A 14th-century manuscript once owned by Qansouh al-Ghury, the last of the Mamluks who ruled Egypt before the Ottoman invasion in 1517, was to be auctioned at Sotheby’s in London, but the auction has been stopped.
The auction price had been estimated at 7,000 to 10,000 pounds sterling.
The Egyptian National Library and Archives succeeded in stopping the sale when it informed Sotheby’s that the manuscript had been with the archive of the Egyptian Book House since 1884, and was last spotted there in 1892.
The Sotheby’s auction, titled “The Arts of the Islamic World”, also includes an Egyptian Mameluke manuscript titled “Al-Samad Family” valued at an estimated 6,000 to 8,000 pounds sterling.
Watani International
28 October 2018