Sultan Baybars' Qur'an Text- Pages 1 and 2

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Add. 22406, fols 1v-2r

Each of the seven volumes of the Baybars Qur'an has a magnificent frontispiece illuminated in Mamluk style, which is characterised by the extensive use of geometric patterns. This is the frontispiece of volume one, illuminated by Muhammad ibn Mubadir.

Frontispieces were often inscribed with quotations from the Qur'an. The upper and lower panels carry a quotation from chapter 56, verses 77-80.

The verses read: 'This is indeed a noble Qur'an, in a well-preserved Book, which none shall touch but the purified. It is a revelation from the Lord of the worlds'. The script used for this inscription is white eastern Kufic over a gold arabesque on a blue ground.

The central design of both pages is an eight-angled star-shaped panel. Each panel carries a word of the title, which taken together reads 'the first seventh', written in white thuluth script.