Browse Items (68 total)

This is a twelfth-century Byzantine panel painting depicting the Virgin Hodegetria on one side and the Man of Sorrows on the other.

This ewer features Kufic text, and the owner was meant to drink from it directly.

This coin circulated under the Fatimid reign and features a non-Kufic inscription.

This silver half groat (Medieval English coin) was issued under Henry VI. On the obverse is a crowned bust (probably Henry VI himself) and on the reverse is a cross. The coin was not only clipped but at some point folded, breaking upon unfolding.

This is a miniature from a Flemish Book of Hours produced around the year 1390. It depicts Christ as the Man of Sorrows.

This folio contains part of Chapter 49, Verse 15, and the entirety of Verse 16. In the descriptions below we simply refer to it as "the 49:16 folio."

This folio comes from a Quran in the Eastern Kufic style. Notice the emphasis on vertical rather than horizontal elongation.

This folio comes from another Kufic Quran. Notice the abundant red dots and black tick marks indicating vowels, and the odd diagonal slant of the text as a whole.

Pictured here is a page out of the famous Blue Quran, which is dispersed all around the world and which the Harvard Art Museum is lucky to have a fragment of. The gold text is also in the Kufic style.

This folio shows what came after the Kufic style. Note that the letters are more curved and crammed.