Lot 380: QUR'AN

QUR'AN
SIGNED ESMA IBRET, OTTOMAN TURKEY, DATED AH 1210/1795-96 AD
Arabic manuscript on paper, 302ff. plus 4 fly-leaves, each folio with 15ll. of elegant black naskh, catchwords, an array of different gold and polychrome roundel verse markers, sura headings in white naskh on gold ground surrounded by elaborate polychrome decoration, the margins with gold cartouches with white calligraphy and different polychrome decoration marking hizb and sajada, juz' and nisf markers in gold naskh in the margins, the opening bifolio with gold and polychrome floral illumination on gold ground framing the text, colophon signed Esma Ibret, in original binding with flap decorated with gilt floral decoration, the doublures red with central gilt medallions
Folio 7½ x 4½in. (18.5 x 11.5cm.); text panel 5¼ x 2¾in. (7 x 3cm.)

VARIOUS PROPERTIES
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The writer and calligrapher Esme Ibret Hanam, is believed to have been born in AH 1194/1780 AD, to an aristocratic family in Istanbul. She grew up as a member of a rich family and as an only child, her father took special interest in her education and assigned to her important professors to teach her the Qur'an, religious studies and the other liberal arts and sciences. When she reached 10 years of age, her father transferred her to the scriptorium of Sheikh Murad which was a centre for the important calligraphers and illuminators of the age. She went on to study the rules and origins of the Arabic script and it's art, under the supervision of such masters of the calligraphy as Isma'il al-Zuhdi, Ibrahim Shafiq and Mahmud Jalal al-Din whom she later married. By the time she was 25 she had become the most famous female calligrapher in the Ottoman Empire. She is known to have written two Qur'ans. The present example is the first, which she wrote in AH 1210, at 16 years of age. The second she wrote in AH 1241 and is presently in the Topkapi Saray museum. She also wrote several copies of the Dala'il al-Khayrat and a number of hileyhs for Sultan Selim III. Of these hilyehs two are known - one in the Istanbul Museum and the second in the Cairo Museum. She died in AH 1245. (Al-Sana'a al-Turkiyeh, Vol. 7, 1972 and Rado, Turkish Calligraphers, Istanbul 1980, p. 168).