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Lot Essay
INSCRIPTIONS:
A couplet from Jami’s Yusuf u Zulaykha: bar an tishna babayad zar bagirist, ka bar lab-i ab u bayad tishna’sh zist, ‘One should wail for that thirsty one, Who is at the waters edge but must nonetheless live thirsty.’
This folio, and that of the following lot, come from an album the bulk of which is in the Fogg Art Museum, formerly in the collection of Louis J. Cartier (1958.63-74; M. Shreve Simpson, Arab and Persian Painting in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 1980, nos.76-85, p.74 and Cartier and Islamic Art: In Search of Modernity, London, 2021, pp.294-5, no.7). One of the folios from that group is signed by the calligrapher Mir ‘Ali al-Harawi.
Many of the folios from the album are arranged in the same format to ours, with two figures framing two lines of elegant nasta’liq. Another folio from the same album was in the Art and History Trust Collection (illustrated Abolala Soudavar, Art of the Persian Courts, Geneva, 1992, p.212, no.79). In the entry to that folio, Soudavar writes that the calligraphy was probably incorporated into an album in Bukhara in around 1560, when the city was ruled by the Uzbek ‘Abdullah Khan (Soudavar, op.cit., p.212). It would have been then that the fine illumination and illustrations were added.
Another folio from this album sold at Sotheby’s, 24 October 2007, lot 26. For a note on Mir ‘Ali please see the following lot.
A couplet from Jami’s Yusuf u Zulaykha: bar an tishna babayad zar bagirist, ka bar lab-i ab u bayad tishna’sh zist, ‘One should wail for that thirsty one, Who is at the waters edge but must nonetheless live thirsty.’
This folio, and that of the following lot, come from an album the bulk of which is in the Fogg Art Museum, formerly in the collection of Louis J. Cartier (1958.63-74; M. Shreve Simpson, Arab and Persian Painting in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 1980, nos.76-85, p.74 and Cartier and Islamic Art: In Search of Modernity, London, 2021, pp.294-5, no.7). One of the folios from that group is signed by the calligrapher Mir ‘Ali al-Harawi.
Many of the folios from the album are arranged in the same format to ours, with two figures framing two lines of elegant nasta’liq. Another folio from the same album was in the Art and History Trust Collection (illustrated Abolala Soudavar, Art of the Persian Courts, Geneva, 1992, p.212, no.79). In the entry to that folio, Soudavar writes that the calligraphy was probably incorporated into an album in Bukhara in around 1560, when the city was ruled by the Uzbek ‘Abdullah Khan (Soudavar, op.cit., p.212). It would have been then that the fine illumination and illustrations were added.
Another folio from this album sold at Sotheby’s, 24 October 2007, lot 26. For a note on Mir ‘Ali please see the following lot.