Live Auction 15505Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds Including Oriental Rugs and Carpets
QUR’AN
Lot 239 The following five Ottoman Qur’ans and prayer books come from the family collection of Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. Houghton’s name is now synonymous with the most important of Persian illustrated manuscripts, the Shah Tahmasp Shahnama. He bought that manuscript from Baron Edmund de Rothschild in 1959 and in 1970 presented seventy-eight of its illustrations to the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

VARIOUS PROPERTIES

QUR’AN

SIGNED HAFIZ 'ALI BIN MUHAMMAD, A STUDENT OF IBRAHIM SHAWQI (SEVKI), OTTOMAN TURKEY, DATED AH 1278/1861-62 AD

Closed25 October 2018

Price Realised

GBP 5,625

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QUR’AN
SIGNED HAFIZ 'ALI BIN MUHAMMAD, A STUDENT OF IBRAHIM SHAWQI (SEVKI), OTTOMAN TURKEY, DATED AH 1278/1861-62 AD
Arabic manuscript on paper, 567ff. plus four flyleaves, each folio with 15ll. of black naskh, gold roundel verse markers, catchwords, text panels ruled in gold, black and red, marginal rosettes of various forms, sura headings in white thuluth within gold-ground cartouches with polychrome illuminations, opening shamsa, following bifolio fully illuminated framing 7ll. of naskh in clouds on gold ground, gold and polychrome illuminated finish piece followed by an illuminated medallion on the last folio, colophon signed and dated, second folio loose, in green and black morocco with flap, decorated with gilt stamped and painted designs, pink doublures
Text panel 3 1/8 x 2in. (8 X 5.2cm.); folio 5 3/8 x 3 ¾in. (13.6 x 9.7cm.)

Specialist note

Ibrahim Shawqi (Sevki) who taught the scribe of our manuscript is probably the celebrated student of Isma'il Zuhdi (d. 1806-07). Ibrahim Shawqi taught another student, Shaykh Sulayman Wahbi (Vehbi) al-Qadiri, a Qur'an by whom is now in the Cetindogan Collection (Durman, 2014, cat.21, p.142 and p.152). It is said that he was sent to Shumen (present day Bulgaria) by Sultan Mahmud II to improve the writing of naskh there.