- The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. Track your hook after promotion. No further edits should be made to this page.
The result was: promoted by Vermont (talk) 01:40, 31 May 2026 (UTC)
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Isfahan Quran
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- ... that the Isfahan Quran (pictured) was written in a style that required a particularly high level of calligraphic skill?
- Source: "Even more than Kufic, these complex scripts would have required skill and precise hand movements on the calligrapher’s part –as for example in the Isfahan Qurʾan, written in 993" Alain George, The Qurʾan, Calligraphy, and the Early Civilization of Islam p. 125 (ref 3 in the article)
MartinPoulter (talk) 14:18, 21 May 2026 (UTC).
General: Article is new enough and long enough
| Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems |
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| Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation |
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| Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px. |
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| QPQ: Done. |
Overall: 
Hello @MartinPoulter! I have a couple pieces of feedback: I don't think the image is exactly clear at 100px. It's really hard, at that size, to appreciate the calligraphy. Would it be appropriate to replace this image with a closer crop that showcases the skill level & style?
The sentence "The text is set out in four lines of Kufic script written in black ink."
is missing a citation. Two locations in the Location section are missing citations. And the line beginning with "The Isfahan Quran is an example of what François Déroche called..."
is missing a citation.
And lastly, personally: I think the way the measurements of the folios are presented is a little confusing: one measurement (the width) is presented as fuzzy/inexact: "34 or 35 centimetres (13 or 14 in)"
, while the other is more exact, to a decimal point: "24 centimetres (9.4 in)"
. I think it would be best to be more consistent. And personally, I think the consistency should lean more exact than fuzzy. For example, you could say something like "one folio is 24 x 35.1 cm (9.4 x 13.8 in) and the other is 23.9 x 33.8 cm (9.4 x 13.3 in)"
. But definitely double-check my measurements here. What do you think? Chao Garden (talk) 04:59, 26 May 2026 (UTC)
- Thanks User:Chao Garden for this review and for suggestions which have concretely improved the article. I've replaced the image in the nomination above, and added citations.
- As for the measurements, they vary between folios in a way that makes it hard to boil down to simple figures. In Ref 2, Alain George discusses one folio in The Met which is 24 x 35.1 cm and a Khalili folio which is 23.9 x 33.8 cm. The Minneapolis Institute of Art gives 33.02 x 20.64 cm for its folio (and I've just now noticed how smaller that height is compared to the others!) The Freer Gallery of Art does not give measurements. So rather than try to give precise measurements for each folio, I've tried to sum up the width as
"34 or 35 centimetres (13 or 14 in)"
. As you say, it's inconsistent to go to a higher level of precision for the height, so that needs to change. Since the MIA folio is smaller than the others I think it helps to be more vague; I've put21 to 24 centimetres (8 to 9 in)
to capture that range. Hopefully that's an improvement. MartinPoulter (talk) 16:01, 26 May 2026 (UTC)
Approved! Thank you @MartinPoulter! Changes look great to me, and I think the cropped image shows off the calligraphy very well. Chao Garden (talk) 18:20, 26 May 2026 (UTC)
