The square central register contains an empty multifoil medallion outlined by two continuous intersecting strips. “The frontispiece or title page (folio 1a) contains a rectangular panel with three registers delimited by a knotted chain pattern in gold paint. See if you can connect what you see in the image to her description. The Penn Museum has another juz’ (part) from this same set, with the same decoration, so we can look at that image, while reading her description. Carine Juvin of an illuminated title page from a juz’ (1 part of 30) from a Mamluk Qur’an now located in the Louvre. As an example of scholarly description of illumination, here is a description written by Dr. Specialists tend to use either English words borrowed from describing Western manuscripts, or they use Persian or Turkish words. It is worth noting that the vocabulary for describing illumination in Islamic manuscripts is not standardized. (Image: Haverford College Quaker and Special Collections RH66 from OPenn) An example of a very simple (and incomplete) headpiece is below. Often, you will find just a headpiece, or a suggestion of a headpiece and nothing else decorative in the manuscript. The above page is quite elaborately illuminated, but illumination can also be much simpler. The margins around the page opening are also decorated with a landscape of plants and animals in gold.
Below is a double-page opening that shows various types of illumination: a superimposed headpiece (also called a titlepiece) with geometric designs, gold cloudbands with bright buds and blossoms surrounding the lines of text, rubrics or panels white floral sprays on a blue ground between the text colors and multi-colored rulings that outline the written surface. Illumination always involves multiple colorful pigments. It can serve as filler for spaces on the page. It can help direct the reader’s attention. Illumination has several possible functions. Diagrams are one category of illustration and are mostly found in scientific texts. Illustration, on the other hand, is pictorial and consists of paintings that usually represent a scene in a manuscript’s narrative text. We can think of illumination as a manuscript’s functional beautifiers.
Decoration includes illumination, illustration, diagrams and anything else that is not text or notes.
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