.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Pilgrimage certificates and scrolls are probably almost as old as the Hajj itself, allowing returning pilgrims to recount the things that they saw and did while at the Haramayn. By the 17th and 18th century they had begun to take on a fairly standard form in the way in which certain buildings were depicted and identified: a fragmentary example in the Khalili Collection is dated to the 17th/18th century, but in its style has much in common with the present lot (acc.no. MSS 745.1). Interestingly, the Khalili scroll and others like it are often attributed to India, or Indian artists working in Mecca. When he visited Mecca in 1853, Richard Burton wrote that a number of Indian artists there supported themselves by 'drawing pictures of the holy shrines in pen and ink heightened with vivid colours' (Richard Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah, London, 1893, p.341 quoted in Stephen Vernoit, Occidentalism, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, London, 1997, p.33). Some, we may assume, would have continued to produce them in India, either working from their own recollections or from images brought back by other pilgrims.
Near identical in style and iconography to the present lot are examples sold by Sotheby's London, 6 October 2010, lot 28 and 26 April 2023, lot 2. Interestingly, the more recent of these is also associated with a female patron and had a similar later note on the back. On ours, the note commemorates the birth of a Mustafa bin 'Abd al-Qadir al-Sa'di on 25 Muharram AH 1297/25 December 1879 AD.