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Lot Essay
Between the 14th and 19th centuries, there was an increased demand for devotional manuscripts produced in North and Sub-Saharan Africa. Specialised workshops produced numerous, often illustrated, copies of such texts, from miniature books to large-scale manuscripts, with both lavish illuminations and simple decorations (Hiba Abid, ‘Illuminating the History of Private Devotion in the Muslim West’, lecture at Columbia University, 2022).
While known examples of Sheikh al-Mu’ta bin Salih al-Sharqi’s Dhakira al-Muhtaj date back to at least the 1810s, the present example dated 1874 is a particularly richly illuminated one, with its numerous polychrome illuminations and diagrams. These include a dozen of the sandals of the Prophet Muhammad, ornately decorated, including poetry honouring him. These are known from the Ottoman tradition of depicting kadem-i şerif (noble footprint) and na‘layn (sandals) in prayer books based on his relics found in the 16th century (Christiane Gruber, The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images, Bloomington, 2018, p.276-85).
Textually and decoratively, our Dhakira al-Muhtaj draws from the most famous of all such Moroccan prayer books, the Dala’il al-Khayrat of Muhammad al-Jazuli (d. 1465), copied across the Islamic world from Morocco to Central Asia, China, and Java, Indonesia (see Nurul Iman Rusli, Dala’il al-Khayrat: Prayer Manuscripts from the 16th-19th Centuries, the collection of the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, 2016).
While known examples of Sheikh al-Mu’ta bin Salih al-Sharqi’s Dhakira al-Muhtaj date back to at least the 1810s, the present example dated 1874 is a particularly richly illuminated one, with its numerous polychrome illuminations and diagrams. These include a dozen of the sandals of the Prophet Muhammad, ornately decorated, including poetry honouring him. These are known from the Ottoman tradition of depicting kadem-i şerif (noble footprint) and na‘layn (sandals) in prayer books based on his relics found in the 16th century (Christiane Gruber, The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images, Bloomington, 2018, p.276-85).
Textually and decoratively, our Dhakira al-Muhtaj draws from the most famous of all such Moroccan prayer books, the Dala’il al-Khayrat of Muhammad al-Jazuli (d. 1465), copied across the Islamic world from Morocco to Central Asia, China, and Java, Indonesia (see Nurul Iman Rusli, Dala’il al-Khayrat: Prayer Manuscripts from the 16th-19th Centuries, the collection of the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, 2016).