OTTOMAN TURKEY, DATED AH 1176/1762-1763 AD

This dynastic scroll begins with Prophets of Islam and traces lineage through subsequent Islamic dynasties including amongst others the four Rightly Guided Caliphs, the Umayyads, the 'Abbasids, the Buyids, the Samanids, the Ghaznavids, the Khwarazmshahs, the Seljuqs, the Assasins, the Chingizids and terminating in the Ottomans with Mustafa III (r. October 1757 - January 1774).

This mid-18th century genealogical scroll is in a continuing tradition of scrolls known as the subhat al-akhbar of which only three examples dating to the 17th and 18th centuries exist. One example is in the Metropolitan Museum terminates with the reign of Mehmed IV(r. 1648-1687), (67.272; G. M. Meredith-Owens, 'A Genealogical Roll in the Metropolitan Museum', in Richard Ettinghausen (ed.), Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1972, pp 87-90). A further two are kept in the Nationalbibliothek at Vienna, one ending with the accession of Mustafa III in 1757 and the other with Murad III (r. 1574-1595). The calculation of the lineages of the Ottoman Sultans back to Adam appears to come from an older Persian genealogical study. On the scroll in the Metropolitan Museum, the compiler of the genealogy, Shafi'i al-Sharif confirms his usage of Persian sources (op. cit. p. 87) for the dating and sequencing of his lineages.