Bihari senaryo

This folio contains, on the right side, verses 2-8 of Surat al-Kahf (The Cave), and, on the left side, verses 67-70 of Chapter 17 of the Qur'an, entitled Surat Bani Isra'il (The Children of Israel), also known as Surat al-Isra' (The Night Journey). The borders of the text include a commentary in Persian on a particular verse of the Qur'an. The fragment is written in a script known as bihari, a variant of naskh (cursive) typical of northern India after Timur's conquest and prior to the establishment of the Mughal Dynasty (ca. 1400-1525 A.D.). Bihari script is reconizable by its emphasis on the sublinear elements of the Arabic letter forms, thickened at their centers and chiseled like swords at their ends (James 1992b, 102). The term bihari derives from the province Bihar in eastern India, but it seems like its alternative spelling bahari describes the size (bahar) of the paper used for writing Qur'ans.