Ibn al-Bawwabابن البواب

A doorkeeper's son who became the second pillar of the Baghdad school. He humanised Ibn Muqla's geometry — rounder, warmer, readable — and copied sixty-four Qur'ans. The one that survives, finished in 1001 and kept at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, is the oldest existing Qur'an in cursive script: proof, a thousand years on, that clarity and beauty are one craft.

Key work: the Chester Beatty Qur'an (1000–1001 CE).