In each of these works, paper serves magnificently as a vehicle of sacred and artistic expression. Editor's Note: When available, dates are given in the year-numbering system used in the Islamic calendar, AH (anno hegirae), which commemorates the Hijra, the emigration of Muhammad and his followers to the city of Medina in 622 CE. All unattributed dates are in the Common Era. Bifolio from a manuscript of the Qur'an, Islamic (Iran or Afghanistan), 485 AH/1092. Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper, each folio 10 ½ x 7 inches (26.7 x 20 centimeters). Collection The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of H. Kevorkian, 1937. 37.111.1, .2. \[Figure 1\] These two folios with their dramatic, angular, Eastern Kufic calligraphy are some of the earliest works on paper in the Metropolitan's collection. The paper reserve, or negative, space that surrounds the calligraphy possesses its own power and energy and creates a field of equilibrium amongst this potent and authoritative script. Surface sized and polished on both sides, glimmering with reflective light, touching this paper is like running your fingertips across polished marble, agate, or glass. The brush-applied, carbohydratebased sizing can be clearly seen in shortwave, ultraviolet light from either side of the paper; patterns left from the brush marks are clearly discernible running in the vertical direction. This slick and thinly applied microscopic layer of milky white starch serves many purposes besides functioning as a protective coating. Calligraphers tolerated very few inclusions, lumps, bumps or surface irregularities. Primarily, the surface sizing fills all the interstices of the cellulose matrix and allows for extreme polishing of the surface, permitting the deposition of ink to retain crisp edges and allowing the writing implement to flow uninterruptedly during the creation of sacred works of harmonic beauty and order. In a culture that views writing itself as a miracle, the calligrapher's art and especially the copying of the Qur'an are viewed with the highest of esteem. The beauty of the prose is, without exception, equally expressed in the secure and steady hand accomplishing thoughtful and mathematically constructed calligraphy. At certain angles, vertical striation marks from the polishing tool can be seen in the margins. In strong raking light as well as normal light, the bifolio exhibits strong patterns of subtle, vertical impressions that may be attributed to the paper retaining the imprint of a plaster wall or surface upon which it was dried, or it could be correlated to the mould impression from its formation process. In addition to the paper's physical strength and astonishingly healthy condition, one of the most distinguishing traits of these two sheets when viewed in transmitted light are their clearly differentiated laid lines and coarse long fibers throughout the sheet. Hare (verso) and Lion (recto), folios from a Bestiary, the Mantiq al-wahsh (Speech of the wild animals of Ka'b al'Ahbar), Islamic (Egypt, probably Fustat), Fatamid period (909–1171), eleventh to twelfth century. Opaque watercolor—carbon black, vermillion, and ochre (iron oxide)—on paper, each folio 6 x 4 ¾ inches (15.72 x 12.06 centimeters). Collection The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1954. 54.108.3. \[Figure 2 and 3\] This fragmentary folio was originally part of a zoological treatise with strong roots in the classical tradition. It belongs to a group that is considered to be among the earliest Arabic illustrated manuscripts to survive. Attribution is given to the Fatamid dynasty, whose rulers were avid collectors of illustrated codices. Lions and hares similar to those on these folios are seen in Coptic textiles and abound in Fatamid ivories and woodcarvings. The folios were found with hundreds of other paper fragments in the course of early twentieth-century excavations at Fustat, a garrison built in 641 for the armies leading the first phase of Arab conquest and later incorporated by the Fatimids in their new foundation for al Qahira (the Victorious), present-day Cairo. The fact that the folios were found in Egypt reinforces its Fatimid attribution. Brought into the Met's collection in 1954, there is no documentation in the object's file that describes the condition or any specific details of the circumstances in which the sheets were found, only their location. Figure 2 and 3. Hare (verso) and Lion (recto), folios from a Bestiary, the Mantiq al-wahsh (Speech of the wild animals of Ka'b al'Ahbar), Islamic (Egypt, probably Fustat), eleventh to twelfth century. Although little is known about the Mantiq al-wahsh in particular, the text is part of a group of Arabic sources that are connected to the classical Greek tradition of scientific handbooks, which were translated, copied, and expanded by Muslim scholars from the late eighth century. Its history is noteworthy as we describe the character of the paper. The paper of these folios is soft, pliable, and very limp; nowhere on the sheet does it appear to have the surface sizing or burnishing treatment that we so often associate with Islamic paper in general. That being said, the calligraphy on both sides is cleanly delineated and fluid, indicating that the paper surface was at one time smooth enough to allow the pen to flow across its surface. Its color, in general, is a dark cream, gray, or tan, and is dull, with inclusions of twisted strands of fiber clumps. When viewed in transmitted light, furnish distribution is uneven and floccular with some shive inclusions; there is no evidence of the mould whatsoever. Examining under binocular magnification, several areas exist with long, twisting, multiple-ply fiber strands that appear to be remnants of rope cordage, twine, or threads. Page of Calligraphy (verso) from an Anthology of Poetry by Sa'di and Hafiz, Islamic (present-day Afghanistan, Herat), Safavid period (1501–1722), late fifteenth century. Ink, opaque watercolor, silver, and gold on paper, 11 x 7 ½ inches (30.2 x 19 centimeters). Collection The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Frederick C. Hewitt Fund, 1911. 11.84.12. \[Figure 4\] Twelve lavishly embellished folios, dated circa 1510 to 1520, survive from a dispersed anthology that includes eleven leaves from the Figure 4. Page of Calligraphy (verso) from an Anthology of Poetry by Sa'di and Hafiz, Islamic (present-day Afghanistan, Herat), late fifteenth century. Gulistan (Rose Garden) by S'adi and one leaf from the Divan (Anthology) by Hafiz copied by the calligrapher Sultan Ali Mashhadi. Soon after a loan in 1910 to the Kunstgewerbe Museum in Berlin, for an exhibition on Oriental Book Arts (Orientalische Buchkunst), the group was formally acquired by the Metropolitan in 1911. Each page is constructed with three and sometimes four individual sheets of paper, pasted back to back and dyed in a variety of colors. The poetry panels are separate from the outer borders and are delineated within multiple parallel lines of ruled pen work. The calligraphy pages are subtly dyed and tinted with a variety of soft, pleasing colors (blues, buffs, pale orange). Aside from symbolic meaning attached to colors, slightly tinted papers that are restful to the eye have been endorsed over the centuries for the art of calligraphy, as pure white is harsh and glaring, like looking at the sun. The interior space of the poetry panels is geometrically divided with gold-ruled lines in numerous configurations and proportions (not following any strict order or system). Graceful and dynamic nastaq'liq script is executed in richly bound, carbon black ink with colored inks making restrained yet delightful appearances in white (lead), blue (ultramarine), red (vermilion), and glimmering gold. Valuable manuscripts were often remounted with new margins for a number of reasons: aesthetic or changing tastes, physical or structural reasons (deteriorated copper-green ruled lines) rendering the borders unstable. The folios of this greatly treasured, fifteenth-century manuscript were remounted in the sixteenth century within some of the most dazzling and elegant painting in metallic liquid (shell gold and silver) paint to adorn the margins of any book. All of the papers that constitute the margins were tinted or dyed by a brush application of their colorants. (Side note: Identification of specific organic dyes is extremely challenging. In collaboration with the museum's scientific research staff, we are conducting ambitious investigations, employing recently developed procedures that are either non-destructive or require micron-scale samples. Publications of these discoveries will be forthcoming.) Observations made around delaminating corners and associatively exposed versos revealed sides of untreated and cream-colored fibers. Pasted together (with starch), back to back and simultaneously overlapping all edges of the calligraphic interior panels, alternating colors of tinted margins are the supports for spectacular gold and silver paintings of flying tigers, preying foxes, winged phoenix, Chinese dragons, resting fawns under canopies of branching trees ripe with fruits, resting birds, and silver streams. Unfortunately silver, which was used ubiquitously in manuscript illustration to represent water, is now tarnished, blackened, and irreversibly out of balance. How light, airy, and shimmery the overall effect would have been at its creation with such sensitivities these easily identifiable structures have been spotted in Persian painting from this time period. They are often seen draped over a belt, hidden up a billowing sleeve of silk, or shown being read (held along the extended forearm) and shared between lovers in an idyllic garden landscape. Frontispiece of an Album of Calligraphies Including Poetry and Prophetic Traditions. Calligrapher: Shaikh Hamdullah ibn Mustafa Dede (d. 1520), Islamic (Turkey, probably Istanbul), Ottoman period (circa 1299–1923), circa 1500. Main support: ink, watercolor, and gold on paper; margins: ink, watercolor, gold, marbled paper; binding: leather and gold; 9 inches x 12 (23.8 x 32.1 centimeters). Collection The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Edwin Binney 3rd and Edward Ablat Gifts, 1982. 1982.120.3. \[Figure 6\] This album contains ten dazzling pages of calligraphic samples written by Shaikh Hamdilath, one of the most celebrated Turkish calligraphers. Designed and assembled with great sensitivity to the directional, visual energy created; the album's complex borders of marbled and dyed papers honor and wrap around magnificently fluid calligraphic samples. Each page is constructed with a structurally similar layout: horizontally placed, large thuluth or muhaqqaq script serve as headings while numerous lines of a smaller naskh script are set below with the top page's smaller script running Figure 6. Frontispiece of an Album of Calligraphies Including Poetry and Prophetic Traditions. Calligrapher: Shaikh Hamdullah ibn Mustafa Dede (d. 1520), Islamic (Turkey, probably Istanbul), circa 1500. to interchanging the warm and cold gold and white metal of silver! The entire margin executed in precious metals elevated the setting for the poetry to a mesmerizing, glimmering scene of real and imaginary creatures and vegetation. Folio 10 (recto) from an Anthology of Persian Poetry in Oblong Format (Safina), Islamic (present-day Afghanistan, Herat), Timurid period (1370–1507), 905 AH/1499–1500. Calligrapher: Sultan Muhammad Nur (circa 1472–1536). Ink, watercolor, and gold on paper, leather binding, each folio 8 ¼ x 3 inches (21 x 7.6 centimeters). Collection The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, Louis E. and Theresa S. Seley Purchase Fund for Islamic Art, and Persian Heritage Foundation Gift, 1997. 1997.71. \[Figure 5\] Charming and delightful, this sleek, elongated book of poetry contains an amazing assortment of decorative papers with fascinating methods of manufacture. This manuscript, also known as a safina, is written in nasta'liq script to be read upright in a vertical, elongated position. Amidst these delicate and beautiful borders are gatherings of short, sonnet-like, Persian ghazal poems executed in black, white, and gold inks. It is bound at the narrow end like a ledger, in a soft, flexible, limp, unadorned, maroon-dyed, goatskin binding. With very few duplicates throughout the entire textblock, a menagerie of numerous stenciled folios, various pseudo-marbleized paper, and multicolored papers and inks, this manuscript displays many of the innovations in surface treatment techniques that developed within the book arts in Iran during this period. One of the oldest techniques of treating a writing surface for embellishment—honoring it, making it stand out above others— was dyeing or coloring. Strong, contrasting, stenciled patterns of scrolling vine work, angels, flowers, birds, leaves, and more appear in a range of colors skillfully and evenly applied without error. Pseudo-marbling is present throughout the textblock in the form of papier coule, colored paste papers, and splatter techniques. In a rich spectrum of colors from soft lavender to dark, rich, blood red, forms resemble things found in nature like roots, veining, moss, marble, tree branches, waterways, and fractals. Most likely, the paper was laid on a flat surface and then covered with a thin application of colored paste. Secondly, diluted color of paste would then be sprinkled onto the surface of the paper. The paper would then be attached to a board and tilted at an angle to allow the still-wet paste colors to run or trickle causing the pattern to form. The typical compact dimensions of these manuscripts made them ideal, pocketsize, traveling companions. In several instances, horizontally and the lower page's set on the diagonal. Small floral medallions are painted in gold, each petal containing green, blue, and red dots with glazes of orange red; pinpricks are impressed in clusters of three and catch the light. The album is compiled of ten pages, four double sided and two singular ends, that are stiff and rigid. The inner core of each page is a multi-laminar, three- or four-ply paper board onto which the calligraphy samples and the overlapping dyed and marbled papers are attached. Working from the inside out, quiet simplicity rests in the thin, rectangular, dyed paper strips that lay closest to the calligraphy. These are bordered by exquisitely crafted, cut-and-pasted strips that create the diagonal, striped borders. Each alternating and often complimentary color of the stripe is butt joined to the next with microscopic overlaps seen only under magnification. Complexity of design grows as our eye travels outwards into the borders of marbling. Marbleized paper, known as ebru, has a long tradition in Turkey and came to be much favored for calligraphic work. The marbling used for the outer borders throughout this album is stunning in its variety of shapes, use of both organic and inorganic colors, and bold rhythms. The patterns are the result of coloring agents, floated on a viscous marble bath, that are carefully transferred to the surface of the paper. Delicious and still intense pink, orange, yellow, blue, and orange hues swirl and flow into and around each other to create full blossoming flowers, traditional combed peacocks and getgels, and sprinkled and speckled stones. Even though the marbling is not from the same sheet, great attention was given to the overall balance and harmony that the two pages have on one another and among all of the constituents within each page. The outer borders are also butt joined or slight overlapped, cut into four strips all around, in each case with great effort to maintain continuity of flow patterns. What is it about marbling that has such a universal appeal? Perhaps part of its mystique is related to the indispensable and elemental role of the water in the process of the formation and the beauty of a marbled sheet. The artist both participates in the fluid dynamics and yields to the pattern's random outcome. The entire, complex construction is finished with fine ruled lines of gilding and ink applied in parallel, complementary colors with deep oranges set next to sky blues. Thickly applied ruled lines, like so many seen throughout manuscript production, not only serve to decorate and delineate the page but serve to disguise and hide many seams and joinery of these pieced-together compilations. Not only does this manufactured album possess superlative examples of Ottoman calligraphy and marbling, it is a masterpiece of the art of assemblage. Anthology of Persian Poetry. Poets: Amir Shahi of Sabzavar (d. 1453), Maulana Nur al-Din ‘Abd al-rahman Jami (1414–92), Nasir Khusrau (1003–circa 1066); Islamic (Iran or Turkey); Ottoman period (circa 1299–1923), sixteenth century. Main support: ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper; binding: lacquer, 8 ¾ x 5 ¾ inches (22.2 x 14.6 centimeters). Collection The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Joseph W. Drexel, 1889. 89.2.2152. \[Figures 7 and 8\] This anthology comprises selected works from Persian poets. Each artfully constructed page is built from two inner calligraphic pages, alternatingly dyed dark blue and light green, pasted back to back, and encased within a beautiful, natural-colored margin paper (seams disguised beneath ruled lines), speckled with large islands of gold leaf. Within each calligraphic inner panel, the dyed paper support is divided into zones with vertical and diagonal calligraphy. The calligraphy is composed in a decoupage technique known as qita'i, wherein individual letters are cut from colored papers and then meticulously arranged and affixed to the paper substrates. Every miniscule letter of every word and every vowel marker is cut by hand, with scissors, from medium weight, warm, natural colored paper, with rare exceptions of pink and yellow dyed papers. Incised lines and delicate score marks are visible only in strong, raking light and serve as visual guidelines for the artist to set down each letter of calligraphy in an orderly fashion while maintaining the diagonal flow. Within and surrounding this amazing decoupage work, a harmonious garden of thickly painted flowers and stems rest atop and add a graceful curvature within the gold-painted clouds. Everything reflects light: the glazed and polished paper of the margins, the gold leaf sprinkled on the surface, the gold clouds, and the raised and proud calligraphy. Every element elevates. The centrality and importance of the art of the book in the Islamic culture cannot be overstated. At the heart of it all lies the paper itself. Even with twenty-first-century technology, one is hard-pressed to unravel and precisely identify all the materials and techniques that went into creating these complex works of art. Conservators and conservation scientists endeavor to find the answers to many remaining mysteries, the least of which include deciphering specific organic dyes and colorants used to color the papers or unambiguously naming the plant fibers that make up the pulp. Above all, we are left in awe of these superlative craftsmen, their understanding of the natural world, their expertise, and their creativity that have resulted in some of the finest, long-lasting works of art on paper to survive. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's outstanding collection of Islamic works of art on paper is generously displayed throughout the permanent galleries and is constantly changing under diligent conservation rotation guidelines; due to their light sensitivities. Visit the museum and experience for yourself these unique and incomparably beautiful works of art on paper.

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