Single-volume Qur'an

The opening text pages, the Fatihah and the beginning of surah al-Baqarah, are written in 'clouds' in gold outlined in black, on a ground of rich, but rather faint, foliate scrolls. Above and below are the surah headings and verse counts in elongated oval panels, with circular handles or ansae filled with a many-petalled rosette. Both the rosettes and the mannered Kufic of the panels have features in common with Qur'ans ordered in the 1360s by the Mamluk sultan, al-Malik al-Ashraf Sha'ban II, for his own funerary foundation or that of his mother, Khawand Barakah, in Cairo, or indeed with the stucco inscription in the main iwan of the mosque of Sultan Hasan, which was still unfinished at his death in 1362.