A HIGHLY RARE ILLUMINATED MINIATURE QURAN, NEAR EAST, 13TH CENTURY PROBABLY ILKHANIDink on paper - bound manuscript8 by 6cm.Arabic manuscript on paper, 276 leaves plus 2 fly-leaves, 19 lines to the page, written in ghubar script in black ink, partly ruled in dark blue, verses separated by gold dots, surah headings in gold thuluth script, first two bifolia with 5 lines of text surmounted above and below by gold and polychrome cartouches, f.276b with owner inscription and date 921 AH/1515-16 AD, in brown morocco bindingCatalogue NoteEarly miniature Qur’ans are rare - while a large number of Ottoman and Qajar examples survive, examples datable to the Abbasid and Ayyubid periods are far more difficult to find. For aparable example, dated slightly earlier, see Sotheby’s, London, 6 April 2011, lot 178. The illumination on the opening bifolium of this Qur’anprises five lines of ghubar script enclosed between cartouches with square Kufic and gold palmettes extending into the margins. It is thusparable to several Qur’ans attributed to the Near East and Mesopotamian region, although all of these are in much larger scale.A miniature thirty-part Qur’an attributed to Iraq, mid-fourteenth century is now in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic art (inv. no.QUR30), which presents similarities in both the verse markers and surah headings, but differences in the opening illuminations (James 1992, pp.120-1). Another similar miniature Qur'an dated 720 AH/1320 AD from Western Persia or Anatolia was sold in these rooms, 23 April 1997, lot 53, whilst a further example, attributed to Turkey and dated 815 AH/1412 AD, was sold in these rooms, 5 July 1982, lot 103.An illuminated miniature Qur’an, Near East, late 13th/early 14th century