The first in-depth examination of the earliest corpus of Qur’ans copied at the beginning of a transformative phase in the history of Qur’an production, at the eastern frontiers of the Islamic world.
The Ghaznavid and Ghurid Qur’ans (c. eleventh–Twelfth centuries CE), studied for the first time as a corpus, inform of how the Qur’an was copied at the beginning of a transformative period in the history of its production when paper, new scripts and the vertical format were adopted. As the book illustrates the ways in which local visual trends were shaped out of diachronic and synchronic multidirectional movement within a medieval landscape that was continuously in flux, it shifts the focus to the eastern frontiers of the Islamic world, reclaiming them as centres of cultural production. It is by contextualising the Qur’an’s materiality within the religious, social and political context that the book ‘rehumanises’ them offering an understanding of how the manuscripts were conceived, produced and used, up until our day.
Arvustused
The Forgotten Qurans is a compelling survey of aesthetics in the service of piety that offers a transformative perspective on calligraphy and the material Quran. It illuminates a neglected tradition of artistic creativity in the book arts of the Ghaznavid and Ghurid sultanates of Afghanistan, no less dynamic and innovative than that witnessed in their spectacular architectural projects. Challenging the hegemony enjoyed by a few select cities in standard histories of Islamic art, the book questions established notions of centre and periphery, inviting us to reconsider their legacies to the field. -- Finbar Barry Flood, New York University Alya Karame offers a pioneering study of the production of Quran manuscripts in the eastern part of the Muslim world in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. For the first time, the book provides a comprehensive overview of material that has never before been the subject of such a wide-ranging study. -- François Déroche, Collège de France
Acknowledgements
List of Figures, Tables and Maps
Notes for Readers
Abbreviations
Series Editors Foreword
Preface
Introduction
1. The First Ghaznavid Qurans: Alliance of Power and Religion
2. A Sultans Quran: A New Genre
3. A Royal Ghaznavid Atelier
4. Ghurid Qurans in a Connected World
5. A Polycentric Landscape in Khurasan and Beyond
Conclusion: From Codicology to Cultural Materiality
Appendices
1. Script and Layout Studies of the Earliest Ghaznavid Qurans
2. List of Qurans from the Medieval Eastern Islamic World, c. 9501250 ce
Glossary
List of References
Index
Alya Karame is a Research Associate at the Orient-Institut Beirut. She specialises in Islamic art and material culture, with a focus on manuscript studies. In 2023, she was a fellow of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University to be later supported by the Paris Région award to pursue her research at the Institut des civilisations at the Collège de France. Her work has been supported by numerous grants, including the Arab Funds for Arts and Culture and the Andrew Mellon foundation (2019-2020). She was at the Khalili Research Centre at the University of Oxford, the recipient of the Barakat Trust award (2018-2019) and prior to that she joined the Kunsthistorisches Institut research program in Florence Connecting Art Histories in the Museum and was based at the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin (2017-2019). Karame obtained her PhD in 2018 in Islamic Art History from the University of Edinburgh and her MA in History of Art & Archaeology from the School of Oriental and African Studies.
