Lot Essay
A manuscript exists in the Osterreichischen Nationalbibliothek in Vienna signed by Mir Hayder al-Husayni which is dated AH 980/1572-3 AD (N.F.340). His signature also appears on a leaf in an album made for Sultan Murad II in Istanbul also dated 980 (mixt.313,ff.2b,6a).
Works written by this extremely accomplished calligrapher are very rare, and textual evidence about his life is scant. According to Mustafa 'Ali in his Menaqib-i hunerveran he was born in Bokhara but came to Tabriz. Presumably attracted by the contrast between the richness of Istanbul in the last years of Suleyman the Magnificent and the now elderly Shah Tahmasp who no longer encouraged the arts, in 1566 or shortly thereafter he moved to Istanbul. He rapidly rose in favour there and became one of the royal calligraphers to Murad III (1574-95), being commissioned to write the colophon to an album of paintings and calligraphy now in the Austrian National Library, dated AH 980/
1572-3 AD (Duda, vol.1, pl.352-3, vol.2, pp.89, 110 and 157)
Duda, D.: Die Islamische Handschriften der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Vienna 1983
Works written by this extremely accomplished calligrapher are very rare, and textual evidence about his life is scant. According to Mustafa 'Ali in his Menaqib-i hunerveran he was born in Bokhara but came to Tabriz. Presumably attracted by the contrast between the richness of Istanbul in the last years of Suleyman the Magnificent and the now elderly Shah Tahmasp who no longer encouraged the arts, in 1566 or shortly thereafter he moved to Istanbul. He rapidly rose in favour there and became one of the royal calligraphers to Murad III (1574-95), being commissioned to write the colophon to an album of paintings and calligraphy now in the Austrian National Library, dated AH 980/
1572-3 AD (Duda, vol.1, pl.352-3, vol.2, pp.89, 110 and 157)
Duda, D.: Die Islamische Handschriften der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Vienna 1983