In Muslim cultures, words are used not only to communicate but to decorate. Because it is through writing that the Qur’an is transmitted, scripts in the Arabic alphabet were devised and perfected to be worthy of divine revelation, while rich materials underscore the sanctity of the text. With its distinctive blue color and use of gold and silver for the script, this page can be readily identified as part of a manuscript known as the Blue Qur’an, a multivolume codex that is dispersed among several collections in North America, Europe, and the Middle East but survives primarily in Tunisia, where it was probably made.
Here, the entire text is sumptuously rendered in gold, while silver rosettes (now tarnished) separate each verse, the precious metals adding luminosity and contrast to the deep blue of the page. As with most early Qur’ans, the kufic script here does not feature the voweling and diacritic marks that became standard by the eleventh century. As is also typical for this period, the calligrapher took care to elongate several letters in each of the fifteen lines, effectively justifying the margins of the text block.
This is one of only a few known Qur’ans on colored parchment, including one in deep orange in LACMA’s collection and another in pink (see M.2002.1.389, M.2002.1.390, and M.2006.141). It also shares similarities with Byzantine Bibles and imperial edicts that used purple parchment with metallic inks.
