Asian and African studies blog

One of the best loved of the illustrated Persian manuscripts in the British Library is the Khamsah of Nizami Or. 6810. Made in Herat during the reign of Sultan Husayn Bayqara, and with one picture dated 900/1494-95, it contains some of the finest late 15th-century painting. The glorious colour and meticulous drawing of its illustrations strike the viewer immediately, while the depth and complexity of their meaning is endlessly fascinating. In addition the manuscript poses interesting problems of artistic attribution and patronage.

Harun al-Rashid and the barber. Ascribed in notes to Bihzad and to Mirak (BL Or.6810, f. 27v).

Illustrating a parable in Makhzan al-Asrar (‘Treasury of Secrets’), the first of the five books of the Khamsah, ‘Harun al-Rashid and the barber’ takes us inside a hammam (‘bathhouse’). We are well and truly inside since the plain doorway in the right marks the entry to an area of privacy, or relative privacy.  In its main saloon, men, with their gaze politely directed away from each other, are dressing or undressing with proper decorum. To the left is a more private space, its status is expressed in a more stately architecture: this is for the moment reserved for caliphal use. In it Harun al-Rashid is the direct object of attention of two attendants, and appears to have engrossed the activity of two more. This space is the focus of the narrative: the viewer’s eye has been led towards it from right to left, according to the reading direction of the Persian script. The text tells us that when Harun visits the hammam the barber who shaves his head asks for the hand of his daughter in marriage. Harun is incensed by this impertinence, which is, moreover, repeated on his subsequent visits.  Harun puts this problem to his vizier, remarking that it seems unwise to subject oneself to the double threat of an actual razor and a dagger-like word. The vizier speculates that the barber’s presumption might result from his standing over a treasure: the caliph should order him to move his position. Harun acts accordingly; standing on a different spot, the barber no longer feels himself the caliph’s equal; excavation reveals the treasure over which had been beneath his feet. 

Over and above the requirements of the narrative, the depiction of the hammam is the gift that the artist makes to the viewer. There are minutely observed practical details such as the soot deposited on the walls by the lamps in the private room, or the precise position of hands that wring a wet towel in the public space; and there is the symbolic detail that the caliph’s robes and crown are temporarily laid aside, so that in a sense he becomes a vulnerable man on a level with the others. There is careful observation and judgement in the use of colour: the dark buff tiles of the floor are evidently not glazed, so that even when wet they will not be slippery; their colour is beautifully set off by the array of blue towels of varying stripe that blazon the function of the establishment, and that are secured into the main composition by the rod that lifts them to or from the drying line.

Is this picture the work of the great painter Bihzad? The names of both Mirak, the older master, and of Bihzad have been written underneath it at an unknown date, but the majority of scholars would attribute it to Bihzad. Writing in 1605, the Mughal emperor Jahangir, then in possession of the manuscript and priding himself on his connoisseurship, asserted that 16 of its pictures were by Bihzad, five by Mirak, and one by ʿAbd al-Razzaq, though he did not specify which (See earlier post: ‘A Jewel in the Crown’).


The Prophet mounted on the Buraq and escorted by angels passing over the Kaʻbah (BL Or.6810, f. 5v).

One of the pictures to which no notes of attribution have been added is the ‘Miʿraj’ (‘ascent’), the picture of the Prophet Muhammad carried up into the heavens on the back of the Buraq, a mount with a human face—the Buraq’s face suggests the work of Mirak, the other faces less so. The Prophet is seen in a swirl of golden clouds and surrounded by angels, against a night sky. He is above the black-draped Kaʿbah, with the town of Mecca around it treated in fascinating detail, albeit in a rather persianate architecture replete with blue and turquoise tiling. The picture follows the type of one produced some 80 years earlier in the Miscellany for Iskandar Sultan BL Add. 27261 of 1410-11 (see earlier post: ‘The Miscellany of Iskandar Sultan’). The later picture has, however, two brilliant innovations. The Prophet is here looking around him in wonder, and the precinct of the Kaʿbah contains two human figures that are so tiny that the viewer seems to look down on them from an immense height.

Iskandar, in the likeness of Husayn Bayqara, with the seven sages. An inscription in the arch of the window is dated AH 900 (1494/95). (BL Or.6810, f. 214r).

This magnificent manuscript clearly draws upon the talents of artists of the royal workshop, but it does not display the name of Sultan Husayn Bayqara, who ruled Herat from 1469 to 1506, as patron, instead a line on one of the arches of Shirin’s palace (f. 62v) says that it was made for the Amir ʿAli Farsi Barlas, and it seems that he is depicted in the frontispiece. Nevertheless, it is beyond doubt that it is Sultan Husayn Bayqara who appears, in proxy portraiture, in illustrations to the story of Iskandar (Alexander the Great), as an ideal king, surrounded by philosophers (above) or showing respect for a holy man (below).

Iskandar, in the likeness of Husayn Bayqara, visiting the wise man in a cave. Ascribed to Bihzad underneath, but to Qasim ʻAli in the text panel. (BL Or.6810, f. 273r).

Thanks to the generosity of the Barakat Trust this manuscript has been fully digitised and can be viewed in our digitised manuscripts viewer (click here Or.6810). Follow this link for a detailed catalogue description with links to all of the miniatures.

Further Reading

Ebadollah Bahari, Bihzad: Master of Persian Painting, London and New York, 1996.
Basil Gray, Persian Painting, Geneva, 1961.
Thomas W. Lentz and Glenn D. Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision, Los Angeles, 1989.
John Seyller, ‘Inspection and valuation of manuscripts in the Imperial Mughal Library’, Artibus Asiae, LVII, 3/4 (1997), pp. 243-349.
Ivan Stchoukine, Les peintures des manuscrits Tîmûrides, Paris, 1954.

Barbara Brend, Independent scholar

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31 January 2014 is the first day of the Year of the Horse, according to the traditional lunisolar Chinese Calendar.  According to this system years are counted in a series of sixty-year cycles, each identified by a combination of two Chinese characters – the first from a cycle of ten known as the Heavenly Stems representing the elements – wood, fire, earth, metal and water, the second from a cycle of twelve known as the Earthly Branches represented by animals: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, cock, dog and pig.

People born in each of these years are traditionally believed to display particular characteristics –those born in the Year of the Horse, for example, are said to be passionate, talented, adventurous and independent but also self-centred and headstrong.

The Chinese Calendar was widely used in East and at various times was adopted in Japan, Korea, Tibet and Vietnam. In all these cultures the horse had a prominent role in practical life and was widely depicted in art.

Part of a printed almanac from Dunhuang dating from AD 877. Babylonian, Persian and Indian influences can be seen including the animal zodiac. (Or.8210/P.6)

In Chinese culture the horse is an animal that represents health and persistence and the written character for horse 馬 mǎ is found in many metaphors and idioms related to fortune and well-being.  For example, 千里馬 qiān lǐ mǎ (literally: 10,000-mile horse) is a metaphor used for talented people and 馬到成功 mǎ dào chéng gōng (literally: riding to success) is used to wish someone good fortune.

In pre-modern Japan the horse was highly prized by the warrior class and horsemanship was one of the key skills of the Samurai.  The image below is taken from Riō busshoku zusetsu ‘An illustrated explanation of the selection of strong horses and cows’ (Or.15562), an album dated 1647 depicting 97 horses and 14 cows, with anatomical annotations, by Kurosawa Sekisai 黒澤石齋 (1622-1678), an expert adviser on horses to the Tokugawa Shogunate.

A selection of different kinds of horses from the Japanese Riō busshoku zusetsu (Or.15562)

Although the Chinese calendar is not widely used in Thailand, the zodiac is important for fortune-telling. According to Thai horoscopes, people born in the year of the horse almost always achieve prosperity and wealth during their lifetime. They are often successful, but not always kind-hearted. They have to be careful in their thirties, sixties and eighties as there are certain years in which they can face danger or even death. It is important at these times to make much merit (in the Buddhist sense).

Horoscope for those born in the year of the horse (ม้า ma, as in Chinese). This illustration also shows the female avatar for the year of the horse and the banana tree. (Or.13650, f 4r)

Curators of the East Asian Section, Asian and African Studies

Anyone who has been in the vicinity of the Brunei Gallery SOAS during the last few weeks could hardly have failed to notice the frenzied activity in preparation for ‘The Everlasting Flame: Zoroastrianism in History and Imagination’ which opened last Friday (see also my earlier post on this subject). Put together by Sarah Stewart, Lecturer in Zoroastrianism in the Department of the Study of Religions, SOAS, together with Pheroza Godrej, Almut Hintze, Firoza Mistree and myself, it is a first in almost every sense. Not only has the theme, Zoroastrianism from the 2nd millenium until the present date, never been presented in this way before, but the majority of the over 200 exhibits have never been on public view.


Bishop Eznik Kolbac‘i wrote this Refutation of the Sects around 440 AD. His criticism of Zoroastrianism was directed principally against the various forms of dualism. His work is valuable as a contemporary account of the religion at a time when the scriptures were still transmitted orally, a fact which Eznik mentions himself as a reason for the existence of so many conflicting views. The frontispiece of this first edition, published in Smyrna in 1762, shows Eznik instructing his pupils (British Library 17026.b.14)


I first met Sarah almost 30 years ago when we were students together in an elementary Pahlavi (a Middle-Iranian language) class at SOAS! Since then we have often discussed her dream of mounting an exhibition. The more familiar I became with the Zoroastrian material in the British Library, the more impressed I was with the incredibly wide range of materials we had. The Library's unique collection of Zoroastrian sacred texts, collected from the 17th century onwards, had been left untouched since the 19th century and I worked closely with our conservation department to restore them, hoping to get the opportunity to be able to exhibit them! The final choice of what to include was difficult, but I’m glad to say the British Library has made a significant contribution with over 30 major loans.


A 12th or 13th century copy of the Babylonian Talmud. The Talmudic period in Babylonia largely overlapped with the Sasanian empire (224-651 AD) and during this period the Babylonian rabbis shared numerous intellectual and cultural concerns with their neighbours, the Zoroastrian priests at Ctesiphon, capital of the Sasanian empire. These affected matters of civil and criminal law, private law, theology, and even ritual (British Library, Harley 5508, ff.69v-70r)


Several people have asked me what my ‘favourite’ exhibits are! The 7th century BC cuneiform tablet from Nineveh, thought to contain the name of the principal Zoroastrian deity, Ahura Mazda (‘Wise Lord’), and a 4th century Achaemenid document from northern Afghanistan attesting the earliest use of the Zoroastrian day names and offerings for the Farvardin (spirits of the dead) must be amongst the most significant items. Equally impressive are the stunning ossuaries from 7th century Sogdiana and the beautiful Parsi portraits and textiles dating from the 19th century, the result of flourishing trade with China. A gallery on the top floor also includes works by the modern artists Fereydoun Ave, Mehran Zirak and Bijan Saffari. I mentioned a few British Library favourites in a previous post (The Everlasting Flame: Zoroastrianism in History and Imagination). Here are a few more:


The concept of Zoroaster as a magician or philosopher from the East is widespread in European literature, particularly after the Renaissance with its increased awareness of Greek and Hellenistic literature. This Italian translation by Bono Giamboni of Li Livres dou Trésor by Brunetto Latini (1230–94) dates from 1425. Of Zoroaster he writes: ‘And at that time a master called Canoaster [i.e. Zoroaster] discovered the magic art of spells and other wicked words and wicked things. These and many other things happened during the first two ages of the era that finished in the time of Abraham.’ (British Library, Yates Thompson 28, f. 51r)



‘The woman who didn’t obey her husband’. This engraving, dating from 1798, from the Persian Arda Viraf Nameh (the visionary journey of Viraf the Just to heaven and hell), is displayed in the exhibition alongside the original which is now part of the John Rylands Collection, Manchester (British Library, SV 400, vol. 2 part 3, facing p. 318)


The exhibition is free and open until 15 December, Tuesday- Saturday 10.30 - 17.00 (late night Thursday until 20.00, special Sunday opening on 15 December). For more details, follow these links to the exhibition website and facebook page.

The exhibition catalogue, edited by Sarah Stewart, includes 8 essays and photographs of every item in the exhibition. It is available from the publishers I.B. Tauris and from the SOAS bookshop (at a special discount price of £17).

Ursula Sims-Williams, Asian and African Studies

Follow us on Twitter @BLAsia_Africa

Cave 16 at the Mogao caves, Dunhuang. Photograph by M. Aurel Stein, c. 1905.

Little was known of the Silk Road until archaeologists uncovered ancient cities in the desert sands, revealing astonishing sculptures, murals and manuscripts. The Buddhist cave library near Dunhuang in western China was one such remarkable discovery. Sealed around AD 1000 and only re-discovered in 1900 it contained over forty thousand manuscripts and paintings. Other sites have yielded tens of thousands more artefacts. These unique items have fascinating stories to tell of life on this ancient trade route. Owing to international archaeological activity most, however, were dispersed in the early 1900s to institutions worldwide.

The International Dunhuang Project (IDP) was formed in 1994 by the major holding institutions with the vision of reuniting these artefacts through digital photography, using web technologies to make them freely accessible to all and ensuring international standards for their preservation and cataloguing. Directed by a curatorial and imaging team at the British Library, IDP UK went online in 1998 and multilingual websites hosted by IDP partners soon followed, starting with IDP China in 2002. The international teams have an immense task but their work in conserving, cataloguing and digitising the manuscripts, paintings and artefacts has started to give a voice to the people who once lived in the cities, worshipped in the temples and traded in the markets of the Silk Road.

Hundreds of thousands of images of manuscripts, paintings, textiles and artefacts along with catalogues, translations, historical and modern photographs, explorers’ archives and more are already freely available to all on IDP’s multilingual website and are widely used by scholars, schoolchildren and others.

As part of its 20th anniversary celebrations, IDP will be arranging a series of events over autumn 2013 to spring 2014. These will include an exhibition of photographs, a conservation show and tell, an afternoon of lectures and a reception, a selection of twenty favourite items from IDP’s patrons, partners, supporters and users, and a special edition of our newsletter, IDP News. Further details will be announced shortly and will also be publicised on the IDP home page, the IDP blog and our Facebook page.

Our launch event will be a lecture given by Tim Williams (UCL). ’Mapping the Silk Road’ will take place at the British Library Conference Centre (map) on November 1 2013 at 6.30pm. Entrance is free and all are welcome. For further details and online booking visit the British Library What's On pages.

Frontispiece of a printed dated copy of the Diamond Sutra.

IDP is dependent on external funding. Our work so far has been enabled by the generous and loyal support of individuals, foundations and funding bodies worldwide. Your help is essential. You can donate directly online, Sponsor a Sutra or if you wish to discuss support of a major project please visit the IDP website to contact us.

Vic Swift, International Dunhuang Project

An exciting project I’ve been working on during the last few months is ‘The Everlasting Flame: Zoroastrianism in History and Imagination’ a new exhibition opening this autumn at the Brunei Gallery, School of Oriental and African Studies London.

One of the world’s oldest religions, Zoroastrianism originated amongst the Iranian peoples in Central Asia during the second millennium BC spreading east along the Silk Road as far as China and south-west to Iran where it was the religion of the Achaemenid kings (550-330 BC) and their successors until the Arab conquest in the mid-seventh century AD. The Zoroastrian sacred texts were composed in the Avestan (Old Iranian) language, but were transmitted orally and were not written down until the late Sasanian period (c. 224-651 AD). Even after that Zoroastrianism remained essentially oral in character with the earliest surviving manuscripts dating from the late 13th century. Central to the religion is the belief in Ahura Mazda (‘wise lord’), his spokesman Zarathustra (Zoroaster) and the dichotomy between good and evil.


One of the holiest Zoroastrian prayers, the Ashem Vohu, discovered at Dunhuang by Aurel Stein in 1917. Transcribed into Sogdian (a medieval Iranian language) script, this fragment dates from around the ninth century AD, about four centuries earlier than any other surviving Zoroastrian text (British Library Or.8212/84)

This exhibition will be the first to provide a visual narrative of the history of Zoroastrianism and its rich cultural heritage. It will include sections on the spread of Zoroastrianism along the Silk Road, the Judaeo-Christian heritage, and Zoroastrianism in Iran from the Achaemenid empire up to and including the Islamic period. Further sections are devoted to Zoroastrianism in India, the Parsis and the Parsi diaspora. In addition to texts, paintings and textiles the exhibition will include a walk-in fire temple and a 10-metre glass etching based on the cast of the western staircase from the palace of Darius at Persepolis from the British Museum.

The exhibition is being curated by Sarah Stewart (lead curator) together with Pheroza Godrej, Almut Hintze, Firoza Mistree  and myself. As you can imagine, we have been having a wonderful time sourcing material to include. Not surprisingly — since I have been involved  — the exhibition will include a large number of loans from the British Library, which is fortunate in posessing one of the most important collections of Zoroastrian manuscripts. It will run from 11 October to 15 December 2013. A catalogue will be published by IB Tauris and there will be a two-day conference associated with the exhibition, ‘Looking Back: The Formation of Zoroastrian Identity Through Rediscovery of the Past’, on 11 and 12 October 2013.

During the next few months I’ll be writing about several of the exhibits, but meanwhile here are a few select items:

An illustrated copy of the Avestan Videvdad Sadeh, the longest of all the Zoroastrian liturgies. Copied in Yazd, Iran, in 1647 (British Library RSPA 230, ff. 151v–152r)

The martyrdom of the lady Tarbo, her sister and her servant who died during the reign of the Sasanian ruler Shapur II (r. 309-379). While the historicity of martyrologies such as this is questionable, they nevertheless represent a literary tradition of the early Christian community which is based on the realities of intermittent persecution under Sasanian rule. This very early Syriac manuscript dates from the fifth or sixth century AD (British Library Add.14654, ff. 13v-14r)

Zoroaster, founder of the seven liberal arts, as portrayed in the French world chronicle, Le Trésor des histoires. Medieval Christian interpretations of Zoroastrianism, based on classical literature, often focussed on the figure Zoroaster who came to be regarded as a master of magic, a philosopher, and an astrologer, especially after the Renaissance, with its increased awareness of Greek and Hellenistic literature. Depicted here at his desk, Zoroaster is described as the founder of necromancy and the seven liberal arts. This copy dates from c.1475–80 (British Library Cotton Augustus V, f. 25v)




Parsis at prayer, the shoreline of Bombay in the distance. Early 19th-century oil painting by Horace Van Ruith (1839–1923) who visited Bombay between 1879 and 1884 and is known to have established a studio there (British Library Foster 953, detail) Images online

For more details, follow these links to the exhibition website and facebook page.

Ursula Sims-Williams, Asian and African Studies

Follow us on Twitter @BLAsia_Africa

Among the collection of 40,000 or so books and manuscripts discovered in 1907 by Sir Aurel Stein in cave 17 of the ‘Caves of a Thousand Buddhas’ near the city of Dunhuang in China,  were large numbers of scrolls including 31 written in Khotanese, a Middle Iranian language which was used between the 5th and 10th centuries in the Buddhist kingdom of Khotan on the southern branch of the Silk Route (present-day Xinjiang-Uygur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China). Of them, the Buddhist scroll Ch.c.001 (IOL Khot S.46) is by far the largest, measuring over 21 metres. It was copied in Dunhuang in the mid 10th century for a Buddhist patron Śāṃ Khīṅä Hvāṃ’ Saṃgakä who, in return, requested long life for himself and his family.

 
Ch.c.001 photographed by Stein in Serindia (Oxford, 1921), vol 4, plate CXLVI


The scroll is dated in four colophons written over a period of six months in the year of the Hare (AD 943) and includes Buddhist esoteric Mahāyāna and Tantric works written in Sanskrit and Khotanese. The first two are Sanskrit dhāraṇīs (incantations): Buddhoṣṇīṣa-vijaya and Sitātapatra (ll. 1-198), and these are followed by further texts in Khotanese: Bhadrakalpika-sūtra, a list of the names of the Buddha (ll.199-754); two almost identical deśanā (confession) texts on the same subject (ll. 755-851 and 1062-1101); and the Mahāyāna Sumukha-sūtra (ll. 852-1061), in which the Bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi and several other deities promise to protect anyone who recites and learns the sūtra.


Lines 795-803 of Ch.c.001 (IOL Khot S 46), part of a confession text written in calligraphic formal Brahmi script. 10th century. Image from IDP


To judge from its size and the care taken to preserve it, the patron, Śāṃ Khīṅä Hvāṃ’, must have been an important person. Almost certainly he can be identified with Hvāṃ’ Śāṃ Khīṅä (i.e., 王上卿  Wang Shangqing) described as a donor in both Khotanese and Chinese on a Dunhuang painting of Vaiśravana (also completed in the year of the Hare), which is preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale Paris (Pelliot Tib 0821). The importance of the patron is also suggested by the quality of the silk painting, which was originally glued to the back of the scroll and served as a cover, secured by ties.

Painted silk sūtra wrapper from Ch.c.001 (IOL Khot S 47). 10th century. Image from IDP


The painting shows a pair of birds, possibly swan geese, standing on lotus flowers and holding budding branches in their beaks. The motif of the wild goose, frequently mentioned in Dunhuang literature, is well attested in Tang painting, lacquerware, silver and ceramics, appearing, for example, on the Dunhuang banner headings MAS 876 and 877 (Ch.00304.a and b), both preserved in the British Museum.


British Museum MAS.876: one of two square-shaped fragments of plain woven silk patterned with the clamp-resist dyeing technique. The pattern consists of two motifs: a dominant large roundel with encircled rosettes and a narrower inner roundel, enclosing four paired geese; and a four-petalled flower in the centre, and the other secondary quatrefoil. The repeat in the warp direction is about 56.6 cm but it is unclear in the weft direction. Another fragment from the same textile (but without geese) is in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Дх51). Image from IDP

To find out more about the Stein collection and finds from Central Asia, visit our International Dunhuang Project Database website at idp.bl.uk. This collaborative database holds over 400,000 images from the major Central Asian collections worldwide. 

Ursula Sims-Williams, Asian and African Studies


 Keep in touch on Twitter @BLAsia_Africa

Further reading

P. O. Skjærvø, Khotanese manuscripts from Chinese Turkestan in the British Library:  a complete catalogue with texts and translation. London, 2002, p 541-50
Sh. Takubo, Tonkō Shutsudo Utengo Himitsu Kyōtenshū no Kenkyū [= Studies on the Khotanese “Collection of the esoteric sūtras” found in Tunhuang]. Tokyo, 1975
G. Dudbridge and R. E. Emmerick, “Pelliot tibétain 0821,” Studia Iranica 7/2 (1978), pp. 283-85

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The British Library is currently mid-way through a three-year partnership project with the Iran Heritage Foundation UK (with additional support from the Bahari Foundation and the Barakat Trust), to open up access and increase awareness of our collection of over 11,000 Persian manuscripts. These originate from Iran, Central Asia and India, and range in time from the 12th century to handwritten and typed texts of recent years. They include some of the most famous illustrated Persian and Mughal manuscripts, several of which were recently on view in our exhibition Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire (if you couldn't make it, see our recent post ‘A farewell to the Mughals’).

Majnun is brought in chains to Layla's tent. From Nizami's Layla Majnun. Painted by the 16th-century Safavid court artist Mir Sayyid ?Ali  (Or.2265, f. 157v). Find this online

Our aim is to construct reliable and consistent metadata describing each manuscript, and to have the bulk of the collection catalogued in digital format by the end of 2014, subject to funding. Details of over 2,000 works have already been added to FIHRIST, a web-based catalogue providing a searchable interface for manuscripts in Arabic script from the major manuscript collections in the UK.

A second part of our digital project is to digitise and put online 50 manuscripts over the next two years. So far we have uploaded the entire text of Shah Tahmasb’s copy of Nizami’s Khamsah (Or.2265) and the three poems by Khvaju Kirmani (Add.18113), copied in Baghdad in 1396. These can be read cover to cover on British Library Digitised Manuscripts.

From Nizami's Haft paykar: Bahram Gur kills the dragon. Painting by Muhammad Zaman dated 1675/76, added perhaps when the manuscript was rebound at the court of Fath ?Ali Shah Qajar (r.1797-1834) (Or.2265, f. 203v). Look at this online

Over the next few months we'll be adding the following manuscripts — so watch this space!

IO Islamic 132: Collection of Poetical Divans, Ilkhanid, 1314-15
Add. 27261: Iskandar Sultan's Miscellany dating from 1410-11
Add. 25900: Khamsah of Nizami, with paintings by Bihzad. Copied in 1442 (see previous post)
IO Islamic 3540. Firdawsi's Shahnamah. Shiraz, 16th century
Or. 6810: Khamsah of Nizami, copied for Amir Barlas. Herat ca.1494 (see previous post)
Add. 18579. Anvar-i Suhayli by Husayn Va‘iz Kashifi. Mughal, 1610-11:
IO Islamic 3442. Shahanshahnamah by Fath ʻAli Khan Saba. Qajar, 1810

 

From the Kulliyat of Khvaju Kirmani, copied in 1396. In this painting, by the artist Junayd Naqqash Sultani (his name is inscribed in an architectural block above the bed), Humay has gold coins poured on him as he leaves Humayun's room, the day after their wedding (Add.18113. f.45v). Find this online

We are now seeking funding for further digitsation. If you would like details or are able to help in any way, please visit our page ‘Opening up Access to the Persian Collections’.

Ursula Sims-Williams, Asian and African Studies

Follow us on Twitter @BLAsia_Africa

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We are often asked what the Mughals' favourite books were. Unfortunately there is no complete record of the contents of the Mughal Library, but John Seyller’s comprehensive survey in 1997 of manuscripts containing Mughal valuations and inscriptions (see below) gives a fairly good indication. A clear favourite was the Khamsah (‘Five Poems’) written in Persian by Niẓāmī (d.ca. 1202). Other very popular works were the Gulistān (‘Rose Garden’) and Būstān (‘Scented Garden’) by the well-known Persian poet Saʻdī (d. 1291/92), the poems of Jāmī (d. 1492) and, of course, the Dīvān of Ḥāfiẓ of Shiraz (d.ca. 1389). The British Library collections suggest similar conclusions, with several fine examples of Mughal copies of these works.

The Khamsah of Niẓāmī

 In a recent post (‘A Jewel in the Crown’) I wrote about what was probably the most highly regarded imperial copy of  Niẓāmī ’s Khamsah (‘Five Poems’). However an equally beautiful example is Or.12208,  which was copied for Akbar between 1593 and 1595 by ʻAbd al-Raḥīm, one of the most celebrated calligraphers of his day. It originally contained 42 illustrated folios (2 double-page illustrations), 5 of which are now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; the remaining 37 are still intact in the manuscript.  Altogether 22 different artists contributed to this work, all of whom were Hindu painters except for ʻAbd al-Ṣamad who came to India from Iran with the Emperor Humayun in 1555.

Khusraw defeats Bahrām Chūbīn, from Khusraw u Shīrīn in Niẓāmī ’s Khamsah. Illustrated by Manohar (fl c. 1580–1620) (Or.12208, f. 72r)

The Dīvān of Ḥāfiẓ

 Examples of two elegant copies of the Dīvān of Ḥāfiẓ (Or.14139 and Or.7573) were given in our most recent post. A third (Grenville XLI) probably dates from between 1600 and 1605. Folio 3r contains a note, possibly by Jahangir, saying that the work was completed at Allahabad where he held court as Prince Salim. Another note, by Shah Jahan, records that it entered his library on the day of his accession on 25 Bahman [corresponding to 8 Jum. II] 1037 (14 February 1628, a similar note occurs in Or.6810 which you can see here).

The Prophet Sulayman with attendant jinns and angels, surrounded by birds and animals (Grenville XLI, f.14r)

Saʻdī’s Gulistān and Būstān

The opening of Sadi’s Gulistān (‘Rose Garden’), copied by Mīr ʻAlī Ḥusaynī (Or.5302) 

This copy of the Gulistān was copied in 975 (1567/68) by the calligrapher Mīr ʻAlī Ḥusaynī who describes himself in the colophon as a royal scribe (al-kātib al-sulṭānī) at the capital (dār al-khilāfah), Bukhara (Uzbekistan). Assuming that this is the genuine work of the famous master Mīr ʻAlī, it is the latest dated example of his work by 20 years (Thackston, pp. 154-55). Between 1531 and 1547/48 Mīr ʻAlī copied several notable manuscripts in Bukhara which subsequently passed into Mughal ownership (see John Seyller’s article below), including another Gulistān, which was copied for Sulṭān ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz Bahādur Khān (ruled 1540-1549). The miniatures in the British Library Gulistān include six Bukhara-style paintings which were commissioned apparently at Akbar's request (see dedicational inscriptions on ff. 30r and 91r). Four of these are ascribed to the artist Shaykhm Muzahhib — possibly Shaykhm, son of Mullā Yūsuf al-Haravī, one of the painters of Rawẓat al-Muḥibbīn, also partially copied by Mīr ʻAlī (see Seyller below, p. 339). The manuscript was 'improved' again in Jahangir's reign when seven more paintings were added, probably between 1605 and 1609.

From Saʻdī’s Gulistān. The king visits the dervish, seated outside his house in a traditional chārbāgh garden, having abandoned his former way of life as a result of being introduced to worldly pleasures. Illustration by an unnamed artist, possibly Sur Das Gujarati (see Losty and Roy, p. 94), which has been added to the manuscript during Jahangir’s reign (Or.5302, f. 50r) 

 
The Būstān Add.27262, illustrated below, is dated 26 Rab. I 1039 (13 Nov. 1629) at Agra and was copied by one of Shah Jahan’s court poets, Ḥakīm Rukn al-Dīn Masʻūd called Ḥakīm Ruknā and Masīḥ (d. 1647 or 1655/56 — according to different sources). Ḥakīm Ruknā, who was also a physician, emigrated to Akbar’s court in 1597/98 having previously been in the service of the Safavid ruler Shah ʻAbbas I (r. 1588 to 1629).

From Saʻdī’s Būstān. Illustration by an unnamed artist depicting a story illustrating the advantages of silence: an old man interferes and breaks up a mixed-race courtship, only to be severely reprimanded by the girl afterwards (Add.27262, f. 129r.)

Saʻdi’s verses were also often used as examples of calligraphy. Examples by the last Mughal ruler Bahadur Shah ‘Zafar’ (r. 1837-1857) and his eldest son Mirza Darabakht (1790–1849) can be seen in an earlier post ‘A 19th century album of imperial calligraphy’. 

Ursula Sims-Williams, Asian and African Studies

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Further reading

John Seyller, “The Inspection and Valuation of Manuscripts in the Imperial Mughal library”, Artibus Asiae 57 no 3/4 (1997), pp. 243-349
Barbara Brend, The Emperor Akbar’s Khamsa of Niẓāmī. London: British Library, 1995
Wheeler Thackston, “Calligraphy in the Albums”, in E. Wright, Muraqqaʻ: Imperial Mughal Albums from the Chester Beatty Library Dublin (Alexandria, Va.: Art Services International, 2008), pp. 153-63
J.P. Losty and M. Roy, Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire. London: British Library, 2012
J.P. Losty, The Art of the Book in India. London: British Library, 1982

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