Folia archeologica 40.

Gerelyes Ibolya: 17. századi török Korántartó

SILVER BOX OF A KORAN In 1985. a fine new object has got in the possession of the Hungarian National Museum. The object is made of silver, gilded. It consists of two parts. The upper part is a cylindrical container with eight sides (height: 11 cm, diameter: 2,8 cm). This container is decorated with nielloed and engraved flowers and precious gems as garnets and in the middle a cornelian. The lower part is a pierced, gilded plate, decorated with engraved flowers and corals (height: 4,5 cm, width: 9,5 cm). (Fig. 1-2-3.) Formerly in the collection of the Hungarian National Museum there was an other, very similar container (Fig. 6.). It was bought in Ragusa by Miklós Jankovich at the beginning of the last century. We were so lucky that at the excavation of Castle Eger an other similar container was found, together with other Türkisch objects. In this container the archaeologist Károly Kozák has found a little paper with Türkisch writing on it. (Fig. 7.). In Istanbul, in the collection of the Topkapi Palace Library there is also a silver box of Sancak Koran, which is very similar (in form and in measure) to our object.

9 We can add, that in European collections — in Karlsruhe and in Vienna 1

0u. — there are also silver boxes of Sancak Korans. On the basis of the style of the decoration and on the examination of the similar boxes, we can say, that our new object was made for containing a Koran, in the middle or at the second half of the 17th centyry, in a Turkish workshop.