.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Sultan Muhammad bin Nurullah, also known as Sultan Muhammad Nur (d. circa AH 940/1533-34 AD) was a pupil of Sultan 'Ali Mashhadi and a scribe at the court of Mir 'Ali Shir Nawa'i, minister to the Timurid ruler Sultan Husayn Mirza Bayqara in Herat. His recorded works are dated between AH 912-938/1506-32 AD (Mehdi Bayani, Ahval va Asar-e Khosh-Nevisan, vol. I, Teheran, 1345 sh., pp.272-9).
Sultan Muhammad Nur was an innovative calligrapher, renowned for his work in colour (Sheila Blair, Islamic Calligraphy, Edinburgh, 2008, p.55). In the folios of this lavish manuscript, he is clearly playing with it - juxtaposing different coloured text panels, margins and inks. In 1544 Dust Muhammad compiled an album of calligraphy and painting for the Safavid Prince Bahram Mirza, which contained thirty signed specimens of Sultan Muhammad's calligraphy, many of which were written on paper of different colours (now in the Topkapi Saray Library, H.2154, published in David J. Roxburgh, The Persian Album 1400-1600, Yale 2005, pp.245-307). In the introduction Dust Muhammad lavishes praise on Sultan Muhammad for his 'accomplishment and purity' as a scribe and stresses his special expertise in writing with coloured inks (Jon Thompson and Sheila R. Canby (eds.), Hunt for Paradise: Court Arts of Safavid Iran 1501-1576, Italy, 2003, p.52). A treatise on the methods of dyeing paper and for preparing perfumed and tinted inks written in Herat in the 1430s suggests that this colourful manuscript derives from a well-established tradition (Thompson and Canby, op.cit., p.52).
A calligraphic panel signed by Sultan Muhammad Nur is included in this sale, lot 7.
Sultan Muhammad Nur was an innovative calligrapher, renowned for his work in colour (Sheila Blair, Islamic Calligraphy, Edinburgh, 2008, p.55). In the folios of this lavish manuscript, he is clearly playing with it - juxtaposing different coloured text panels, margins and inks. In 1544 Dust Muhammad compiled an album of calligraphy and painting for the Safavid Prince Bahram Mirza, which contained thirty signed specimens of Sultan Muhammad's calligraphy, many of which were written on paper of different colours (now in the Topkapi Saray Library, H.2154, published in David J. Roxburgh, The Persian Album 1400-1600, Yale 2005, pp.245-307). In the introduction Dust Muhammad lavishes praise on Sultan Muhammad for his 'accomplishment and purity' as a scribe and stresses his special expertise in writing with coloured inks (Jon Thompson and Sheila R. Canby (eds.), Hunt for Paradise: Court Arts of Safavid Iran 1501-1576, Italy, 2003, p.52). A treatise on the methods of dyeing paper and for preparing perfumed and tinted inks written in Herat in the 1430s suggests that this colourful manuscript derives from a well-established tradition (Thompson and Canby, op.cit., p.52).
A calligraphic panel signed by Sultan Muhammad Nur is included in this sale, lot 7.