Bihari - 16th Century Quranic folio - Bihari Script - 1600

A Qur’anic leaf in Bihari Script - Sultanate India, 16th Century. Arabic manuscript on paper, 13 lines to the page written in clear bihari script in black, red and blue ink, gold rosettes decorated with blue between verses, inner margins ruled in blue and red.


Dimensions of leaf: 20.5 by 13.5cm

Dimensions of Mount: 34by 28 cm

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Item will be shipped via DHL.


The fragment is written in a script known as bihari, a variant of naskh (cursive) typical of northern India after Timur's conquest and prior to the establishment of the Mughal Dynasty (ca. 1400-1525 A.D.). Bihari script is reconizable by its emphasis on the sublinear elements of the Arabic letter forms, thickened at their centers and chiseled like swords at their ends (James 1992b, 102). The term bihari derives from the province Bihar in eastern India, but it seems like its alternative spelling bahari describes the size (bahar) of the paper used for writing Qur'ans.