In March 1727 officials at the Royal Library in Paris finalized their purchase of eight manuscripts sent to them two years earlier from Egypt. Among these items was a late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century Persian muraqqa, a codex-format album containing a collection of elegantly framed Persianate calligraphies, drawings, and paintings. Also included in the album were two engravings, dated 1554, by the German artist Heinrich Aldegrever from his series depicting the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Figs. 1, 2).

The presence of Aldegrever's engravings in a Persian muraqqa testifies to the geo-graphical reach of early modern prints, and their reception in the regions to which they traveled. Prints proved a provocative catalyst for Persian draftsmen and painters, as the selective appropriations of European motifs by Safavid and Qajar artists demonstrate. As the little studied codex housing Aldegrever's prints shows, they were also collected by courtly patrons. Muraqqa means patched, and the heterogeneous contents of albums in the Turko-Persianate world and their collage-like presentation once led scholars to regard them as akin to scrapbooks. As David Roxburgh has established, however, muraqqa are not haphazardly assembled but rather are carefully conceived and arranged collections. Their contents and sequencing embody art historical and connoisseurial discourses while also instantiating the specific interests and tastes of their patrons. The interpretation of this muraqqa's organizing logic and its meanings within the context of Safavid court culture is beyond my expertise.