One-half of a double-page frontispiece, Juz 10

Each of these two folios was once paired with a matching folio and placed at the beginning of one section (or juz) of a monumental 30-part Qur’an, the folios of which are now dispersed around the world. The first and last openings of text in each section were surrounded by illumination and, also, each chapter began with an elaborate illuminated heading. Some of the surviving folios are signed by either the calligrapher or the illuminator. Several are also dated, and from this we know that on average it took three months to illuminate one volume, about twice as long as it took to copy out the text.