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Lot Essay
This celestial globe is attributable to Diya’ al-Din Muhammad bin Qa’im Muhammad bin Mulla Isa bin Shaykh Alladad Asturlabi Humayuni Lahuri. Diya’ al-Din was a member of a family who for four generations through the 16th and 17th centuries maintained a workshop at Lahore producing well-made scientific instruments, including planispheric astrolabes and celestial globes.
The family of metalworkers excelled in certain metallurgical techniques, in particular the production of hollow cast globes using the lost-wax, or cire perdue, method. The earliest extant instrument produced by the family was an astrolabe made in AH 975/1567-68 AD by the founder of the workshop, Shaykh Allahdad Asturlabi Humayuni Lahuri (formerly in the library of Nawab Sir Salar Jung Bahadur in Hyderabdad). The nisba Humayuni might suggest simply that he lived during the reign of Humayun or perhaps that he was an astrolabist active at his court. Twenty-one signed globes by this family of makers are known, of which Diya’ al-Din’s range in date from 1645 to 1680. One of his celestial globes (the only one which is not a seamless globe) bears an inscription stating that it was made at the order of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, indicating that his work was held in as high regard as that of the rest of his illustrious family (Private Collection, Paris; Emilie Savage-Smith, ‘Islamicate Celestial Globes: Their History, Construction, and Use’, Smithsonian Studies in History and Technology, Number 46, Washington D.C., 1985, globe no.30, fig. 17, p.42).
Our globe is virtually identical to two examples signed by Diya’ al-Din and made in the same year, AH 1074/1663-64 AD. One of those, commonly referred to now as the ‘Barlow Globe’, is in the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh (inv.no.1890-331). The other is in the Museum of the History of Science, in Oxford (inv.no.57-84/25; Savage-Smith, op.cit., globes nos.27 and 28, pp.230-31). All three globes share the same engraving technique, design, precision and star placements – and are distinct from other examples known.
Whilst Diya’ al-Din’s prolific father Qa’im Muhammad worked within a limited framework, avoiding experimentation and giving scant attention to the decorative potential of the celestial figures he reproduced, his son Diya’ al-Din manipulated the traditional forms – paying more attention to decorative detailing such as variations in surface texture (Andrea P.A. Belloli, ‘The Constellation Figures on the Smithsonian Globe’, in Savage-Smith, op.cit., p.105). The iconography of figures such as Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Auriga, Boötes, Hercules, the head of Draco, Delphinus (with crown) and Argo are virtually the same on our globe and the Edinburgh and Oxford examples, all distinctive of Diya’ al-Din’s more ornamental and detailed style. The horse whip carried by Auriga, for instance, is transformed in Diya’ al-Din’s renditions to a staff issuing rows of leaf-like forms, as seen here. Similarly the Virgo of our globe is an elegant, slender creature who wears wide pearl bands at her cuffs and anklets at her feet. Her breasts are visible through her bodice and the upper sections of her wings are decorated with scalloped motifs. This is all extremely similar to the Oxford globe and completely different to the squatter simpler version depicted by Qa’im Muhammad (Belloli, op.cit., p.105). Diya’ al-Din’s Leo has more prominent, furry ears with broad hind legs and a head depicted in profile rather than turned to be seen full-face, as is more familiar from the work of his father, and contemporaneous manuscript illustrations.
The constellations on our globe, and the other related examples, are all presented in simple outline form, as is familiar in the illustrations to ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi’s (903-986 AD) Kitab suwar al-kawakib (Book of the Constellations of the Fixed Stars), see for example a copy in Bodleian dated AH 400/1009-10 AD (Emmy Wellesz, An Islamic Book of Constellations, Oxford, 1965). The illustrations to the manuscript were clearly a source for the design of constellation images for globe makers, though as in illustrations to different copies of the text, the dress and artistic conventions found were clearly influenced by the trends of different locations and time periods. The style of dress worn by the human constellation figures here is clearly Mughal, and typical of that of western India in the 16th and 17th centuries.
The question naturally arises as to why our globe is not similarly inscribed with the name of the maker and the date of manufacture. In her discussion on a similar globe in the Smithsonian, unsigned but attributed by her to Qa’im Muhammad, Emilie Savage-Smith suggests that the reason for the lack of signature was a technical error. The maker placed the northern circle too far from the equator, probably then ceasing work altogether on the globe, as such an error would be impossible to correct. She suggests therefore that the maker never got around to adding his signature, as this would undoubtedly have been the last element to be engraved (Savage-Smith, op.cit., p..98). Our globe shows no technical inaccuracies. Indeed it is one of the finest preserved examples with respect to the quality of the inlay of the stars, which are precisely placed and indicated by magnitude. Most of the other known globes are signed towards the southern equatorial pole, and so it is probable that this important detail was lost with the damage that our globe sustained.
Emilie Savage-Smith writes of the Oxford globe that it has a long metal probe around which three pieces of paper, possibly amulets, were rolled and sewn together. These are too large to extract through the poles drilled for the axis, and rattle when the globe is shaken. She has suggested that perhaps the present globe had a similar arrangement, and that a later owner cut off the lower part in order to extract the contents.
We would like to thank Emilie Savage-Smith for her contribution to this catalogue note.
The family of metalworkers excelled in certain metallurgical techniques, in particular the production of hollow cast globes using the lost-wax, or cire perdue, method. The earliest extant instrument produced by the family was an astrolabe made in AH 975/1567-68 AD by the founder of the workshop, Shaykh Allahdad Asturlabi Humayuni Lahuri (formerly in the library of Nawab Sir Salar Jung Bahadur in Hyderabdad). The nisba Humayuni might suggest simply that he lived during the reign of Humayun or perhaps that he was an astrolabist active at his court. Twenty-one signed globes by this family of makers are known, of which Diya’ al-Din’s range in date from 1645 to 1680. One of his celestial globes (the only one which is not a seamless globe) bears an inscription stating that it was made at the order of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, indicating that his work was held in as high regard as that of the rest of his illustrious family (Private Collection, Paris; Emilie Savage-Smith, ‘Islamicate Celestial Globes: Their History, Construction, and Use’, Smithsonian Studies in History and Technology, Number 46, Washington D.C., 1985, globe no.30, fig. 17, p.42).
Our globe is virtually identical to two examples signed by Diya’ al-Din and made in the same year, AH 1074/1663-64 AD. One of those, commonly referred to now as the ‘Barlow Globe’, is in the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh (inv.no.1890-331). The other is in the Museum of the History of Science, in Oxford (inv.no.57-84/25; Savage-Smith, op.cit., globes nos.27 and 28, pp.230-31). All three globes share the same engraving technique, design, precision and star placements – and are distinct from other examples known.
Whilst Diya’ al-Din’s prolific father Qa’im Muhammad worked within a limited framework, avoiding experimentation and giving scant attention to the decorative potential of the celestial figures he reproduced, his son Diya’ al-Din manipulated the traditional forms – paying more attention to decorative detailing such as variations in surface texture (Andrea P.A. Belloli, ‘The Constellation Figures on the Smithsonian Globe’, in Savage-Smith, op.cit., p.105). The iconography of figures such as Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Auriga, Boötes, Hercules, the head of Draco, Delphinus (with crown) and Argo are virtually the same on our globe and the Edinburgh and Oxford examples, all distinctive of Diya’ al-Din’s more ornamental and detailed style. The horse whip carried by Auriga, for instance, is transformed in Diya’ al-Din’s renditions to a staff issuing rows of leaf-like forms, as seen here. Similarly the Virgo of our globe is an elegant, slender creature who wears wide pearl bands at her cuffs and anklets at her feet. Her breasts are visible through her bodice and the upper sections of her wings are decorated with scalloped motifs. This is all extremely similar to the Oxford globe and completely different to the squatter simpler version depicted by Qa’im Muhammad (Belloli, op.cit., p.105). Diya’ al-Din’s Leo has more prominent, furry ears with broad hind legs and a head depicted in profile rather than turned to be seen full-face, as is more familiar from the work of his father, and contemporaneous manuscript illustrations.
The constellations on our globe, and the other related examples, are all presented in simple outline form, as is familiar in the illustrations to ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi’s (903-986 AD) Kitab suwar al-kawakib (Book of the Constellations of the Fixed Stars), see for example a copy in Bodleian dated AH 400/1009-10 AD (Emmy Wellesz, An Islamic Book of Constellations, Oxford, 1965). The illustrations to the manuscript were clearly a source for the design of constellation images for globe makers, though as in illustrations to different copies of the text, the dress and artistic conventions found were clearly influenced by the trends of different locations and time periods. The style of dress worn by the human constellation figures here is clearly Mughal, and typical of that of western India in the 16th and 17th centuries.
The question naturally arises as to why our globe is not similarly inscribed with the name of the maker and the date of manufacture. In her discussion on a similar globe in the Smithsonian, unsigned but attributed by her to Qa’im Muhammad, Emilie Savage-Smith suggests that the reason for the lack of signature was a technical error. The maker placed the northern circle too far from the equator, probably then ceasing work altogether on the globe, as such an error would be impossible to correct. She suggests therefore that the maker never got around to adding his signature, as this would undoubtedly have been the last element to be engraved (Savage-Smith, op.cit., p..98). Our globe shows no technical inaccuracies. Indeed it is one of the finest preserved examples with respect to the quality of the inlay of the stars, which are precisely placed and indicated by magnitude. Most of the other known globes are signed towards the southern equatorial pole, and so it is probable that this important detail was lost with the damage that our globe sustained.
Emilie Savage-Smith writes of the Oxford globe that it has a long metal probe around which three pieces of paper, possibly amulets, were rolled and sewn together. These are too large to extract through the poles drilled for the axis, and rattle when the globe is shaken. She has suggested that perhaps the present globe had a similar arrangement, and that a later owner cut off the lower part in order to extract the contents.
We would like to thank Emilie Savage-Smith for her contribution to this catalogue note.