This outstanding Koran in the Sakıp Sabancı Museum collection begins with the Fatiha surah and first four verses of the Bakara surah on an illuminated double spread. The spaces between the lines on these pages are decorated with gold cloud cartouches. Horizontal and vertical rectangular panels around the areas of text and the broad border around the pages are filled with gold motifs on a gold ground and tiny pink, white and blue flowers and gold branches on gold and lapis blue grounds. Encircling the broad border are marginal darts consisting of blue hatayi flowers and red carnations arranged alternately. The surah headings and words inside the marginal rosettes (cüz, aşr, hizb) are written in white ink and finely illuminated. The Arabic colophon on ff. 470v-471v reads, ‘Written with the help of God, who will judge all on the Last Day, by Hafız Osman, a weak servant in need of the grace of Almighty God, whose namesake is he who compiled the Koran [Osman], at the end of Ramazan in the year 1093 of the Hegira of the possessor of grace and honour [Muhammad].’ On f. 471r is a Persian text in nesih script explaining how certain letters should be read when reciting the Koran, and inside two gilded cartouches on either side of the last line is the signature of the illuminator Hasan b. Mustafa reading, ‘Illuminated by the humble Hasan b. Mustafa’. The illuminator Hasan decorated two Korans by Hafız Osman and another by İsmail b. Ali. He used the same panel illumination and dart design for a Koran copied by İsmail b. Ali in 1096/1685. The covers of the cherry coloured leather binding with flap are decorated with a gold-tooled medallion with pendants, cornerpieces and a broad border. The binding is not original but is the work of a master craftsman and appears to date from the late 19th century.
