Page with illuminated calligraphy

Ottoman calligraphers often demonstrated their skills by writing different styles and sizes of calligraphic script on rectangular sheets of paper, which were then mounted on pasteboard. Known as qit'a, these calligraphic panels were commonly bordered with colored and marbled papers and assembled into accordion fold albums, known as muraqqaʿ. This calligraphic folio was composed using the nasta‘līq script. and contains the elaborate signature, “wrote it the poor, the wretched, the sinner shaykh Meḥmed named Es‘ad-zāde." This Istanbul-based calligrapher was named al-Sayyid Meḥmed Şeref bin ‘Abdu’r-Raḥīm Fá’iz (d. 1747), but used the patronymic Es‘ad-zāde. The inner border of this calligraphic folio, lined with gold margins and illuminated with floral decorations, is blue with white dots and the outer border is speckled with gold leaf.