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Lot Essay
This bifolio comes a manuscript titled Qisas al-Anbiya or ‘Stories of the Prophet’. This collection of narratives focuses on the lives of Islamic prophets, most of whom are biblical. The miniature painting on the verso has not been identified but it could be Yusuf on the road to reunite with his father Yaqub.
A manuscript with the same unusual polychrome stippled designs and identical rules are published in Stories of the Prophet (Rachel Milstein, Karin Rührdanz and Barbara Schmitz, Stories of the Prophet, Costa Mesa, 1999). This manuscript is in the Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul (acc.no.H.1228) and Milstein mentions that it is missing the first folios and likely an illustrated folio from between fols. 59 and 60. It seems likely that our bifolio comes from the same manuscript.
Although written in Persian, the majority of these texts were copied and illustrated in Ottoman Turkey by a group of unknown painters. We can use Milstein’s analysis of 21 copies of three different texts titled Qisas al-Anbiya to confidently locate this as having been copied between 1570 and 1580.
Another example with closely related illuminated margins, text and miniatures can be found in the Harvard Art Museum, Massachusetts (acc.no.1985.275).
A manuscript with the same unusual polychrome stippled designs and identical rules are published in Stories of the Prophet (Rachel Milstein, Karin Rührdanz and Barbara Schmitz, Stories of the Prophet, Costa Mesa, 1999). This manuscript is in the Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul (acc.no.H.1228) and Milstein mentions that it is missing the first folios and likely an illustrated folio from between fols. 59 and 60. It seems likely that our bifolio comes from the same manuscript.
Although written in Persian, the majority of these texts were copied and illustrated in Ottoman Turkey by a group of unknown painters. We can use Milstein’s analysis of 21 copies of three different texts titled Qisas al-Anbiya to confidently locate this as having been copied between 1570 and 1580.
Another example with closely related illuminated margins, text and miniatures can be found in the Harvard Art Museum, Massachusetts (acc.no.1985.275).