The scroll comprises the genealogy of Shaykh Sayf al-Din al-Rajihi ibn Sabiq ibn Hilal ibn Yunus going back to the Prophet Adam, and at the end of the scroll, his name is once more mentioned with further branches illustrating the lines of matrilineal descent. Shaykh Sayf al-Din al-Rajihi was the great-grandson of the founder of the Yunusi order and is understood to have arrived in Damascus from ‘the East’ or ‘from Iraq.’ Upon his arrival he was greeted with honour, receiving a village in the Ghuta along with a residence in Damascus. He went on to hold a position of great influence during the reign of Sultan Qalawun (r.1279-90) (Richards 1990, p.267).

Sources describe him as highly revered, of awe-inspiring presence with dishevelled hair and approaching seventy at the t.mes of his death in 1307 AD. Upon his death, prayers were held for him in the Great Mosque, and he was buried in his residence in the Bab Touma district of Damascus known as Dar Amin al-Dawlah (al-Safadi 1998, p.495). A scroll which confirms terms of a waqf made by Sayf al-Din al-Rahiji is in the University of Cambridge Library (inv.no. Or.1259).

The colophon states that the scribe, ‘Ali ibn Yusuf al-Qudsi, was the Muezzin of the Umayyad Mosque, or Great Mosque of Damascus. A treatise on astronomy signed by the same scribe is listed in the collects ion of St John’s College, Oxford (inv.no. MS 156B). In that manuscript, the colophon provides a further insight into his biography, where he notes he was a student of the t.mes keeper of the Umayyad Mosque, Shams al-Din Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Tizni, himself an important Syrian astronomer (Savage-Smith 2005, pp.11-19, no.3). It is also noted in the colophon that this scroll was copied from an earlier scroll, dated 19 Jumada II 697 AH/1298 AD, copied by Shaykh al-Islam Siraj al-Din al-Bulqini al-Shafi’i, most likely an ancestor of a recorded family of Egyptian scholars of Palestinian descent (Leiden 1986, p.1308). Notes in the right-hand margin provide authentication from various figures, dated between 894 AH/1489 AD, the year the scroll was completed, and 905 AH/1500 AD.

The calligraphic panels that introduce the scroll are spectacular in their variety and scale indicating the scribe had great concern for the aesthetic quality of his production, striving to achieve maximum visual impact in its introduction. In one example, he creates a calligraphic design by repeating a section of Qur’an XVII, surah al-‘isra, v.84 by forming a grid of intersecting extended verticals, each cross section punctuated by a red square. The contrast between the thickly applied ink and the smooth, ivory paper is striking and the extended verticals recall earlier Mamluk tughra designs such as Al-Qalqashandi’s design for Sultan al-Ashraf Sha’ban (r.1363-77, see Blair 2006, p.340).

Framing the static grid are lam, ya’ and ha’ terminals achieved with a particularly dynamic flourish. The effect is almost kinetic in which the letters appear to whirl around the grid, reminiscent of calligraphic pinwheels on Mamluk metalwork (see, for example an early fourteenth-century incense burner made for Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad ibn Qalawun in the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, inv.no. MW.467.2007). The scribe appears to play with scale and style throughout the scroll, punctuating the large calligraphic compositions with grids of minute words, and framing the exuberant thuluth calligraphy that forms the body of the scroll with smaller texts in red thuluth comprising blessings, prayers and quotations from the Qur’an.

Other panels in the opening of the scroll are more sculptural in their conception such as the panel of square Kufic in red and deep brown, and the deep arch of the tawakkaltu ‘ala Allah that commences the scroll. The bold letters and scale of the arch, striking in its asymmetry, can be paralleled with the opening of a calligraphic album compiled by al-Tayyibi for for Sultan Qansuh al-Ghuri in 1503 (Blair 2006, p.350, fig.8.14). Blair notes that the styles developed by the Mamluks would go on to become the basis for developments in adjacent regions including Anatolia (Blair 2006, p.352). The creative compositions in the calligraphy and the palette of red and black illustrated in this rare Mamluk example clearly found favour with the Ottomans shown by two contemporaneous calligraphic panels from an album of calligraphy produced for Sultan Bayezid II in the second half of the fifteenth century (see Christie’s, 31 March 2009, lots 136 and 137).

While numerous tooled leather Mamluk book bindings have been documented, the present lot provides a rare example of the work on an exceptionally well-preserved scroll case. The tooled designs enlivened with gold dots follow the tradition of Mamluk book bindings, comprising motifs of twelve-pointed stars, bands of S-scrolls and geometric knotwork (see, for example, Ohta 2012, figs.1.5, 4.40 and 4.58). The core of the case is formed of discarded manuscript material lined with leather, a technique similarly found in Mamluk pasteboards (ibid., fig.4.1). The lid incorporates a notch on each side suggesting there was once a strap attached for transportation. It is undoubtedly due in large part to the case that the scroll itself survives in such fine condition.