Today my ink history class looked at a facsimile of an illuminated manuscript, undated, unidentified, of Islamic calligraphy. It was captivating work. Please forgive me in advance for all the butchered sight-drawings; cameras weren’t allowed. The manuscript contained several hundred pages of ornate Arabic lettering (no clue on the style or time period), gold script, some violet and red script, and illustrations.
Early sections were arranged in frames, bordered in thin blue on the outside and then in goldleaf strips inside. Within the frames were either calligraphic Arabic text, or a repeating image of these encircled pod-like things, like this:
On an early page, in one of the lower frames, in thick gold lettering:
Then later in red script:
What followed were illustrations with gold headings over them. Colourful houses, gardens, a variety of animals.
Deeper into these illustrated sections appeared a girl with an extended squid-like body floating among mountaintop clouds, a mirror being shown to her frowning face by men in the distance. Many more chimerical figures came up: bird-mammals, a crosseyed goatman surrounded by figures reaching to him in prayer, a crab devouring an old woman’s bodiless head.
The last sections resembled bookkeeping or something. One page featured cramped, doodle-like script filling a 7x8 grid so that the text conformed to X shapes against the grid's intersections. The columns and rows had scripted headings in orange and red, respectively. Later pages contained picture grids. One was packed with at least 50 miniature figures making clothes, hunting, playing the sitar, writing on a coffin (?), praying, bearing boulders, running with knives. Many of them were in front of doors. Then more strangeness: a hydrahead; two dressed female bodies joining at the neck; chimeras abound.
Can any of your read the text? Any guesses as to the origins of this manuscript?
A thousand thanks.