMPLES
OF FULLY DEVELOPED NASTALˆQ SCRIPT AL-JARBARDI, Fakhr al-Din Ahmad b. Al-Hasan. Shaeh al-Shafiya of Ibn Hajib. Persia, probably Shiraz, Friday 19 Jumada al-Awwal 776 AH / 26 October 1374 AD. Arabic manuscript, ff. II+212, 167 x 120 mm, copied on cream coloured paper, with 17 lines to the page of black early nasta’liq script, partially vocalised, the word qawluhu picked out in red throughout, reading marks in red, marginal annotations throughout in various later nasta’liq hands, colophon on fol.212r gives the date of completion, foliated in the upper left hand corners, the initial two flys as well as fol.1r and 212v contain notes in elegant nasta’liq and numerous early ownership inscriptions and stamps; some damp and water staining not affecting text, pest damage at fore-edge of second fly with noticeable paper loss; late 19th century strait-grained brown morocco with flap; in good condition.
£8750 A 14th century copy of a commentary on the renowned Shafiya by Fakhr al-Din al-Jarbardi (d. AH 745/AD 1345) on sarf (morphology), copied less than three decades after his death, and a fine sample of one of the earliest examples of fully developed form of nasta’liq script. The name nasta’liq is a contraction of the Persian naskh-i ta’liq, that is, a hanging or suspended naskh. Nasta’liq is, thus, commonly thought to have developed from combining these two scripts (the naskh and ta’liq), yet, a convincing theory traces its evolution from naskh alone in the 14th century Iran. From the 15th century, nasta’liq became the literary script par excellence for writing Persian, and although it is sometimes used to write Arabic text (as in the present manuscript), it came to be more popular in the Persian, Turkic, and South Asian spheres of influence.
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QUR’AN LEAF WITH ILLUMINATION AND TEXT QUR’AN LEAF. North Africa or Spain, c. 1250–1350 AD. A single vellum leaf, 109 x 185 mm, text area 140 x 120 mm, verso with six lines of maghribi script in brown ink, diacritics and vocalisation in green, red and blue, sura heading in gold in an ornamental kufi script against a red-brown ground and contained within a cartouche framed by white strapwork, palmette medallion in blue and gold extending into the margin, recto with a full-page ornamental frontispiece consisting of an elaborate geometric design in white strapwork, the compartments filled with designs either in gold or in white on red, blue or purple grounds, the whole surrounded by an outer border of gold interlace; slightly worn, loss at upper inner corner repaired with blank vellum.
£15,000+VAT A fine example of a maghribi frontispiece, with a particularly complex geometrical design. It would doubtless originally have formed the left-hand half of a double-page frontispiece of a Qur’an section. The sura heading on the verso, which is also a hizb (sixtieth) division, is also unusually elaborate for a Qur’an of this format. The text comprises the beginning of the first verse of sura 17, Bani Isra’il (the Children of Israel). Vellum Qur’ans of the size and format of this leaf were standard in both North Africa and Spain, making it very difficult to localise them purely on the basis of script and illumination. Indeed, the present frontispiece has stylistic features in common with examples from both North Africa (e.g. the finispiece of a Qur’an produced in Morocco and dated AH 718/AD 1318; see Fraser 2006, no.21) and Spain (e.g. the finispiece of Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, Ms. or. Arabe 385, copied in AH 703/AD 1303 and loosely attributed to Nasrid Granada, and the finispiece of British Library MS. Or. 12523C, part of a multi-section Qur’an which according to tradition was brought from Spain to Morocco by a princely family at the time of the Christian re-conquest of Granada at the end of the 15th century; see Lings 1976, nos.48 and 45 respectively). |
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QUR’AN. India, AH 1062/AD 1652. Arabic manuscript, ff. XX+319, 315 x 220 mm, copied on thin, cream-coloured, lightly burnished, semi-transparent paper, with 15 lines to the page in a combination of mihaqqaq (lines 1, 15), thuluth (line 8) and naskhi (lines 2-7, 9-14), all in black, within five compartments of different sizes; three compartments sprinkled with gold each containing 1 line of text in different styles; two plain compartments each containing 6 lines of text in elegant naskhi, fully vocalised in black, reading marks in red, sura headings in gold riqa’ occur within the naskhi text, divisions of the text and the prostrations (sajda) marked in the margins by inscriptions in gold riqa’, other marginalia in red, use of the letter ‘ayn in red to mark each reverence (ruku’) in the Indian manner, colophon on folio 319r; occasional smudging and staining not affecting text, localised worm-holes repaired with toned tissue, some folios repaired along the spine edge, some reinforced with similar paper at fore and head edges, edges trimmed; early 19th century Indian straight-grained red morocco, gilt roll borders and decoration reflecting an English style, spine with two black morocco labels lettered in gilt, some restoration to the fore edge flap, with printed floral/marbled end leaves; in good condition.
£15,500 This is a fine example of a 17th century Indian Qur’an with characteristics of Iranian Qur’ans of the 15th and 16th centuries. The illuminator of this manuscript copy never completed his work, and merely provided the marginalia in gold riqa’ and the compartments sprinkled with gold. It is clear, however, that this copy was meant to be an outstanding production. There are no ownership inscriptions or stamps to indicate the early provenance of this manuscript. |
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Full description is available here 
