Page with illuminated calligraphy, Sayings attributed to the Companions of the Prophet

Ottoman calligraphers often demonstrated their skills by writing different styles and sizes of Arabic script on rectangular sheets of paper, which were then illuminated, mounted on pasteboard with colored and marbled papers, and assembled into accordion fold albums, known as muraqqaʿ. This calligraphic panel was written by the Istanbul calligrapher, Ömer bin Abdurrahman (d. 1777). He used black ink to write the heading in the thuluth style of script and the three small lines in the naskh style. To make the verse markers, an illuminator used gold to paint pinwheels and revolving circles and decorated them with blue and red dots.