Ibn al-Sa'igh (Abd al-Rahman ibn Yusuf), calligrapher

Abd al-Rahman ibn Yusuf, known as Ibn al-Sa'igh, was a well-known calligrapher of the Mamluk period who died in 845/1441–2. He wrote a treatise on calligraphy and copied several Qur'an manuscripts in different scripts, among them one in naskh dated Shawwal 813/January–February 1411 for the library of Faris al-Saqi al-Khazindar, an official of Sultan Faraj ibn Barquq, and another in Cairo dated 814/1411–12. ^{1 2}

His best-known work is a single-volume Qur'an transcribed in muhaqqaq in 801/1398–9 for Muhammad ibn Batut al-Salihi al-Dimishqi, whose colophon says it was written "with one pen in sixty days". It is the largest Qur'an known to have been made for the Mamluks, on sheets over a metre high, slightly larger than full-baghdadi size, with eleven lines of large muhaqqaq per page and sura titles in thuluth rather than the stylised kufic usual at the time. Like its Timurid contemporary it attests to the triumph of calligraphy over illumination: the main ornaments are gold circles between the verses. ^{1 3 2}

Blair compares it with the even larger contemporary Timurid Qur'an and finds the anonymous Timurid hand smoother and more fluid, Ibn al-Sa'igh's bumpier and looser: his verticals sometimes wiggle or taper, some strokes do not connect, his vocalisation is larger and heavier, his serifs rounder. She explains the difference in size by paper technology: full-baghdadi sheets were the limit of traditional dipped moulds, which give paper smooth enough to write on both sides, whereas the Timurids probably used floating moulds for their enormous sheets. ²