Bookbinding — Upper cover of a bookbinding, Egypt, 15th century

Bookbinding — Upper cover of a bookbinding, Egypt, 15th century is an object recorded by Victoria and Albert Museum, dated 15th century. The museum's brief description reads: Detached binding, [Upper cover of a bookbinding], [Egypt or Syria, 15th century]..

Museum description: 1 bookbinding cover. Brown leather over paper pasteboards; blind and gold tooling; doublures removed. This cover is almost certainly from a Qurʾān. The large rectangular inner panel is filled with a complex geometrical interlace forming a number of differing pointed stars with the compartments decorated with dot punches. The main stars are repeated in the four corners of the broad outer margin which contains some of the ninety-nine attributes of Allāh.

These are written in Kūfic script. The outer border contains frames of cablework patterns, repeated crosses and plain fillets. The pasteboards are made up of many sheets, some of which have fragments of text in a neat naskh script. A number of these appear to deal with grammar and linguistics. The museum record gives material recorded as paper, leather, pasteboard; measurements Height 96 cm; Width 67 cm; place associated: Egypt, Syria.

These details come from the holding museum's own record; how far this object represents a wider collectible type has not yet been independently verified.