Qurʾan Manuscript Masterpieces on Display in Houston

A special installation celebrating the art of Qurʾan manuscripts is on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston through June 28, 2026.

Sea of Ink, Forest of Pens: The Art of the Qurʾan in the Hossein Afshar Collection focuses on a dozen masterworks from the 7th to the 19th centuries, shedding light on the production of deluxe Qurʾan manuscripts from across Islamic lands over more than 1,200 years.

Highlights include:

• a mid-7th century folio from a Qurʾan manuscript written in Hijazi script style on parchment from Saudi Arabia from one of the earliest copies of the Qurʾan of which only pages and fragments survive
• a beautifully illuminated Qurʾan manuscript from Iran, dated AH 1260/1844-45, signed and dated by the calligrapher Mir ʿAbd al-Karim Muhammad Sadiq al-Husayni al-Yazdi
• Pouran Jinchi’s Tajvid Red 2 (2009), a contemporary ink-on-paper work interpreting one of the most important aspects of the Qurʾan, its tajvid, or proper recitation, highlighting the rhythmic and performative quality of the calligraphic act, and shifting the viewer’s attention from a word’s meaning to its sound
• Master calligrapher Haji Noor Deen’s Ayat al-Kursi Scroll (2015) combining the discipline of the Islamic calligraphic reed pen with the flowing style of the Chinese calligraphic brush in Sini Arabic script to copy the Ayat al-Kursi, or Throne Verse, a widely recited and inscribed Qurʾanic verse believed to offer protection over homes and families