Lot Essay
The Persian inscription in thuluth on the two end faces commemorate "Prince (amirzada) Amir Shams al-Milla w'al-Din Muhammad, son of his excellency Nizam al-Din Wali Beg, may his life be prolonged, who died in the year nine hundred and thirty". The inscription continues on the upper face of the plinth and consists of verses lamenting the deceased who died suddenly.
The inscriptions within cartouches on the two sides of the cenotaph are two Persian verses. The eight inscriptions in thuluth within the cartouches on the top are invocations in Arabic to the Prophet and the Twelve Imams. The kufic inscriptions within the square below the eight pointed rosette reads "God, he is exalted, is wisest".
The father of the deceased, who was still living when it was made, has not been identified. Judging from his titles and the memorial to his son he was a personage of some standing and importance.
The cenotaph is carved in a style developed in Herat under Timurid patronage in the second half of the fifteenth century. The finest examples carved in black stone are to be found among the ruins of the madrasa of Sultan Husayn Baiqara which was being built in 1492-1493 AD (see Blair, S.S. and Bloom, J.M: The Art and Architecture of Islam, New Haven and London, 1994, p. 51, fig. 66). Also in this group are a cenotaph in the Isabella Gardner Museum, Boston (Lentz, T.W. and Lowry, G.D.: Timur and the Princely Vision, Los Angeles, 1989, p. 201, fig. 70) and another in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Characteristic of all is the style of floral decoration which was also adopted by the wood carvers and was ultimately derived from manuscript decoration designed by the kitabkhana. This consists of symmetrical scrolls with flowers, such as peonies, lotuses and chrysantheums, rendered in relief in minute detail with arcades or cartouches outlined in a slightly higher plane. A fragment of a stele very similar stylistically is in the Louvre, Paris (see Exhibition catalogue: L'islam dans les collections nationales, Paris, 1977, p. 94, no. 133).
The cenotaph in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (reg. no. 973-1901) is dated AH 942/1536 AD and in form and decoration close to ours. It has the same projecting ledge at the base and similar decorative composition on the top including a square cartouche with an inscription in floriated kufic "Wisdom belongs to God". The long sides are entirely decorated with floral scrolls and one of the end sides inscribed with the date in thuluth. The other has three blank spaces which would have contained the name of the deceased suggesting that the cenotaph was unfinished or vandalised. It comes from the tomb of Buyan Kuli Khan in Bukhara.
Our cenotaph is also in the early Timurid tradition in that it has a stalactite cornice similar to that on the great nephrite tomb of Timur (Tamerlane) in the Gur-i Amir in Samarqand (see Lentz, T.W. and Lowry, G.D.: Timur and the Princely Vision, Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century, Los Angeles, 1989, p. 28, fig. 3).
The inscriptions within cartouches on the two sides of the cenotaph are two Persian verses. The eight inscriptions in thuluth within the cartouches on the top are invocations in Arabic to the Prophet and the Twelve Imams. The kufic inscriptions within the square below the eight pointed rosette reads "God, he is exalted, is wisest".
The father of the deceased, who was still living when it was made, has not been identified. Judging from his titles and the memorial to his son he was a personage of some standing and importance.
The cenotaph is carved in a style developed in Herat under Timurid patronage in the second half of the fifteenth century. The finest examples carved in black stone are to be found among the ruins of the madrasa of Sultan Husayn Baiqara which was being built in 1492-1493 AD (see Blair, S.S. and Bloom, J.M: The Art and Architecture of Islam, New Haven and London, 1994, p. 51, fig. 66). Also in this group are a cenotaph in the Isabella Gardner Museum, Boston (Lentz, T.W. and Lowry, G.D.: Timur and the Princely Vision, Los Angeles, 1989, p. 201, fig. 70) and another in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Characteristic of all is the style of floral decoration which was also adopted by the wood carvers and was ultimately derived from manuscript decoration designed by the kitabkhana. This consists of symmetrical scrolls with flowers, such as peonies, lotuses and chrysantheums, rendered in relief in minute detail with arcades or cartouches outlined in a slightly higher plane. A fragment of a stele very similar stylistically is in the Louvre, Paris (see Exhibition catalogue: L'islam dans les collections nationales, Paris, 1977, p. 94, no. 133).
The cenotaph in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (reg. no. 973-1901) is dated AH 942/1536 AD and in form and decoration close to ours. It has the same projecting ledge at the base and similar decorative composition on the top including a square cartouche with an inscription in floriated kufic "Wisdom belongs to God". The long sides are entirely decorated with floral scrolls and one of the end sides inscribed with the date in thuluth. The other has three blank spaces which would have contained the name of the deceased suggesting that the cenotaph was unfinished or vandalised. It comes from the tomb of Buyan Kuli Khan in Bukhara.
Our cenotaph is also in the early Timurid tradition in that it has a stalactite cornice similar to that on the great nephrite tomb of Timur (Tamerlane) in the Gur-i Amir in Samarqand (see Lentz, T.W. and Lowry, G.D.: Timur and the Princely Vision, Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century, Los Angeles, 1989, p. 28, fig. 3).