Double parchment leaf from a Koran written in eastern Kufi

A variant of classical Kufi that is more vertical in expression was found from the 10th century and was sometimes called eastern Kufi. This leaf shows that the style spread to the west. What is striking about this magnificent Koran is the extreme, almost mannered differences in thickness in the monumental script.

Quite exceptionally, we know that this “Nurse’s Koran” was commissioned by Fatima, who had cared for the Zirid prince al-Muizz ibn Badis. The Koran was finished in January 1020 and according to the colophon was written, given diacritical marks denoting the vowels, and bound by one and the same person, Ali ibn Ahmad al-Warraq, and immediately donated by Fatima to the Great Mosque in Kairouan.