Ottoman Collection Prayers (1 results)

8vo (112 x 160 mm). Arabic manuscript on polished cream paper. 130 leaves, carefully numbered in red ink. 11 lines of elegant black naskh within gilt borders with generous marginal glosses, gilt and polychrome roundel verse markers, some words in gold or red. Several elaborate gilt and coloured headpieces and decorations, as well as two full-page miniatures of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in gilt and polychrome. Contemporary brown morocco with fore-edge flap, tooled central medallion and corner spandrels enclosing arabesques. An uncommonly prettily illustrated Arabic collection of Quranic and other prayers, including Surah 6 (al-An'am, "The Cattle") and Surah 35 (Fatir, "The Originator"), as well as the famous "Dala'il al-khayrat" ("Waymarks of Benefits"), an extensive book of Sunni poems in praise of the Prophet Muhammad compiled by the Moroccan Sufi scholar Muhammad ibn Sulaiman al-Jazuli (807-870 H / 1405-1465 CE). Received throughout the Islamic world, it functioned as a kind of Muslim catechism. - Binding rubbed, extremeties professionally repaired; old annotations to endpapers. The colophon states the date AH 1156 and the name of the scribe, Hafez Mehmet, known as Cakizadeh (?). - Provenance: from the private collection of Michel E. Abemayor (1912-1975) of New York, the last descendant of an important Cairo dynasty of dealers in Egyptian antiquities, with his collection ticket to front pastedown.