Koran

Calligraphy was a very important art-form in Muslim civilisation. Koranic manuscripts, composed on various materials, bear witness to an artistic development whose main patterns also found expression in architecture and the decorative arts. References to the making of books are found in the ancient texts from as far back as the 11^th century, notably those of Ibn Badis who wrote of his preference for yellow, red and green inks.

This manuscript, almost square in shape, is written on parchment, which, being a luxurious and durable material, was often used for religious books (Korans and collections of hadîth). The book opens with two full-page illuminations (frontispiece and page 1), presenting a blue, black and gold geometric decoration, featuring braids and grooves, around squares and a circle. The presence of a marginal vignette in this composition is reminiscent of 10th century illuminations, in particular those found at Kairouan and based on eastern models. In the topmost part of these pages, above the illumination, are featured the basmala and the tasliya.

The text of this book, written in Andalusian script and in a faded brown ink, is vocalised in red and carries blue orthoepic signs. The surat-headings are inscribed in golden Kufic with no outline, apart from the initial headings, which are placed in an illuminated frame with an adjoining marginal medallion.

Decorative symbols inserted into the body of the text or in the margins accentuate the structure of the text in order to make reading and learning it easier: the verses are separated by small golden trefoils, each group of five verses is marked by a tear and each group of ten by a golden-centred wheel. The Koran is also divided into thirty juz, sixty hizb or eighty-five nisf, (among other groupings) not necessarily corresponding with the division into surats, which are marked on the pages by marginal medallions.

Folio 93 verso has a marginal medallion in the upper right-hand corner, in the form of a double circle, whose centre is decorated with the word hizb in Kufic on a red and green background, and whose gilded border is flecked with red and blue dots tracing axes that bisect the circle. Folio 94 recto displays a gilded surat-heading marked with a vegetal marginal medallion containing bifid palmettes and tendrils, evocative of the Iranian culture of the time.

Thus, in its form and in its composition, this book belongs to a group of post-Almoravid and Almohad Korans dating from between 1160 and 1199, belonging to the national libraries of Cairo and Tunis, to the Khalili collection in London, and to the Istanbul University Library. The Almohad period is characterized by the preponderance of a repertoire of geometric and floral decorative themes, close to those found in eastern Koranic illuminations. The link between Almohad architectural decoration, as we know it from the different Almohad sites of the Maghreb and Al-Andalus, and these illumination-decorations is obvious. Comparable patterns can be found in the decoration of the buildings of Taza, Seville, Marrakech and Rabat.