OnIslam & Newspapers
Monday, 25 August 2014 00:00
The history of torn Qur’an page, which comes from an estate in ×Melbourne, was not identified.
CAIRO – A hand-painted torn page of the Muslims’ holy book of the Qur’an has been sold for $68,000 in aSydney auction, dashing expectations of estimates putting it between $37 and $55.
“All we did was have a close look of it - the reality is, it is very hard to get an expert to know what it is about,” auctioneer ×Mark Owens told Daily MailAustralia on Monday, August 25.
“What we did was take as many photos as we could and email it to anyone interested.”
The history of torn Qur’an page, which comes from an estate in ×Melbourne, has not been identified.
“I've never even spoken directly to the person who put it in apart from a couple of e-mails,” Owens explained to CNN.
“He said it came from an estate in Melbourne. I don't think he knew a great deal about it. How old it is, I still don't know.”
“We're a general auction house. We don't really know. It could be 16th century, could be 14th century, could be 18th. It's certainly not something from 50 or 100 years ago. But I can tell you it came in a frame that probably cost $3. And it wasn't in great condition – a few tears,” Owens told The Sunday Morning Herald.
In order to indentify how old the page is, a forensic analysis should be applied.
“Without putting it to forensic analysis, it's impossible to know,” Owens noted.
The auctioneer at ×Bargain Hunt Auctions sold the double sided page of Qur'an from a local resident whose family has been keeping it for years.
“So we sent out images, and overseas, to the underbidders for the last page,” Owens says.
“There's always an element of taking a punt. None of them took the opportunity to fly over and inspect it, but they wanted high-resolution photographs.”
Persian Manuscript
The first bid to buy the page was at $4400, increasing dramatically by $2000 in each bid.
Within 15 minutes, an anonymous seller from ×London who didn't attend the auction but was listening over the internet.
“We got a phone call within about 30 seconds from a very happy gentleman.”
The Qur’an page has surpassed then value of other expensive items sold by Bargain Hunt Auctions.
“But it's not hugely decorative,” Owens said.
“As is always with the Qur’an, it's just script. There's a few delicate highlights in gold. Very understated.”
This wasn't the first time that ×Bargain Hunt Auctions sells a thousand-dollar worthy page of Qur’an.
An Old Persian manuscript of Qur’an has been sold for $29,000 a few months ago after getting it from an auction on the ×Central Coast for a$10.
“I told him, 'That'll go all OK,'” Mr Owens recalls.
“We thought it would go for a couple of hundred. It ended up going for $29,000, so that was a bit of a surprise.”
The Qur’an is a revelation from ×God, the creator of the worlds, so He is the original author.
There is only one Qur’an which is in ×Arabic and many translations of the Qur’an in several languages.
There could be multiple translations by different authors in the same language such as English.
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