Asian and African studies blog

Among the treasures recently digitised thanks to the generous support of the Iran Heritage Foundation is a fine illustrated copy (BL Add.7735) of one of the most famous works in all classical Persian literature: Farīd al-Dīn ‘Aṭṭār’s Manṭiq al-ṭayr (‘Speech of the Birds’), a Sufi allegory of the quest for God. A recent posting introduced the poem and discussed some textual and artistic features of the manuscript. This posting examines the first three illustrations (see Titley, p. 35) and the accompanying text, in relation to ‘Aṭṭār’s poem and some of its principal themes. The intention is to discuss the remaining six paintings in two future postings.

British Library Add.7753, f. 28v

On folio 28v (cf. ed. Gawharīn, pp. 43-45), a beggar kneels before the princess he loves, who is accompanied by a dark-skinned woman. The latter (not mentioned in the poem) is either a maid or perhaps an adviser; the reason for suggesting the latter possibility is that her body language suggests that she is listening intently to the conversation – something servants are rarely portrayed as doing in Persian miniatures.

One day, long before, the princess had smiled at the poor man. That fatal smile had aroused false, but irrepressible, hopes in him. For years the beggar lives with the street dogs at the gates of her palace, hoping to win her love. Finally the princess sends for him and tells him that he must leave since it has been decided that otherwise he will be put to death. In reply, the beggar exclaims that he is happy to die for love of her, but asks the princess why she had smiled at him. She explains that she had simply been amused by his foolishness and naivety. The text on the page illustrated tells us that

The girl summoned the beggar secretly, and told him:
  ‘How could one like you be paired with one like me?
They’re out to get you. Run away! Be off!
  Don’t sit on my doorstep. Get up and be off!’
Said the beggar, ‘I washed my hands of life
  the day I fell madly in love with you.
May a myriad lives, like that of my restless soul,
  be scattered each moment before your face!
Since they’re going to kill me, though wrongfully,
  be kind and answer one question from me…’

British Library Add.7753, f. 30v

Folio 30v (cf. ed. Gawharīn, p. 46) depicts the hoopoe, leader of the birds, and the peacock. Most of the birds produce reasons why they cannot – or will not – set out on the perilous quest for the wondrous Sīmurgh bird. The vain and splendid peacock, having been banished from the joys of Paradise because of his pride, explains that he is unable to join the group because he is too much obsessed by the desire to return to his former celestial abode. In ‘Aṭṭār’s words:

Said [the peacock], ‘Though I am Gabriel among birds,
  something far from good came upon me through fate.
[The above couplet is at the bottom of the preceding page.]
Somewhere a foul serpent became my companion,
  so I fell in humiliation from Paradise.
When the place of my solitary worship was changed,
  my legs were tied up to the place where I stood.
Yet I am resolved, with the help of a guide,
  to find my way to Heaven from this dark place.
I’m not the kind of man to reach the King;
  to be moving about would be enough for me.
Why should the Sīmurgh care about me at all?
  the Highest Paradise is enough for me.
I have no other things to do in this world,
   if only I can get to Heaven once more.’

The rejoinder (on the next page) comes from the Hoopoe. It is not enough, he argues, for God’s creatures to aspire to the delights of Paradise. They were created to know and worship when the Creator of all, Who is like a boundless ocean possessing beauties and perfections beyond all reckoning and imagining – compared to which Paradise itself is a mere droplet.


British Library Add.7753, f. 49r 

On folio 49r (ed. Gawharīn, p. 68), the venerable Shaykh Ṣan‘ān (or Sam‘ān) falls helplessly in love as he gazes at a Christian maiden on her balcony. In this famous tale the Shaykh abandons his Muslim faith, drinks wine, and becomes the girl’s swineherd; his disciples leave in despair. Eventually, however, the maiden sees a vision and embraces Islam, while the Shaykh too regains his former faith. The verses on this page recount the beginning of the tale.

So four hundred disciples, men of worth,
  set out on the journey together with him.
From the Ka‘ba they went to furthest Asia Minor,
  marching round Anatolia from head to foot.
By chance there was a high balcony
  upon which a Christian maiden was sitting –
a Christian girl like a heavenly angel,
  with hundredfold knowledge of Christ’s way,
her beauty’s sun in Perfection’s sign [of the zodiac].
  A sun she was – but one that never set!

Before telling this extraordinary story ‘Aṭṭār explains its significance. The seeker after God, in transcending the boundaries of his limited vision, must leave behind all his preconceptions, all that that he thinks he knows. In figurative poetic language this is termed ‘infidelity’ (kufr), or the renunciation of one’s former faith, although this does not signify literally abandoning all conventional religious beliefs and practices. The Hoopoe tells the birds:

Love will open the door of poverty to you;
  Poverty will guide you to Infidelity.
When you’ve neither this faith or this unbelief,
  this soul and this body of yours are no more.
After that you’ll be man enough for this task –
  and it takes a man to unveil such secrets!
Set out like a man and have no fear;
  Pass beyond unbelief and belief. Have no fear.
How much more of this dread? Leave childhood be!
  Be falcons, be lions of men, for this quest.
Should a hundred trials come up suddenly,
  still there’s naught to fear once you’re on this Path!

(Translations by M.I. Waley)

This manuscript is now available to read in entirety on the British Library's digitised manuscripts page. Follow us on Twitter to keep in touch with further developments at @BLAsia_Africa.

Further reading
‘Aṭṭār, Farīd al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm. Manṭiq al-ṭayr. Ed. and comm. Sayyid Ṣādiq Gawharīn. Tehran, 1342/1963.
Attar, Farid ud-Din. The Conference of the Birds. Tr. Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis. London, 1984.
Ritter, Helmut. The Ocean of the Soul: men, the world and God in the stories of Farīd al-Dīn ‘Aṭṭār. Tr. J. O’Kane. Leiden, 2003.
Titley, N.M. Miniatures from Persian manuscripts. London, 1974.

Muhammad Isa Waley, Asian and African Studies

Related articles

'The Speech of the Birds': an illustrated Persian manuscript

Three of the most fascinating exhibits in ‘The Everlasting Flame: Zoroastrianism in History and Imagination’, on view at the Brunei Gallery SOAS until December 15th, concern the Zoroastrian vision of heaven and hell.

The revelations of Arda Viraz (‘righteous Viraz’), or Viraf, as his name has been transcribed in Persian, were written in Pahlavi (pre-Islamic Persian) during the early Islamic period, and reflect a time of religious instability. The story is set in the reign of the founder of the Sasanian Empire, Ardashir I (r. 224-241). It describes how the Zoroastrian community selected the righteous Viraz to visit the world of the dead returning with an account of the rewards and punishments in store. Although the story did not assume its definitive form until the 9th to 10 centuries AD, it can be regarded as part of a tradition of visionary accounts, the earliest of which is found in present-day Iran in the third-century inscriptions of the Zoroastrian high priest Kirder.

Many copies of this popular story survive in both prose and verse, with versions in Persian, Gujarati, Sanskrit and even Arabic (Kargar, p.29). Several include vivid illustrations, re-enforcing the story’s underlying importance as a Zoroastrian pedagogic text.

Arda Viraz with the divinities Srosh, Mihr and Rashn, the judge, at the Chinvat bridge, which the souls of the dead must cross. Traditionally, if a soul’s good deeds outweigh the bad it is met by a beautiful woman (actually an embodiment of the deceased's life on earth), the bridge is broad and it can easily cross on its way to paradise; if not, the bridge becomes narrow, the soul encounters an ugly hag and falls into hell.
Rylands Persian MS 41, f.12r.  Reproduced by courtesy of the University Librarian and Director, The John Rylands Library, The University of Manchester

The two manuscripts in ‘The Everlasting Flame’ are copies of a popular Persian version composed in verse in Iran at the end of the 13th century by Zartosht Bahram Pazhdu. The British Library’s manuscript (Reg.16.B.1) was copied in India and dates from the late 17th century. Although the text is in the Persian language, it was copied line by line in both Persian and Avestan (old Iranian) scripts, reflecting a tradition of transcribing Zoroastrian texts in a ‘Zoroastrian’ (i.e. Avestan) script. The manuscript was acquired for the orientalist Thomas Hyde (1636-1703) who used it as a means of deciphering the previously undeciphered Avestan script.
 

The beginning of Thomas Hyde’s copy of the Arda Viraf namah
British Library Reg.16.B.1, ff 1v-2r. 

The second copy on display (John Rylands Persian MS 41) contains 60 illustrations which vividly depict the rewards and punishments awarded after death. The scene below describes happy souls in a sweet smelling garden in paradise where birds sing, golden fishes swim and musicians perform. On enquiring how they earned such a reward, Arda Viraf is told that, while living, they killed frogs, scorpions, snakes, ants and other evil creatures (khrastar and hasharat)– one of the most meritorious actions a good Zoroastrian could perform.
 

A scene in paradise. Rylands Persian MS 41, f.26r. 
Reproduced by courtesy of the University Librarian and Director, The John Rylands Library, The University of Manchester

In contrast, more than half of the illustrations in this manuscript depict the gruesome punishments in store for those judged deficient at the Chinvat Bridge. These were to some extent tailored to the crimes committed on earth; for example the man who had butchered believers was punished by being flayed alive, another who had overindulged and not given food to the poor was starved until forced to eat his own arms out of hunger. Punishments were meted out by demonic creatures, mostly consisting of those same evil scorpions, snakes and reptiles which good Zoroastrians were encouraged to destroy.

On the right: sinners who neglected to wear the sacred girdle (kusti) and were slack in matters of religious ritual are being eaten by demonic animals. On the left: a woman is hung upside down and tormented. Her crime was to disobey her husband and argue with him.
Rylands Persian MS 41. ff 47v-48r.  Reproduced by courtesy of the University Librarian and Director, The John Rylands Library, The University of Manchester

This manuscript was copied in July 1789 in Navsari, Gujarat, by a Zoroastrian, Peshotan Jiv Hirji Homji. It was brought to England at the end of the 18th century by a collector Samuel Guise, a surgeon working for the East India Company at its factory in Surat. Guise’s collection caused quite a stir in the literary world, being mentioned in journals such as The Edinburgh Magazine and the British Critic (Sims-Williams, p.200). The orientalist William Ouseley reproduced the illustration of the disobedient wife in his Oriental Collections published in 1798. After Guise’s death in 1811, his collection was sold. Most of his Zoroastrian manuscripts were acquired by the East India Company Library (now at the British Library) but this manuscript was purchased by the Persian scholar, John Haddon Hindley. Eventually it was bought by Alexander Lindsay, 25th Earl of Crawford, from the estate of another Persian scholar, Nathaniel Bland and is now in the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester. It has recently been digitised and images of the entire work can be seen at https://luna.manchester.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/x263o9.
 

An 18th century facsimile of Samuel Guise’s copy  of the Arda Viraf namah, included with some of the earliest engravings of Zoroastrian manuscripts in William Ouseley’s Oriental Collections.
British Library SV 400, vol. 2 part 3, facing p. 318.

Further reading:

S. Stewart (ed), The Everlasting Flame: Zoroastrianism in History and Imagination. London: I.B. Tauris, 2013. Special discounted paperback edition available only from the SOAS bookshop
Articles: “Ardā Wīrāz”  by Ph. Gignoux,  “Činwad puhl” by A. Tafazzoli and “Kartir”  by P. O. Skjærvø in Encyclopædia Iranica (http://www.iranicaonline.org/).
D. Kargar, Arday-Viraf Nama: Iranian conceptions of the other world. Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2009.
H. Jamaspji Asa, M. Haug, and E.W. West, The Book of Arda Viraf: The Pahlavi Text Prepared by Destur Hoshangji Jamaspji Asa. Bombay: Govt. Central Book Depot, 1872.
J.A. Pope (tr.), The Ardai Viraf Nameh; or, the Revelations of Ardai Viraf. London: Black, Parbury & Allen, 1816.
W. Ouseley, The Oriental Collections. London: Printed by Cooper and Graham, 1797-1800.
U. Sims-Williams,  “The strange story of Samuel Guise: an 18th-century collection of Zorostrian manuscripts,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute 19, 2005 (2009), pp. 199-209.

Ursula Sims-Williams, Asian and African Studies

One of London’s most prominent celebrities in 1810 was Mirza Abu’l Hasan Khan, the ‘Envoy Extraordinary’ who was dispatched by Fath Ali Shah of Persia to the Court of King George III. He arrived in London in 1809, and the portrait shown here was commissioned by the East India Company soon after his arrival.

Portrait of Mirza Abu’l Hasan Khan, Envoy Extraordinary from the King of Persia to the Court of King George III, by William Beechey, 1809. British Library, F26.
For a catalogue record of this painting, click here.

The purpose of Mirza Abul Hasan Khan’s trip to London was to generate British interest in the Persian silk trade. In the portrait, he is dressed in a full length gold brocade gown and a cape woven with flowers. On the table next to him, there are two bundles of fabric. These garments and effects were symbolic of Mirza Abul Hasan Khan’s mission in London. He was one of a long line of Persian ambassadors who travelled to London to secure the silk trade with the East India Company. But Mirza Abul Hasan Khan was more widely regarded by the British public as an exotic foreigner.

On 2 January 1810, Charles Lamb wrote the following about Mirza Abu’l Hasan Khan, to his friend, Thomas Manning. ‘The Persian Ambassador is the principal thing talked of now.  I sent some people to see him worship the sun on Primrose Hill at half past six in the morning, 28th November; but he did not come, which makes me think the old fire-worshippers are a sect almost extinct in Persia.  The Persian Ambassador’s name is Shaw Ali Mirza.  The common people call him Shaw Nonsense’.

Perhaps the Persian envoy didn’t show up that morning because he was tired of being stared at all the time! He must have been a man of strong character, because he came to London a second time, in 1819. On that occasion, he presented a solid gold dish to the East India Company’s Court of Directors. Today, it is part the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collections.

Of course, there was a lot more to Mirza Abu'l Hasan Khan than his celebrity status. He had many high ranking friends and acquaintances in England, became a freemason, and in Persia, he worked closely with the British Ambassador to the court of Fath ʻAli Shah. The British Library holds a manuscript copy of his Persian diary (Add.23,546: Khayratnamah-yi sufara) in which he recorded his day-to-day activities in London. The portrait of Mirza Abu’l Hasan Khan (pictured above) is on permanent display in the Asia & African Studies Reading Room, so all our readers are welcome to come in and have a really good look at him.

Further reading

Diba, Layla (ed.), 'Royal Persian Paintings, The Qajar Epoch 1785- 1925', Brooklyn Museum of Art, 1998, fig XVII, p. 197.
Howes, Jennifer. “British Library”. Pages 52-87 in Ellis, L. (editor) Oil Paintings in Public Ownership in Camden, Volume 2. London: The Public Catalogue Foundation, 2013. (Full page reproduction of the painting on page 169.)
H. Javadi, 'Abulʼl-Ḥasan Khan Īlčī: Persian diplomat, b. 1190/1776 in Šīrāz', in Encyclopædia Iranica (http://www.iranicaonline.org)
Langer, Axel. The Fascination of Persia. Zurich: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2013.

Jennifer Howes, Curator of Visual Arts

Among the treasures recently digitised thanks to the generous support of the Iran Heritage Foundation is an illustrated copy (BL Add. 7735) of one of the most famous works in all classical Persian literature: Farīd al-Dīn ‘Aṭṭār’s Manṭiq al-ṭayr (‘Speech of the Birds’), a Sufi allegory of the quest for God.

In Manṭiq al-ṭayr, ‘Aṭṭār describes how the hoopoe, leader of the birds, tries to persuade them to set out on a quest to find the Sīmurgh, the supreme and immortal Bird who here symbolises the Creator. Most of the birds produce reasons why they cannot – or will not – undertake the perilous journey. Finally the hoopoe sets out with a few companions. Traversing seven valleys, which represent stages of the mystical Path, the thirty birds (sī murgh) finally encounter the object of their search, the Sīmurgh. Losing their illusory separative identities in the beatific vision, they find everlasting fulfilment.

Such is the narrative framework; but as in his other didactic works in masnavī form (rhyming couplets), ‘Aṭṭār intersperses many moral and instructive tales touching on the main themes of the poem. These include spiritual and earthly love and passion; faith and disbelief; death and the transitory nature of life in this world; and the ways in which ‘worlds collide’ in encounters between people who because of their respective positions in life are divided by a gulf that at times appears – and is surely intended by the author to be – partially analogous to that between the Creator and His creation. For that is one of the predominant leitmotifs in the illustrations to our manuscript. A future posting will look at the subjects of the paintings and their relationship to ‘Aṭṭār’s didactic messages.

First page of Farīd al-Dīn ‘Aṭṭār’s Manṭiq al-ṭayr.  British Library, Add.7735, f.1v.

What is now Add. 7735 was acquired by the British Museum in 1825 by Act of Parliament from the estate of Claudius James Rich (1787-1821), British Resident at Baghdad and a discriminating collector of some 806 Islamic manuscripts, all now in the British Library. The previous history of this manuscript is almost completely unknown; firstly because it is now incomplete and has no colophon, and secondly because any other evidence has been lost through the removal of any folios at the beginning or end of the volume which did not contain text. Folio 1r has several ownership inscriptions; all, however, date from the 12th/18th century.

An interesting feature of this manuscript which has hitherto escaped attention is the omission of a number of the stories that occur near the end of the poem. As Dick Davis, whose translation omits the epilogue, has remarked, it is anticlimactic. Indeed, its omission from Add. 7735 would have been more understandable for the sake of literary effect. But comparison with pp. 253-8 of the critical edition by Sayyid Ṣādiq Gawharīn, to whose memory this posting is dedicated, shows that the manuscript, which has matching catchwords and no missing text folios, lacks six consecutive stories altogether, then resumes with the last three tales about the Seljuk vizier Niẓām al-Mulk (ed. Gawharīn, p. 258), the Prophet Solomon, and the famous Khurāsānian Sufi Abū Sa‘īd of Mihana. The epilogue text ends as in Gawharīn (p. 259), leaving about 40% of the text area free for the colophon that was never added.

Last page of Farīd al-Dīn ‘Aṭṭār’s Manṭiq al-ṭayr.  British Library, Add.7735, f.208r.

Further textual omissions appear to have been avoided by the calligrapher who copied the manuscript writing in a smaller hand to compensate for want of space. A total of 18 extra bayts (couplets) were fitted into the lengthy story of a king who killed his vizier’s son out of jealousy (cf. ed. Gawharīn p. 238-43): 3 bayts on 195v, 3 + 3 on 196r, 3 on 197r, 3 on 197v, and 3 on 198r. Further scrutiny may perhaps bring further actual omissions from Add. 7735 to light.

Manṭiq al-ṭayr, with six couplets added.  British Library, Add.7735, f.196r.

The lack of documentary evidence for the date and region of origin of the manuscript is compensated for, to a limited extent, by the presence of miniature paintings in a style that displays a number of specific influences, and with which the fine nasta‘līq calligraphy and opening illuminated headpiece are consistent. Published descriptions of the paintings describe them as being in what is called the Later Herat style, associated with the patronage of Sultan Ḥusayn Bāyqarā who ruled from that city between 1469 and 1506, and with Kamāl al-Dīn Bihzād (d. 1536), the most famous of all Persian painters. Despite their similarities, however, the miniatures in Add. 7735 differ noticeably from those found, for example, in the British Library manuscripts Add. 25900 and Or. 6810, both copies of Niẓāmī’s Khamsa (‘Five Poems’), and in the superb copy of Sa‘dī’s poem Būstān (Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, Cairo), all produced under Bihzād’s supervision and with his participation. Likewise, they differ from the four contemporary illustrations in the equally magnificent, and Bihzādian, manuscript of ‘Aṭṭār’s Manṭiq al-ṭayr (Fletcher Fund, 63.210) preserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

The miniatures in Add. 7735 do possess some of the charm, compositional flair and atmosphere of the late 15th century masterpieces just referred to; but they are less conceptually ambitious, more restricted in palette, architectural detail and landscape, and lack the magisterial touch of Bihzād. It is known, however, that Bihzād, his star student Shaykhzāda, and a number of other Herat painters were ‘offered’ positions at the court of the Uzbek Shaybānids, based at Bukhara, who conquered the region in 1506. Others joined later, finding themselves no longer comfortable as Sunnīs in Iran under the militantly Shī‘ī Safavid dynasty. These developments ensured the partial continuation of the Later Herat tradition. Given their similarity, in certain respects, to some of the more Herat-influenced Bukhara painting of the first two or three decades of the 16th century, one is tempted to assign the Manṭiq al-ṭayr tentatively to that era.

So far as can be ascertained, our Manṭiq al-ṭayr manuscript has been ‘formally’ exhibited (apart from occasional appearances in the general display of manuscripts in the British Library, and before that in the British Museum) only twice, in 1967 and 1977; and most of the nine miniatures have never been published. Moreover, there are several inaccuracies in the descriptions of their subjects given in Miniatures from Persian Manuscripts, the late Norah Titley’s pioneering and invaluable catalogue and subject index of miniatures in the British Library and British Museum. It therefore seems a worthwhile project to reproduce and discuss them, with reference to ‘Aṭṭār’s text, in a future posting for this blog.

This manuscript is now available in our digitised manuscripts viewer. Follow us on twitter (@BLAsia_Africa) to keep in touch with further developments.

Further reading
‘Aṭṭār, Farīd al-Dīn Muḥammad. Manṭiq al-ṭayr (Maqāmāt al-ṭuyūr). Ed. and comm. Sayyid Ṣādiq Gawharīn. Tehran, 1342/1963.
Attar, Farid ud-Din. The Conference of the Birds. Tr. Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis. London, 1984.
Bahari, Ebadollah. Bihzad, master of Persian painting. London and New York, 1997.
Lukens, Marie G. ‘The Fifteenth-Century miniatures’. Online: Metropolitan Museum of Art in collaboration with JSTOR (PDF downloadable here).
Titley, N.M. Miniatures from Persian Manuscripts. London, 1974.
 
Muhammad Isa Waley, Curator for Persian

Related articles

Mantiq al-tayr ('the Speech of Birds'), part 2

• Over 300 important biblical manuscripts including the London Codex dating from c. 10th century, one of the oldest Masoretic Bibles in existence and the Torah Scroll of the Jewish community of Kaifeng.
• Anglo-Jewish charters in Hebrew and Hebrew/Latin attesting to the Jewish presence in England before the expulsion of the Jewish population in 1290 by King Edward I. They include debt acquittances (releases from debt), attestations (formal confirmations by signature), and other types of contractual transactions between Jews and non-Jews.
• A collection of 142 Karaite manuscripts, one of the best Karaite resources in the world, comparable only to the Abraham Firkovitch Karaite manuscript collection in St. Petersburg.
• Some 150 illuminated and decorated manuscripts representing the schools of medieval Hebrew illumination in France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Treasures include the Golden Haggadah, the Lisbon Bible, the North French Hebrew Miscellany, the Duke of Sussex German Pentateuch, the Harley Catalan Bible, and the King’s Spanish Bible.
• About 70 manuscripts containing texts of the Mishnah and the Talmud (Jewish legal code),  and  about 130 manuscript compendia and commentaries on Talmudic and Halakhic topics by some of the greatest Jewish luminaries such as Moses Maimonides, Rashi, Moses ben Jacob of Coucy, Isaac of Corbeil, and others. Many of these manuscripts date from the 14th and 15th centuries, with some dating back to the 12th century.

Ilana Tahan
Lead Curator, Hebrew and Christian Orient Studies 

The Islamic Manuscript Association is an organisation that promotes the cataloguing, digitisation, preservation, and research of Islamic manuscripts throughout the world.  This year’s conference focused on manuscripts of the Mamluk Empire and its contemporaries.  From September 2^nd to the 4^th, researchers, conservators, curators and librarians from across the world gathered to share their knowledge on this topic at Magdalene College, Cambridge.  The conference’s programme included 25 papers, of which I will discuss a selection in this blog.

Highlights included the presentation of Prof. Frédéric Bauden (Sorbonne – Paris IV), whose talk, “Manuscript Paper Formats of the Mamluk Period: The Contribution of Mamluk Chancery Paper,” identified the author of a unique manuscript on Mamluk-era chancery practice, al-Thaghr al-Bāsim fī Ṣina’at al-Kātib was al-Kātim , as al-Saḥmawī (d. 868/1464).  Using al-Qalqashandī’s well-known chancery manual, Ṣubḥ al-‘Āsha’ in conjunction with al-Saḥmawī’s work, Dr. Bauden established that certain of  J. von Karabaček’s calculations in his 1887 Das Arabische Papier were mistaken and are in need of revision. Throughout his paper, Dr. Bauden demonstrated the importance of chancery paper measurements for the study of Mamluk-era manuscripts.

Dr. Élise Franssen’s (University of Liège) paper, “Al-Ṣafadī: His Personality, Methodology, and Literary Tastes Approached Through His Tadhkira,”  received a very positive response from the audience and elicited much praise from those present.  Dr. Franssen focused on an autograph volume of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Khalīl Aybāk al-Ṣafadī’s (1297-1363) Tadhkira  that she described aptly as the author’s commonplace book, in which al-Ṣafadī recorded texts he found interesting, appreciated on an aesthetic level, or wanted to incorporate into his own work.   In her paper, Dr. Franssen demonstrated how the study of this autograph lends insight into a Mamluk scholar’s method of dealing with texts.

Dr. Muhammad Issa al-Sharafeen’s (Al-Bayt University, Jordan) paper, “The Copyist in the Mamluk Period,” examined the role of copyists – in contrast to calligraphers – in the production of manuscripts.  Dr. Sharafeen discussed many aspects of the manuscript production process that will interest codicologists, for instance the number of manuscripts that particular Mamluk-era scribes produced, the length of time it took for certain scribes to copy texts, and also the importance of accuracy in the professional practices of copyists and the mechanisms for correcting errors.  Dr. Sharafeen also established the identity of a scribe counterfeiting the famous calligrapher Ibn Bawwāb’s hand, casting light on an interesting example of historical forgery.  

Mr. Christopher Braun (Warburg Institute), currently pursuing a PhD, presented a paper entitled, “In Seach of Buried Riches: Arabic Manuscripts on Treasure Hunting in Medieval Islamic Egypt.”  While the extant manuscripts on treasure hunting date from the 18^th and 19^th century, the texts they contain are often much earlier, from the Mamluk and perhaps the Fatimid era.  These texts often included, in addition to instructions on where to locate the treasure, various incantations and techniques of divination in order to open the tombs in which the treasures were supposedly held.  His paper explored how these treatises may have been employed and some of the possible reasons for their creation, such as profiting from those gullible enough to purchase such manuscripts.

Dr. Osamu Otsuka’s (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) presentation, “A Forgotten Ilkhanid Historical Work: Abū al-Qāsim Kāshānī’s Zubdat al-Tawārīkh,” challenged the current understanding of Ilkhanid historiography by examining a neglected author, Abū al-Qāsim Kāshānī (d. 1335 AD) and his comprehensive history, the Zubdat al-Tawārīkh, written for the seventh Ilkhanid ruler, Ghāzān Khān (r. 1294-1304 AD) .   Dr. Otsuka compared this work with the well-studied Jāmi’ al-Tawārīkh of Rashīd al-Dīn (d. 1318 AD) and argued that through a process of textual borrowing (what we today would call plagiarism but was common practice in the writing of historical chronicles in the premodern world), Rashīd al-Dīn adapted large parts of Kāshānī’s more comprehensive Zubdat al-Tawārīkh into his Jāmi’ al-Tawārīkh.  Because of the similarity between the two works, scholars have often deduced that the opposite was the case, that Kāshānī’s work was the less original of the two, and Rashīd al-Dīn was the great chronicler; however, Dr. Otsuka sought to establish Kāshānī’s rightful place in Ilkhanid historiography.

While the above brief description of a selection of papers from the conference does not give justice to the breadth and depth of scholarship presented in Magdalene College, it should give the reader an idea of the variety of topics that were addressed over the three days.  A suggestion to TIMA would be to publish the conference proceedings, as many of the papers are very useful manuscript curators and researchers.

Further events included a speech by Dr. Iman Ezz el-Din Ismail (General Director of the Egyptian National Library, Bāb al-Khalq) on the receipt of UNESCO protected heritage status for her institution’s collection of Mamluk Qur’ans.  Workshops were also offered on digitistion and on how to contribute to a new world-wide union catalogue of Islamic manuscripts.

 Next year’s conference will be held again at Madgalene College from August 31^st to September 2^nd, 2014, and the topic will be Manuscripts and Conflict.

Nur Sobers-Khan, Asian and African Studies
- See more at: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/asian-and-african/2013/08/index.html#sthash.CHUMO96m.dpuf

Nur Sobers-Khan, Asian and African Studies
- See more at: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/asian-and-african/2013/08/index.html#sthash.CHUMO96m.dpuf

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

Last month I wrote about Or.13295, a beautiful manuscript of the Taj al-Salatin, ‘Crown of Kings’.  The Taj al-Salatin is a 17th-century Malay work modelled on the Persian genre of ‘Mirrors for Princes’, texts containing moral and ethical advice on good governance for rulers. Or. 13295, which was copied in Penang in 1824, is one of the finest illuminated Malay manuscripts known, and all my attention in that blog post was focussed on its artistic aspects: the exquisitely decorated frames, the accomplished and neat hand of the scribe, and the deluxe binding of red leather and gilt. 

The British Library also holds another manuscript of a shortened version of the Taj al-salatin, Add. 12378, which is much more typical of most Malay manuscripts in being quite plain in its presentation, the lines of text in black ink only enlivened by occasional dashes of red to highlight certain words, for example to indicate the start of a new section. Again, as is the case for most Malay manuscripts, there is no indication of where or when it was copied, but in view of the use of English paper watermarked ‘1803’ and ‘1806’, and the characteristic ‘Kedah’ shape of the letters jim, ca, ha and kha, it is likely that this manuscript was also copied in Penang, where its later owner, John Crawfurd,  was based from 1808 to 1811 in the service of the East India Company.

The opening lines of a shortened version of Taj al-Salatin, addressed firstly to rulers (raja), secondly ministers (menteri), thirdly subjects (rakyat), and fourthly, the readers and future copyists of the book (orang yang menurutkan kitab ini dan menyalinkan kitab ini).  British Library, Add. 12783, f.1v. 

Without the distraction of any beautiful decoration, we can focus on the contents of this text, which was written by Bukhari al-Johori in Aceh in 1603.  Its advice on ideals of behaviour for kings, ministers and subjects is illustrated by Qur’anic quotations and through anecdotes (hikayat) about role models such as ancient Sassanian kings, Islamic prophets and the early caliphs, with many references to Persian and Arabic works.  Taj al-Salatin became one of the most popular works in the Islamic courts of the Malay archipelago: over twenty Malay manuscripts are known, as well as translations into Javanese, and it was printed in Batavia (present-day Jakarta) by a Dutch scholar as early as 1827.  The full text of ‘The Crown of Kings’ contains 24 chapters, arranged in four sections, three major and one minor, and the scholar Vladimir Braginsky has suggested that the structural arrangement of the text can be likened to the shape of a traditional Persian crown itself (as depicted in the miniature below from the Shahnama), with the concept of justice as the apex from which radiate outwards the main sections of the text, and their further subdivisions.


Bahram Gur winning the crown, from the Persian epic Shahnama, a manuscript from India, 1437.  British Library, Or.1403, f.363v. 


Schematic representation of the structure of the Taj al-Salatin, recalling the radial form of a traditional Persian crown, with the concept of justice at the apex, by Braginsky (2000: 201).  Reproduced with permission from the author.

Chapter 12 of the Taj al-Salatin is devoted to the behaviour of envoys and diplomats, and their need for honesty and integrity.  A good example of the narrative style of the Taj al-Salatin is a cautionary tale retold from the Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain, of when Iskandar sent an envoy to King Dara.  On his return, the envoy read out Dara’s reply.  Something struck Iskandar as being suspicious, and he ordered another envoy to write down the statement and report the matter back to Dara.  The letter was returned to Iskandar with the offending word cut out, and Dara’s reply, ‘I cut out the word in the letter because that word is not my word. When I read your letter, your envoy was not present, otherwise I would have had his tongue cut out of his mouth, and so instead I have had the word cut out from the letter (Bermula aku mengeratkan kata ini di dalam surat itu karena kata itu bukan kataku, dan tatkala kubaca surat itu tiada ada hadir pesuruhmu supaya kusuruh kerat lidah pesuruhmu itu, maka aku mengeratkan kata itu yang bukan kata aku).’  Iskandar summoned the offending envoy and, as punishment, ordered his tongue to be cut out.


King Dara’s reply to Iskandar Zulkarnain, from Pasal 12 of Taj al-Salatin.  British Library, Add. 12378, f.42r (detail).

Both manuscripts of the Taj al-Salatin are amongst nearly fifty Malay manuscripts in the British Library now fully accessible online on the Digitised Manuscripts site.

Further reading

Vladimir Braginsky, ‘Tajus Salatin (The Crown of Sultans) of Bukhari al-Jauhari as a canonical work and an attempt to create a Malay literary canon’, The canon in Southeast Asian literatures, ed. D. Smyth (London: Curzon, 2000), pp. 183-209
P.P. Roorda van Eysinga (ed.), De Kroon aller koningen, van Bocharie van Djohor, naar een oud Maleische geschrift vertaald (Batavia: Lands Drukkerij, 1827).
Khalid M. Hussain (ed.),  Taj us-Salatin.  Bukhari al-Jauhari. (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1992).

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asian studies