This folio is from the “Blue Qurʾan,” among the grandest of medieval Islamic manuscripts. With its gold script on dark blue parchment, the Blue Qurʾan was an aesthetic glorification of the holy text. But it may have had other connotations. Its rich colors emulated—and perhaps competed with—imperial Byzantine manuscripts of the Bible written in gold and silver on purple or blue parchment. And the gold perhaps symbolized the light of the holy text shining through darkness and illuminating the infinite.

More gold was originally visible on the pages of this Qurʾan than we can now see. Beneath the now-tarnished silver medallion in the margin, which may have been added during a medieval refurbishment, is an original gold element. Some traces of red, and occasionally green, pigment remain. Just why the gold was covered up is unknown.

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