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Lot Essay
The full page illuminated ex-libris panel on f.26a of this manuscripts reads in a single line of script running across the panel “bi-rasm khazanat al-sultan al-a'zam ghiyath al-dunya wa'l-din sultan muhammad bahadur khallada allah mulkahu "On the order of the treasury of the Greatest Sultan, Ghiyath al-Dunya wa'l-Din Sultan Muhammad Bahadur, may [God] perpetuate his reign".
These titles and name are those of Sultan Muhammad bin Baysunqur bin Shahrukh bin Timur, the second of Baysunqur’s sons who was born in AH 821/1418 AD. He was clearly a man of energy who, unlike his father, was not content to support the ruling member of his family. He organised a revolt against his elderly grandfather Shah Rukh in 1446, but was defeated and fled to Luristan where he remained until his grandfather’s death some months later. In the free-for-all that followed this event, similar to that which had followed Timur’s death forty years earlier, Sultan Muhammad came to the fore again, carving out a large area of Iran that included Fars, thereby in 1447 pushing out his cousin 'Abdullah bin Ibrahim who had taken over from his father. Not satisfied with this, a couple of years later he marched at the head of an army into the lands to the north that were held by his brother Abu’l Qasim bin Baysunqur. In a battle outside Mashhad in 1450 he defeated his younger brother and took control of considerable areas of Khurasan including Mashhad. It was however only a year later than the tables were turned and he was defeated and killed by the same younger brother in 1451 (Peter Jackson and Laurence Lockhart (eds.), The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6, pp. 103, 108, 111 and 112).
Little is known about his artistic patronage. He is known to have commissioned the Winter Prayer Gallery (shabestan-e zemestani) behind the north west Iwan of the Masjid-i Jami’ in Isfahan, the only surviving Isfahani building that dates from the Timurid period (Jackson and Lockhart, op.cit, vol. 6, p.755). The foundation inscription for that lists his titles as al-sultan al-a'zam a'dal salatin al-'alam ghiyath al-haqq wa'l-din sultan muhammad bahadur (the greatest sultan, the must just of the sultans of the world, Ghiyath al-Din wa'l-Haqq) (L. Honarfar, Ganjineh-ye asar-e tarikhi-ye Isfahan. 2nd ed., Tehran, 1971, pp, 121-122). These titles are almost the same as those found on the present manuscript. One other manuscript has been associated with him, a Diwan of Kamal Khujandi, that is dedicated to “Abu al-Nasr al-Sultan Muhammad Bahadur Khan” (David Roxburgh (ed.) Turks, A Journey of a Thousand Years, exhibition catalogue, London, 2005, no,180, pp,228-9 and 422). The binding on the same manuscript is clearly dedicated to Abu al-Qasim Babur Bahadur Khan, the younger brother and eventual nemesis of Sultan Muhammad, but although the exhibition catalogue tentatively attributes the manuscript to his patronage, the title is not his, and the name retains the al—before the Sultan indicating that it is a title and not a name, unlike the way the name appears here. It is not surprising, growing up at the court of his father Baysunqur, and with the strong artistic patronage of his uncles, that Sultan Muhammad was inclined towards the arts. As we have just seen with the book binding, his younger brother was, and his elder brother Ala al-Dawla according to Dust Muhammad went to very considerable lengths to complete his father’s Jung (Thomas W. Lentz Jr., Painting at Herat under Baysunghur ibn Shahrukh, PhD thesis, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1985, pp.143-4). This however is the first manuscript to be attributed without doubt to Sultan Muhammad bin Baysunqur.
This manuscript shows a fascinating combination of influences. The illumination is very similar to that used in his father’s manuscripts. The layout of the opening bifolium is very similar to that of his father’s Shahnama in the Gulistan Palace (Firuza Abdullaeva and Charles Melville, The Persian Book of Kings, Ibrahim Sultan’s Shahnama, Oxford, 2008, p.33). Both have long panels of similar attenuated kufic on scrolling gold above and below the main text block, here in gold on white scrolls, there in white on gold. Both enclose these within a band of interlaced alternating arabesques, the tips of which create very small extensions in the outer frame. The headings within the text are even more similar, both in their composition, and in their variety, both to his father’s manuscripts and to his grandfather’s Khamsa of Nizami (Ada Adamova, Persian Painting and Drawing from the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, 1996, esp. pls.1/12 p.115 and 1/27 p.139). The illumination is noticeably different from that found in the Shahnama made for Baysunqur’s brother, Ibrahim Sultan, in Shiraz.
This difference is significant. The patron of our manuscript, Sultan Muhammad, ruled in Fars for four years from 1447-1451. This is probably the only period of his life when he was old enough, and in a position of sufficient power, to commission manuscripts in his own right. It is also the only period in his life when he would have been entitled to use the title ‘Sultan’ as in the colophon. It is likely that there was an active scriptorium in Shiraz at the time. A number of manuscripts are known that were commissioned by Ibrahim Sultan until his death in 1435, and production continued thereafter as evidenced by the very impressive Paris Shahnama of 1444, the signature of which describes the scribe as “al-sultani”, demonstrating that he was in the employ of 'Abdullah, son of Ibrahim Sultan (Francis Richard, Splendeurs persanes, manuscrits du XII au XVIIe siècle, Paris, 1997, p.81; also Ivan Stchoukine, les peintures des manuscrits Timurides, Paris, 1954, pls.XXXVIII-XL). The illumination of that manuscript is completely different from that of ours, both in layout and in detail, preferring meandering leafy floral motifs and lotus flowers to the tightly controlled arabesques found in our manuscript. The illumination strongly indicates that Sultan Muhammad brought to his capital artists who had worked for his father in Herat.
The paintings demonstrate a similar link with the paintings in Herat earlier in the same decade. The figure of Nawruz shooting a dragon, one foot on a much hgher level, turning the body to shoot downhill behind him is very similar indeed to the figure of Farud shooting Zarasp in the Shahnama created in the early 1440s for Baysunqur’s brother Muhammad Juki (Barbara Brend, Muhammad Juki’s Shahnama of Firdausi, London, 2010, pl.43, p.75). Further elements in this painting especially the colouring and style of the rocks find further very close parallels with the Muhammad Juki Shahnama, for example the depiction of Gushtasp slaying the Dragon (Brend, op.cit., pl.53, p.105). The bright red lily with broken leaves in the foreground of the depiction of Humay’s dream is also a feature found in the Juki Shahnama (Brend op.cit., pl.34, p.50 and pl.42, p.72), although it also appears on earlier Shirazi manuscripts (Susan Scollay (ed.), Love and Devotion from Persia and beyond, exhibition catalogue, Oxford, 2012, fig.1.6, p.8, very similarly sprouting from the base of a tree and with sharply broken leaves). The layout, with four rather than six columns also copies the Shahnama of his uncle rather than that of his father. This manuscript also takes to a considerably greater degree the playing with the size and shape of the paintings. Muhammad Juki’s manuscript already takes this one stage further than Baysunqur’s, the depiction of Farud shooting Zarasp in particular bringing down the upper edge of the text in two separate steps. The present manuscript has considerably greater variety of shape and size of painting than was found in the previous Timurid royal commissions, the smallest depictions reminiscent more of an Aja’ib al-Makhluqat manuscript than an epic.
But the style here is a softer one than that of Herat, more lyrical. This is noticeable both in the colouring, which is a little less intense, and the drawing which, particularly in the depiction of the trees in Humay’s Dream of Parrots, has every tree apart from the cypress swaying elegantly, echoing each other’s shapes in a particularly appropriate dreamlike way. This is in marked contrast to the strength and masculinity of the trees in the Baysunqur Shahnama. In that manuscript, even when they do curve, it is more as if they are slightly gnarled and sharp rather than the sinuous lines found here (see for example the depiction Rustam responds to Isfandiyar; published Masterpieces of Persian Painting, exhibition catalogue, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran, 2005, p.46). This lyricism harks back to the Jalayrid manuscripts of the end of the preceding century.
The present manuscript was never finished and it thus tells us a considerable amount about how such a manuscript was assembled. The marginal rules are invariably finished and gilded. The heading panels were obviously done in blocks, but not necessarily starting at one end and finishing at the other. Each of the three sections has a block of pages with finished headings, but a number of ones which were only completed later. Two headings in particular show how the illumination was worked. F.80a has at the bottom three large triangular panels which are complete, but these are flanked by two smaller triangular panels one of which has a floral design sketched in, ready to be worked up. F.75a has a heading panel within the text which has the scrollwork pencilled in, but the lettering for the title is not there. F.85b has the scrollwork slightly stronger, and the heading is now written in in gold, ready to have the illuminated background fully worked around it. The paintings are similar. Two, f.89a and 109b, are fully worked and date completely from the original period. Three are all from the original period but show different stages of completion. It becomes apparent that the artist first painted the background, to a high degree of finish and detail before beginning work on the more critical parts. After the background the more important parts such as the clothing were worked on, and the faces were left to the very end. It has been suggested that this indicates that there was a succession of artists who worked on each painting, with the most junior working on the background, and the most senior inserting the faces.
The manuscript was obviously very much treasured in later years. Two of the paintings, ff.14a and 17a have clearly received additions at a later date. The compositions are fully of the original period, but it seems that these were worked up, most probably in the later Safavid period. They have been very well done, but the faces are completely unlike any Timurid face. On f.17a for example one can see the Timurid underdrawing of the collar of the robe underneath the main figure’s chest and shoulders. The same artist appears to have begun work on a third of the paintings, Humayun before Humay’s Palace on f.52b. Here Humay’s robes and saddle are not quite the colours that one would expect in the fifteenth century, and the roof architecture of Humay’s pavilion is very strange. One can see an original design for an arched surround for the pavilion, which was presumably going to be surmounted by a roof-line not unlike that in the very late Jalayrid version of the almost identical but reversed scene of Khusraw outside Shirin’s palace now in the Freer Gallery of Art (Brend, op.cit., pl.11, p.19). This painting shows two different hands drawing. One, the original artist, draws using both a soft grey and also a light red to form the compositions. The other, probably a later artist, painted a face in the doorway in a very delicate nim-qalam style that still appears to be completely 15th century in style.
This is a fascinating manuscript for many reasons. It was commissioned by a member of the royal house of Timur who has thus far not been associated with any degree of certainty with a manuscript. In its incompleteness it gives a very clear demonstration of the sequence through which such royal manuscripts were created. It also provides a hugely important link in the history of painting in Shiraz and southern Iran, demonstrating very clearly how the earlier angular open style of Ibrahim Sultan was transformed into the dense rounded forms that are typical of painting there later in the same century.
The paintings in this manuscript include:
1. A man addresses his beloved in a garden
2. A man asks a Sufi a question
3. The story of the poor, old musician
4. The old woman demands justice from Qizil Arslan
5. Humay answers Humayun
6. Nouruz sees two green birds in a dream
7. Nouroz shoots a dragon
These titles and name are those of Sultan Muhammad bin Baysunqur bin Shahrukh bin Timur, the second of Baysunqur’s sons who was born in AH 821/1418 AD. He was clearly a man of energy who, unlike his father, was not content to support the ruling member of his family. He organised a revolt against his elderly grandfather Shah Rukh in 1446, but was defeated and fled to Luristan where he remained until his grandfather’s death some months later. In the free-for-all that followed this event, similar to that which had followed Timur’s death forty years earlier, Sultan Muhammad came to the fore again, carving out a large area of Iran that included Fars, thereby in 1447 pushing out his cousin 'Abdullah bin Ibrahim who had taken over from his father. Not satisfied with this, a couple of years later he marched at the head of an army into the lands to the north that were held by his brother Abu’l Qasim bin Baysunqur. In a battle outside Mashhad in 1450 he defeated his younger brother and took control of considerable areas of Khurasan including Mashhad. It was however only a year later than the tables were turned and he was defeated and killed by the same younger brother in 1451 (Peter Jackson and Laurence Lockhart (eds.), The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6, pp. 103, 108, 111 and 112).
Little is known about his artistic patronage. He is known to have commissioned the Winter Prayer Gallery (shabestan-e zemestani) behind the north west Iwan of the Masjid-i Jami’ in Isfahan, the only surviving Isfahani building that dates from the Timurid period (Jackson and Lockhart, op.cit, vol. 6, p.755). The foundation inscription for that lists his titles as al-sultan al-a'zam a'dal salatin al-'alam ghiyath al-haqq wa'l-din sultan muhammad bahadur (the greatest sultan, the must just of the sultans of the world, Ghiyath al-Din wa'l-Haqq) (L. Honarfar, Ganjineh-ye asar-e tarikhi-ye Isfahan. 2nd ed., Tehran, 1971, pp, 121-122). These titles are almost the same as those found on the present manuscript. One other manuscript has been associated with him, a Diwan of Kamal Khujandi, that is dedicated to “Abu al-Nasr al-Sultan Muhammad Bahadur Khan” (David Roxburgh (ed.) Turks, A Journey of a Thousand Years, exhibition catalogue, London, 2005, no,180, pp,228-9 and 422). The binding on the same manuscript is clearly dedicated to Abu al-Qasim Babur Bahadur Khan, the younger brother and eventual nemesis of Sultan Muhammad, but although the exhibition catalogue tentatively attributes the manuscript to his patronage, the title is not his, and the name retains the al—before the Sultan indicating that it is a title and not a name, unlike the way the name appears here. It is not surprising, growing up at the court of his father Baysunqur, and with the strong artistic patronage of his uncles, that Sultan Muhammad was inclined towards the arts. As we have just seen with the book binding, his younger brother was, and his elder brother Ala al-Dawla according to Dust Muhammad went to very considerable lengths to complete his father’s Jung (Thomas W. Lentz Jr., Painting at Herat under Baysunghur ibn Shahrukh, PhD thesis, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1985, pp.143-4). This however is the first manuscript to be attributed without doubt to Sultan Muhammad bin Baysunqur.
This manuscript shows a fascinating combination of influences. The illumination is very similar to that used in his father’s manuscripts. The layout of the opening bifolium is very similar to that of his father’s Shahnama in the Gulistan Palace (Firuza Abdullaeva and Charles Melville, The Persian Book of Kings, Ibrahim Sultan’s Shahnama, Oxford, 2008, p.33). Both have long panels of similar attenuated kufic on scrolling gold above and below the main text block, here in gold on white scrolls, there in white on gold. Both enclose these within a band of interlaced alternating arabesques, the tips of which create very small extensions in the outer frame. The headings within the text are even more similar, both in their composition, and in their variety, both to his father’s manuscripts and to his grandfather’s Khamsa of Nizami (Ada Adamova, Persian Painting and Drawing from the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, 1996, esp. pls.1/12 p.115 and 1/27 p.139). The illumination is noticeably different from that found in the Shahnama made for Baysunqur’s brother, Ibrahim Sultan, in Shiraz.
This difference is significant. The patron of our manuscript, Sultan Muhammad, ruled in Fars for four years from 1447-1451. This is probably the only period of his life when he was old enough, and in a position of sufficient power, to commission manuscripts in his own right. It is also the only period in his life when he would have been entitled to use the title ‘Sultan’ as in the colophon. It is likely that there was an active scriptorium in Shiraz at the time. A number of manuscripts are known that were commissioned by Ibrahim Sultan until his death in 1435, and production continued thereafter as evidenced by the very impressive Paris Shahnama of 1444, the signature of which describes the scribe as “al-sultani”, demonstrating that he was in the employ of 'Abdullah, son of Ibrahim Sultan (Francis Richard, Splendeurs persanes, manuscrits du XII au XVIIe siècle, Paris, 1997, p.81; also Ivan Stchoukine, les peintures des manuscrits Timurides, Paris, 1954, pls.XXXVIII-XL). The illumination of that manuscript is completely different from that of ours, both in layout and in detail, preferring meandering leafy floral motifs and lotus flowers to the tightly controlled arabesques found in our manuscript. The illumination strongly indicates that Sultan Muhammad brought to his capital artists who had worked for his father in Herat.
The paintings demonstrate a similar link with the paintings in Herat earlier in the same decade. The figure of Nawruz shooting a dragon, one foot on a much hgher level, turning the body to shoot downhill behind him is very similar indeed to the figure of Farud shooting Zarasp in the Shahnama created in the early 1440s for Baysunqur’s brother Muhammad Juki (Barbara Brend, Muhammad Juki’s Shahnama of Firdausi, London, 2010, pl.43, p.75). Further elements in this painting especially the colouring and style of the rocks find further very close parallels with the Muhammad Juki Shahnama, for example the depiction of Gushtasp slaying the Dragon (Brend, op.cit., pl.53, p.105). The bright red lily with broken leaves in the foreground of the depiction of Humay’s dream is also a feature found in the Juki Shahnama (Brend op.cit., pl.34, p.50 and pl.42, p.72), although it also appears on earlier Shirazi manuscripts (Susan Scollay (ed.), Love and Devotion from Persia and beyond, exhibition catalogue, Oxford, 2012, fig.1.6, p.8, very similarly sprouting from the base of a tree and with sharply broken leaves). The layout, with four rather than six columns also copies the Shahnama of his uncle rather than that of his father. This manuscript also takes to a considerably greater degree the playing with the size and shape of the paintings. Muhammad Juki’s manuscript already takes this one stage further than Baysunqur’s, the depiction of Farud shooting Zarasp in particular bringing down the upper edge of the text in two separate steps. The present manuscript has considerably greater variety of shape and size of painting than was found in the previous Timurid royal commissions, the smallest depictions reminiscent more of an Aja’ib al-Makhluqat manuscript than an epic.
But the style here is a softer one than that of Herat, more lyrical. This is noticeable both in the colouring, which is a little less intense, and the drawing which, particularly in the depiction of the trees in Humay’s Dream of Parrots, has every tree apart from the cypress swaying elegantly, echoing each other’s shapes in a particularly appropriate dreamlike way. This is in marked contrast to the strength and masculinity of the trees in the Baysunqur Shahnama. In that manuscript, even when they do curve, it is more as if they are slightly gnarled and sharp rather than the sinuous lines found here (see for example the depiction Rustam responds to Isfandiyar; published Masterpieces of Persian Painting, exhibition catalogue, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran, 2005, p.46). This lyricism harks back to the Jalayrid manuscripts of the end of the preceding century.
The present manuscript was never finished and it thus tells us a considerable amount about how such a manuscript was assembled. The marginal rules are invariably finished and gilded. The heading panels were obviously done in blocks, but not necessarily starting at one end and finishing at the other. Each of the three sections has a block of pages with finished headings, but a number of ones which were only completed later. Two headings in particular show how the illumination was worked. F.80a has at the bottom three large triangular panels which are complete, but these are flanked by two smaller triangular panels one of which has a floral design sketched in, ready to be worked up. F.75a has a heading panel within the text which has the scrollwork pencilled in, but the lettering for the title is not there. F.85b has the scrollwork slightly stronger, and the heading is now written in in gold, ready to have the illuminated background fully worked around it. The paintings are similar. Two, f.89a and 109b, are fully worked and date completely from the original period. Three are all from the original period but show different stages of completion. It becomes apparent that the artist first painted the background, to a high degree of finish and detail before beginning work on the more critical parts. After the background the more important parts such as the clothing were worked on, and the faces were left to the very end. It has been suggested that this indicates that there was a succession of artists who worked on each painting, with the most junior working on the background, and the most senior inserting the faces.
The manuscript was obviously very much treasured in later years. Two of the paintings, ff.14a and 17a have clearly received additions at a later date. The compositions are fully of the original period, but it seems that these were worked up, most probably in the later Safavid period. They have been very well done, but the faces are completely unlike any Timurid face. On f.17a for example one can see the Timurid underdrawing of the collar of the robe underneath the main figure’s chest and shoulders. The same artist appears to have begun work on a third of the paintings, Humayun before Humay’s Palace on f.52b. Here Humay’s robes and saddle are not quite the colours that one would expect in the fifteenth century, and the roof architecture of Humay’s pavilion is very strange. One can see an original design for an arched surround for the pavilion, which was presumably going to be surmounted by a roof-line not unlike that in the very late Jalayrid version of the almost identical but reversed scene of Khusraw outside Shirin’s palace now in the Freer Gallery of Art (Brend, op.cit., pl.11, p.19). This painting shows two different hands drawing. One, the original artist, draws using both a soft grey and also a light red to form the compositions. The other, probably a later artist, painted a face in the doorway in a very delicate nim-qalam style that still appears to be completely 15th century in style.
This is a fascinating manuscript for many reasons. It was commissioned by a member of the royal house of Timur who has thus far not been associated with any degree of certainty with a manuscript. In its incompleteness it gives a very clear demonstration of the sequence through which such royal manuscripts were created. It also provides a hugely important link in the history of painting in Shiraz and southern Iran, demonstrating very clearly how the earlier angular open style of Ibrahim Sultan was transformed into the dense rounded forms that are typical of painting there later in the same century.
The paintings in this manuscript include:
1. A man addresses his beloved in a garden
2. A man asks a Sufi a question
3. The story of the poor, old musician
4. The old woman demands justice from Qizil Arslan
5. Humay answers Humayun
6. Nouruz sees two green birds in a dream
7. Nouroz shoots a dragon