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Lot Essay
This is a manuscript of considerable historical importance, a crucial piece of evidence for understanding the lives of Mirza Ali, one of Safavid Iran' great artists, and Ibrahim Mirza, one of its great patrons. In 1981, when Stuart Cary Welch and Martin Dickinson wrote the seminal study of the Shah Tahmasp Shahnama, Mirza Ali's activity after the completion of the Freer Haft Awrang in 1565 was somewhat unknown. It was a challenging time to be an artist in Iran: it coincided with Shah Tahmasp's Edict of Sincere Repentance, after which the ruler swore off artistic patronage, and the exile of Ibrahim Mirza to the wilds of Azerbaijan as Governor of Sabzavar. While there, he apparently lived on grain from the local harvest and scraped by on one tuman a day (Massumeh Farhad and Marianna Shreve-Simpson, ‘Sources for the study of Safavid painting and patronage, or méfiez-vous de Qazi Ahmad’, Muqarnas, vol.10, p.288). Along with his patron, Mirza Ali faded into relative obscurity; consequently Dickson and Welch attributed all Mirza Ali's later works, particularly the single-leaf portraits, to the late 1560s (Martin Bernard Dickson and Stuart Cary Welch, The Houghton Shahnama, volume I, Cambridge MA, 1981, p.150).
This manuscript allowed that chronology to be revised. The colophon is significant because as well as being dated precisely to 1573, it states that the text was copied in dar al-mu'minin, 'the abode of the faithful' (a standard way for Shi'i writers to refer to the Safavid realm), Sabzavar. This exactly coincided with Ibrahim Mirza's exile, between about 1567 and 1574. Even more significant, in Cary Welch's eyes, were the three colour illustrations in the manuscript which - though damaged - were attributable to Mirza Ali. The opening frontispiece depicted a jovial gathering in a rocky landscape. In its composition and colour palette, it is similar to a frontispiece now split between the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (acc.no.14.624) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (12.223.1). It is also comparable in several points of detail: the orange-jacketed prince appears on the right hand side of both frontispieces, his right hand held out in a similar gesture; while to the left a motley gathering of courtiers stand while a horse peers out from behind an outcrop, laden with an almost identically patterned saddle, looking on as one figure caresses another's cheek.
Yet in these paintings there are also echoes of Mirza Ali's earlier career and his work on some of the single most significant paintings of the 16th century. The tented pavilion in which the prince sits on the right may be compared to the painting from the Shah Tahmasp Shahnama now in the Khalili Collection (acc.no.MSS 1030), in which the musician Barbad conceals himself in a tree to play for Khusraw by night (f.731r., Eleanor Sims, The Tale and the Image, volume I, Oxford, 2022, fig.18.10, p.203). On both pavilions, below the canopy is a burgundy fringe cut out into repeating palmette shapes. The cobalt-blue band around our canopy is echoed by that at the top of the tent panels of the Shah Tahmasp painting. Both tents also have turquoise-blue floor mats, stencilled in gold. Interestingly, in both pictures there is a kneeling figure in a yellow jacket to the left of the pavilion in an identical rounded hat with a continuous band of fur around the outside. The musician in the lower right corner may be considered another visual reference to the Shah Tahmasp painting, echoing Barbad in the tree of the other. If this was a deliberate reference, then it may be suggested that the prince sat in Khusraw's throne in our painting is none other than Ibrahim Mirza.
Recognising the work's significance, in 1984 Stuart Cary Welch asked for permission to mention this book in a forthcoming Festschrift for his co-writer, Martin Dickinson. He was excited to present it on this occasion since it confirmed a theory both of them held but had not spelled out in the book: "that the great artist Mirza Ali had gone to Sabzavar with the virtually exiled Sultan Ibrahim". In his letter to the owner, he described the confirmation of that theory to be "very satisfying". Knowledge of this manuscript encouraged Cary Welch to revise his previous dating of the later paintings of Mirza Ali to the 1560s. In his 1981 catalogue of the collection of Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, he ascribed two miniatures of courtly youths as the products of this period of artistic exile, dating them to the 1570s (Anthony Welch and Stuart Cary Welch, Arts of the Islamic Book, Ithaca, 1982, no.27). In her later cataloguing of the two paintings, Sheila Canby suggested that they may be even later, dating to circa 1580, after the prince returned from Qazvin, based on similarities with contemporaneous painting in the capital (Princes Poets and Paladins, London, 1998, no.39). A new chapter in the life of Mirza Ali, whose earlier life had included work on one of the most celebrated manuscripts ever produced, could now be written.
Subsequently, further information has come to light about Ibrahim Mirza's time in Sabzavar. Marianna Shreve Simpson has highlighted the existence of a second manuscript with a colophon associating with with Sabzavar. Dated to Muharram 982 / April-May 1574, it is a volume of the Naqshi-i badi' of Muhammad Ghazali Mashhadi. It is of a very similar size to ours and also copied in fine nasta'liq by Sultan Muhammad Khandan; today it is in the Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul (acc.no.TKS R.1038). It confirms what Welch suspected about this manuscript in two important respects. Firstly it specifically mentions that it was copied for Ibrahim Mirza, whose name does not appear on our colophon. Secondly, it specifically states that it was made for his kitab-khaneh (book workshop) in Sabzavar, confirming that Ibrahim Mirza had with him a number of artists and artisans involved in the production of luxury manuscripts (Marianna Shreve Simpson, Sultan Ibrahim Mirza's Haft Awrang, New Haven, 1997, p.240). Both manuscripts were also similar in theme, discussing mystical love and its consequences, and the Topkapi manuscript also includes two illustrations, though not attributable to any particular artist.
The final important piece of evidence to contextualise this manuscript is the finispiece of a Divan of Ibrahim Mirza in the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (acc.no.AKM282.86). The right hand page of the finispiece is in fact a direct copy of the right hand page of our finispiece, identical in almost every respect of composition to ours. A signature on folio 23b. means that the paintings are clearly by Abdallah al-Muzahhib, also known as al-Shirazi, and the whole manuscript can be dated to AH 990 / 1582 AD (Sheila Canby, Princes, Poets, and Paladins, London, 1998, no.38). Given the authorship of that manuscript, it is widely accepted that the prince in the finispiece was intended to be Ibrahim Mirza. However, by that time it was a posthumous portrait: Ibrahim Mirza was dead - murdered at the hands of Shah Isma'il II - and Mirza Ali may also have passed away by 1582. However, evidently our manuscript had returned to Qazvin at the end of Ibrahim Mirza's exile, and there been used as an exemplar by later artists, keen to learn from Mirza Ali's work.
This manuscript allowed that chronology to be revised. The colophon is significant because as well as being dated precisely to 1573, it states that the text was copied in dar al-mu'minin, 'the abode of the faithful' (a standard way for Shi'i writers to refer to the Safavid realm), Sabzavar. This exactly coincided with Ibrahim Mirza's exile, between about 1567 and 1574. Even more significant, in Cary Welch's eyes, were the three colour illustrations in the manuscript which - though damaged - were attributable to Mirza Ali. The opening frontispiece depicted a jovial gathering in a rocky landscape. In its composition and colour palette, it is similar to a frontispiece now split between the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (acc.no.14.624) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (12.223.1). It is also comparable in several points of detail: the orange-jacketed prince appears on the right hand side of both frontispieces, his right hand held out in a similar gesture; while to the left a motley gathering of courtiers stand while a horse peers out from behind an outcrop, laden with an almost identically patterned saddle, looking on as one figure caresses another's cheek.
Yet in these paintings there are also echoes of Mirza Ali's earlier career and his work on some of the single most significant paintings of the 16th century. The tented pavilion in which the prince sits on the right may be compared to the painting from the Shah Tahmasp Shahnama now in the Khalili Collection (acc.no.MSS 1030), in which the musician Barbad conceals himself in a tree to play for Khusraw by night (f.731r., Eleanor Sims, The Tale and the Image, volume I, Oxford, 2022, fig.18.10, p.203). On both pavilions, below the canopy is a burgundy fringe cut out into repeating palmette shapes. The cobalt-blue band around our canopy is echoed by that at the top of the tent panels of the Shah Tahmasp painting. Both tents also have turquoise-blue floor mats, stencilled in gold. Interestingly, in both pictures there is a kneeling figure in a yellow jacket to the left of the pavilion in an identical rounded hat with a continuous band of fur around the outside. The musician in the lower right corner may be considered another visual reference to the Shah Tahmasp painting, echoing Barbad in the tree of the other. If this was a deliberate reference, then it may be suggested that the prince sat in Khusraw's throne in our painting is none other than Ibrahim Mirza.
Recognising the work's significance, in 1984 Stuart Cary Welch asked for permission to mention this book in a forthcoming Festschrift for his co-writer, Martin Dickinson. He was excited to present it on this occasion since it confirmed a theory both of them held but had not spelled out in the book: "that the great artist Mirza Ali had gone to Sabzavar with the virtually exiled Sultan Ibrahim". In his letter to the owner, he described the confirmation of that theory to be "very satisfying". Knowledge of this manuscript encouraged Cary Welch to revise his previous dating of the later paintings of Mirza Ali to the 1560s. In his 1981 catalogue of the collection of Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, he ascribed two miniatures of courtly youths as the products of this period of artistic exile, dating them to the 1570s (Anthony Welch and Stuart Cary Welch, Arts of the Islamic Book, Ithaca, 1982, no.27). In her later cataloguing of the two paintings, Sheila Canby suggested that they may be even later, dating to circa 1580, after the prince returned from Qazvin, based on similarities with contemporaneous painting in the capital (Princes Poets and Paladins, London, 1998, no.39). A new chapter in the life of Mirza Ali, whose earlier life had included work on one of the most celebrated manuscripts ever produced, could now be written.
Subsequently, further information has come to light about Ibrahim Mirza's time in Sabzavar. Marianna Shreve Simpson has highlighted the existence of a second manuscript with a colophon associating with with Sabzavar. Dated to Muharram 982 / April-May 1574, it is a volume of the Naqshi-i badi' of Muhammad Ghazali Mashhadi. It is of a very similar size to ours and also copied in fine nasta'liq by Sultan Muhammad Khandan; today it is in the Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul (acc.no.TKS R.1038). It confirms what Welch suspected about this manuscript in two important respects. Firstly it specifically mentions that it was copied for Ibrahim Mirza, whose name does not appear on our colophon. Secondly, it specifically states that it was made for his kitab-khaneh (book workshop) in Sabzavar, confirming that Ibrahim Mirza had with him a number of artists and artisans involved in the production of luxury manuscripts (Marianna Shreve Simpson, Sultan Ibrahim Mirza's Haft Awrang, New Haven, 1997, p.240). Both manuscripts were also similar in theme, discussing mystical love and its consequences, and the Topkapi manuscript also includes two illustrations, though not attributable to any particular artist.
The final important piece of evidence to contextualise this manuscript is the finispiece of a Divan of Ibrahim Mirza in the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (acc.no.AKM282.86). The right hand page of the finispiece is in fact a direct copy of the right hand page of our finispiece, identical in almost every respect of composition to ours. A signature on folio 23b. means that the paintings are clearly by Abdallah al-Muzahhib, also known as al-Shirazi, and the whole manuscript can be dated to AH 990 / 1582 AD (Sheila Canby, Princes, Poets, and Paladins, London, 1998, no.38). Given the authorship of that manuscript, it is widely accepted that the prince in the finispiece was intended to be Ibrahim Mirza. However, by that time it was a posthumous portrait: Ibrahim Mirza was dead - murdered at the hands of Shah Isma'il II - and Mirza Ali may also have passed away by 1582. However, evidently our manuscript had returned to Qazvin at the end of Ibrahim Mirza's exile, and there been used as an exemplar by later artists, keen to learn from Mirza Ali's work.