"Purity of writing is purity of the soul." So states an old Arabic saying that points to the importance of writing, and especially of beautiful writing, in Islamic culture. Islam is the first religion in which a distinction was made between the "People of the Book," that is, those who possess a revealed sacred scripture, and those who have no written revelation. Hence the importance of keeping the "revealed" book, the Qur’an, in the best possible form was central from both the religious and the aesthetic viewpoints.

Ahmad ibn al-Suhravardi al-Bakri was one of the six celebrated disciples of Yaqut al-Musta^csimi, one of the greatest masters of cursive calligraphy. This folio, the left half of the double end-page of a Qur’an, was signed by Ibn al-Suhravardi in a splendid muhaqqaq calligraphy (the three lines of text). In addition, the kufic script inside the cartouches, which were illuminated by the famous artist Muhammad ibn Aybak, states that the text was finished in the year 707 A.H. (1307/08 A.D.) in Baghdad.