QUR’AN, Illuminated Arabic manuscript on paper. [Copied in Mosul, ca A.H.1120 / ca 1708].

12mo (166 x 110 mm). 294 leaves, 15ll. of text within gold and red and black rule borders, marginal gold and polychrome palmettes, sura headings in blue on gilt ground, gold and polychrome divisions, ff.1v and 2r each with central round panel within wide gold and polychrome borders. (First leaf laid down, second leaf with margins renewed, marginal repairs to last leaf, some soiling.) Contemporary red morocco Islamic binding, blind-stamped arabesques with brown calf onlays within blind-stamped borders, central brown calf onlay on fore-edge flap (some light wear, hinges reinforced, endpapers renewed); morocco folding case. Provenance: E. A. Wallis Budge (gift inscription, 9 August 1927 to:) C. J. Gadd.

NOTED EGYPTOLOGIST E. A. WALLIS BUDGE’S COPY, GIVEN TO ASSYRIOLOGIST C. J. GADD

Wallis Budge, English Egyptologist, Orientalist, and philologist, worked for the British Museum and published several works on the ancient Near East. He helped build the British Museum’s collection of cuneiform tablets, manuscripts, and papyri. He developed an interest in languages at a young age, and studies Biblical Hebrew, Syriac, Assyrian, Ge’ez and Arabic. Laid in is a note by him: “This copy was believed to have been written about A. H. 1120 by the Mullah of Mosul. E. A. Wallis Budge 9.8.27.” Wallis Budge gave the book to his colleague at the British Museum, C. J. Gadd, an Assyriologist, served as Chair of Ancient Semitic Languages and Civilizations at the School of Oriental and African Studies.