RASULİD YEMEN QUR'AN JUZ' XİX from the 14th or 15th c. by Qur'anic section

Arabic manuscript on buff paper, each folio with 6ll. of large flowing naskh, red diacritics, clusters of three gold dots marking verses, three sura headings in loose gold naskh, opening folio with gold and polychrome carpet page framing title, some staining to margins, in contemporary brown morocco stamped with elaborate cruciform motif, doublures stamped with central medallion within calligraphic frame. COMPLETE BİNDİNG WİTH FLAP. 18 x 13 cm. WİTH AN ENDOWMENT BY ALMAHDİ İBN 'İZZUDDİN İBN EMİR AL MU'MİNİN AL HASAN İBN EMİR AL MU'MİNİN 'İZZUDDİN ... AL MU'AYYAD İN 991 H. ONE OF THE EWLL-KNOWN ZAYDİ SCHOLARS İN YEMEN AND GRAND SON OF THE İMAM AL HASAN B. 'İZZUDDİN. (see Christies description for a juz' from the same set, the İslamic sale 27 April 2017). This manuscript retains a highly interesting bookcover. The composition of its decoration is arranged around a central quatrefoil. Four untooled fleur-de-lys rise from this quatrefoil to form a large lozenge or four-pointed star. The points of this star encroach on the rectangular borders of the cover whilst stylized palmettes, also untooled, fill in the spandrels. These motifs are silhouetted against a densely textured ground of stamped ringlets. A very close comparable example is provided by a 14th or 15th century South Arabian bookcover in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (Gulnar Bosch, John Carswell, Guy Petherbridge, Islamic Bindings & Bookmaking, exhibition catalogue, Chicago, 1981, cat.10, p.98-99). It is the work of the maker Isma'il. The doublures of our manuscript are stamped with the repeated benedictory inscription al-'izz al-muqim al-da'im ('lasting and perpetual glory') which also appears on the binding of a Yemeni Qur'an dated to 1450-1500 in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection (David James, After Timur, Oxford, 1992, cat.11, pp.52-53).