World-leading rare book dealers Peter Harrington will offer an attractive copy of David Bryce’s celebrated miniature Quran, one of the most iconic miniature books ever produced, at this year’s Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.
Printed in Glasgow in the late 1890s, the photolithographed Bryce Quran was the earliest European-printed edition of the Quran in miniature format.
Bryce produced his miniature Qurans for Muslim readers across Europe, the Indian subcontinent, East Africa, and the Middle East. Initially sold with a protective metal locket with an inset magnifying lens, the edition combined remarkable technical achievement with commercial success. Earlier miniature Qurans had been lithographed in India and the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth century, but none matched the Bryce edition’s widespread popularity.
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Sarah Trevisan, a Middle East specialist at Peter Harrington said: “We have brought this very special item which is a minture quran printed in Scotland in about 1896 so the late 19th century and it is a photolithograpic production, which means it was first produced as an actual manuscript in Turkey and then it was photographed and made much smaller and then printed in this very tiny format”.
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Measuring just 26 × 19 mm, the Qur’an is photolithographed in Arabic. It is bound in its original red leather with gilt decoration and housed in its original metal locket, the format in which these extraordinary miniature books were first issued.
Peter Harrington is offering the miniature Quran for £2,750 (around Dh13,587) at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, which runs until September 18.
Source: Khaleej Times