Minneapolis Institute of Art

Page from Qur'an

Africa

Date

12th century

Medium

Ink on parchment

Department

Arts of Global Africa

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

This striking text from chapter six of the Koran was written in maghribi , a western Islam form of kufic script. In the ninth century, the Aghlahids broke from the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad and established their own dynasty in Kairovan (present-day Tunisia). They were great patrons of the arts who, along with their successors, the Fatimids, were instrumental in developing western Islamic calligraphy throughout North Africa and Spain. The distinguishing feature of maghribi is the modification of rectangular kufic forms into cursive ones, with definite curves and almost perfect semicircles that are most evident in the flourishes in the final forms of certain letters.

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