Page from an illuminated Qur'an manuscript

This folio is from the largest and grandest Qurʾan manuscript ever produced in the western part of the Islamic world and one of the largest parchment Qurʾans ever made. The complete manuscript contained around 1,050 folios. Its size suggests that it was probably intended to remain permanently in a mosque or other institution for which it was made, functioning as both a manuscript for reading aloud and a powerful statement of piety and wealth by the patron who commissioned it.

The illumination is profuse, luxurious, and detailed, and was executed with great skill. A manuscript of this scale and luxury could only have been sponsored by a patron of enormous wealth and high standing — probably a prince or ruler of one of the dominant western Islamic dynasties of the period, perhaps the Nasrids of Granada (1232 – 1492) or the Marinids of Fez (1244-1465).