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CA0401 · visual art
Creator/community: Ibrahim Sultan, calligrapher; other book artisans unrecorded here Place/era: Probably Shiraz, Iran; dated 830 AH/1427 CE
Generated interpretation
Imagined thematic or material-study illustration accompanying Qur’an of Ibrahim Sultan; consult the separately credited reference image for documentary context. Credit: AI-generated with OpenAI image_gen for Culture Ark. Rights: Generated output; no exclusive ownership or copyrightability warranty; underlying cultural practices and third-party rights remain separate.. Changes: Resized within1400px and converted to WebP; no crop or substantive alteration.
Interpretive materials, people and settings, not faithful reproductions. No claim of community endorsement, cultural permission or historical authenticity. Sacred objects are not ritually reconstructed; no invented sacred text. Consult the separate institutional reference for the selected work.
Documented reference / existing artwork
One decorated manuscript page from the Qur’an of Ibrahim Sultan, dated 830 AH/1427 CE. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 13.228.1. Not the entire manuscript. Credit: Ibrahim Sultan / The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of Alexander Smith Cochran, 1913. Rights: Public domain; Met Open Access. Changes: Resized within1400px and converted to WebP; no crop or substantive alteration. Image source Image licence
Met API explicitly marks isPublicDomain=true. Image reuse permission does not transfer ownership of the object or resolve cultural permissions, sacred significance, provenance or restitution questions. Retain the catalog context.
History and context
This Qur’an manuscript joins the visual discipline of naskh calligraphy with ink, colour, gold, and a leather binding. Its calligrapher, Ibrahim Sultan, was also the governor of Shiraz and a grandson of Timur. The Metropolitan Museum identifies the manuscript as signed and dated to 1427, making the ruler a practitioner of a demanding art rather than only its patron. The selection should preserve the book’s religious identity as well as its appearance. To reduce the pages to attractive patterns would erase the words, reading practices, and reverence that shaped their making. The manuscript also reminds future viewers that authority, devotion, and sustained manual skill could meet in the same person.
What future readers can learn
Curatorial interpretation: Patronage and personal artistic labour can overlap, while sacred writing requires preservation of meaning as well as visual form.
Limits and cultural context
This is Met 13.228.1, not another Qur’an associated with Ibrahim Sultan. Shiraz is probable rather than certain. A public-domain image does not remove the need for respectful handling of sacred text.
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