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The Islamic Museum in
Palestine possesses manuscripts date from various periods. They
are written in several
calligraphic styles as Kufic, Maghribi, Naskhi and Thuluth.
The most important
Qur’an in the museum is written in the Kufic style
The Kufic script is
named after the town of Kufa in Iraq which was one of the main
Islamic
cultural centers in the
early period. This script was often used for the calligraphy of
Qur’ans.
It replaced most of the
earlier scripts and reached its perfection in the 2nd
century A.H. (8th
century A.D.)
Kufic script is
characterized by its geometrical synthesis with letters appearing in
square or
rectangular forms. The
vertical strokes of its letters are quite short, while the
horizontal
strokes are extended and
look somewhat rectangular. During the 3 rd century A.H. ( 9th
century A.D.), the Kufic
style developed two variations, the Eastern al-Baghdadi or al-Farisi
and the North African
al-Kufi al-Maghribi. These two are more dynamic than the original
square or rectangular
Kufic and allow for more flexibility and variety within the style.
The
copy in question
comprises the second part of the Qur’an, composed of 172 sheets (344
pages) each page being
of fifteen lines. It measures 31 cm in length and 23 cm in width
and is 7 cm thick. The
origin of this Qur’an and the name of the calligrapher have not been
discovered.
The Back of the second
sheet in this Qur’an is covered with geometrical decoration
interwoven in twisted
bands and resulting in various decorative patterns in green, brown,
orange and red colours
reflecting the exceptional artistic ability present in the early
Islamic
era.
At the beginning of each
sura [chapter] is a decorative band with simple designs within
vegetal and geometrical
motifs coming out of the edges in the same colours as mentioned
above. The title of the
sura and the number of verses it contains are written on the edge of
the band in gold. The
writing is decorated with orange dots, which represent vocalization
in
reading and black dots
for the diacritics.
The system of coloured
dots and other orthographic signs was devised by Abu al-Aswad
al-Du’ali 69 A.H. (688
A.D). It is said that in 96 A.H (714 A.D.), al-Hajjaj Ibn Yusuf
invented a
method of distinguishing
the sounds represented by identical character using dots or
vertical strokes.
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