SIGNED MIR KHALIL, BIJAPUR, DECCAN, DATED AH 996/1587-88 AD

Mir Khalil Padishah-Qalam (also known as Mir Khalilullah Shah) was a court calligrapher and courtier in the palace of Sultan Adil Shah II in Bijapur (Mehdi Bayani, ahval va athar-e khosh-nevisan-e nasta’liq, vol.I, Tehran, 1345, pp.177-80). When Sultan Ibrahim Adil Shah II, who was an author as well as a great admirer of the arts of the book, compiled his Kitab-e Navras or ’Book of Nine Rasas’ in 1617, Mir Khalil was asked to transcribe a copy. So pleased was the Sultan with the results that Mir Khalil was given the epithet Padishah-Qalam, ‘King of Pens’. Our manuscript, where he simply signs Mir Khalili, was copied before he received this illustrious title. Qadi Ahmad writes that so prized was Mir Khalil’s work, that he was once able to send tribute to Shah Tahmasp in the form of 200 tomans worth of precious items (Minorsky, Calligraphers and Painters, A Treatise by Qadi Ahmad son of Mir Munshi, Washington, 1959, p.151). It is related by several sources that Shah ‘Abbas once set up a competition to decide who was the better calligrapher between him and Mir ‘Imad al-Hassani. Mir ‘Imad’s rival, ‘Ali Reza ‘Abbasi was chosen as judge and naturally came down on the side of Mir Khalil (Bayani, op.cit., pp.177-80).

The text of our manuscript is a history of Shah Isma'il imitating the style of the Shahnama (see Charles Melville, ‘The Illustration of history in Safavid manuscript painting’, in Colin P. Mitchell (ed.), New Perspectives on Safavid Iran: Empire and Society, 2011, pp. 175-176).

A manuscript of poems from the Khamsa of Nizami copied by Mir Khalil recently sold at Sotheby’s, London, 9 April 2014, lot 60.