This concertina album contains various extracts from Arab literature (adab). The first four pages, plus pages twelve to thirteen (including the colophon page) appear to originate from the same manuscript: pre-Islamic poetry including a qasida of Laqit ibn Zurarah.

The last page bears a colophon with the name Yaq'ut al-Mustasimi and the date Jumada I 667 AH (January 1269 AD). The legendary calligrapher Yaq'ut, Master of the Six Pens, remained famous for centuries after his death in 1298 and his works are sought after to this day. Over the centuries his penmanship was frequently imitated and emulated by various scribes, who often copied manuscripts signing with his name.

Calligraphic exercises by the great masters were often cut and laid down on album pages, see for example a calligraphy signed by Yaq'ut with later sixteenth century Persian illumination sold at Christie’s London, 20 October 2016, lot 12, and an ‘unwan from the Shah Jahan album, which combined a text written by the Timurid calligrapher Mir ‘Ali with a refined Mughal illumination dated to circa 1640 and not dissimilar in style to that of this concertina album. The knotted entwined cusps and arabesques are very close to those decorating the opening page of a Qur’an attributed to Isfahan, circa 1700, now in the Nasser D. Khalili collection, inv. no.Qur244; published in Bayani, Contadini and Stanley 1999, p.148, no.47.

A Qur'an signed by Yaq'ut al-Mustasimi was sold in these rooms, 24 October 2007, lot 19, while other Qur'ans bearing an ascription to Yaq'ut were sold on 8 October 2014, lot 33; 9 October 2013, lot 48, and 25 April 2012, lot 414.