Islamic Art Sales Set Records in London

LONDON—Islamic and Indian art sales have brought in record numbers at both Christie's and Sotheby's this week.

At Christie's, a 7th-century vellum leaf from a Koran sold for £2.5 million ($4.92 million) with fees, reports Bloomberg. The leaf is one of the earliest fragments of the Koran ever produced, Christie's said. The auction raised £11.8 million with fees, making it the house's highest-grossing sale of Islamic art to date.

At Sotheby's, a late-12th-century iron key to the Kaaba in Mecca, Islam's holiest pilgrimage site, sold for £9.2 million with fees, roughly 20 times its £400–600,000 estimate, to an English speaker who would not identify himself. The auction had already set a record for Sotheby's sales of Islamic art when it was halfway through, with £18.5 million raised.