Mushaf al-Hadina ("Nurse's Qur'an"), Qayrawan, ca. 1019–21

The Mushaf al-Hadina, or "Nurse's Qur'an", is a monumental sixty-part Qur'an on parchment, probably made at Qayrawan about 410 AH/1019–21 CE. The Met holds a bifolium from it with a passage from Surat al-An'am, five lines of brown ink on each side of each folio. ¹

It is written in a variant of the new-style script associated with the western Islamic world, with careful contrast between thick rounded forms and thin strokes descending below the baseline; vowels are marked in red, blue and green. ¹

The colophon records that the whole manuscript, including its binding, was vocalised, illuminated and gilded by Ali ibn Ahmad al-Warraq ("the papermaker"), a renowned eleventh-century calligrapher and artist, under the supervision of Durra al-Katiba ("the lady scribe"). The writing is not consistent throughout, which suggests to Maryam Ekhtiar that more than one hand was involved. Another note reveals that it was commissioned by Fatima, nursemaid of a Zirid prince, before being endowed to the Great Mosque of Qayrawan in Ramadan 410 AH/1019–20 CE — hence its name. The author calls it the best-known surviving manuscript commissioned by a North African woman. ¹