Page from a Qur'an (Primary Title)
Unknown (Artist)
Although Muslims discovered paper in the 8th century—from the Chinese, with whom they battled for control of Central Asia—their use of the novel material was at first reserved for administrative documents. Qur’ans, it seems, continued to be copied on animal-skin parchment until the late 10th century. This detached folio from a Qur’an, made perhaps a centuryafter the shift to paper, features six lines of text on each page in so-called Eastern Kufic script. This evolution of the earlier Kufic is more compact, softening its angular geometry with curved flourishes that extend below what was previously a strict lower limit. Diacritics here appear in black and vowels in red.
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