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Early Illustrated Manuscripts of Kashifi's Akhlāq-i Muḥsinī

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Lisa Golombek
Lisa Golombek*
Affiliation:
Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto; Royal Ontario Museum
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Extract

Of the Many Recorded Manuscripts of Husayn Vaᶜiz-i Kashifi's Treatise on ethics, Akhlāq-i Muḥinī, only six were planned to have illustrations to the text. The manuscript bearing what is ostensibly the earliest date (900/1494-95), was acquired by the Royal Ontario Museum in 1997. It opens with a shamsah, inscribed with a dedication to the Timurid prince Abu’l-Muhsin, and containing the date 900 in numerals (fig. 1). On the last folio, a quatrain relating to the year of composition of the treatise contains a chronogram as well as the date 900 in numerals. The abjad date can, however, be read either as “900” or “907,” and Maria Subtelny has demonstrated convincingly that the latter date must be the correct one, as the text contains a reference to the reconciliation of Abu’l-Muhsin and his father Sultan-Husayn, which took place around 906/1500. Therefore, the work could not have been composed in 900 A.H., and, consequently, the attribution of the Toronto manuscript to this date is false.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 4: Husayn Vaᶜiz-i Kashifi , December 2003 , pp. 615 - 643
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for Iranian Studies 2003

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References

1. For a discussion of the contents of this work and its editions and translations, see the article by Maria Subtelny in this volume. I would like to acknowledge the far-reaching assistance and support she has given me in my research on the Toronto manuscript, which includes making materials available to me, drawing my attention to parallels in illustrated manuscripts that she came across in her own work, and the resolution of the problem of the date of composition. The following manuscripts were planned to include illustrations: Royal Ontario Museum, 997.47.1 (discussed in this article); Tashkent, Institute of Oriental Studies, no. 2116/I, dated 907 A.H., copied by Mir-ᶜAli (23 miniatures, overpainted probably in the late sixteenth century); Istanbul, Kitabkhanah Hajj Selim Aga, No. 745, dated 944 A.H.; Paris, BN, Suppl. persan 1959, for library of Shah ᶜAbbas II (1052/1642–1077/1666) (Richard, F., Splendeurs persanes: Manuscrits du XIIe au XVIIe siècle, Paris, 1997: 222Google Scholar, #157) (the six miniatures were removed); St. Petersburg, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, C-633, ca. 1640, probably at Isfahan (Akimushkin, O. in Petrosyan, Y. A. et al., Pages of Perfection: Islamic Paintings and Calligraphy from the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg [Milan, 1995], 252–53Google Scholar, cat. no. 46); Tehran, Nassiri Collection, dated 1020/1611 and 1055/1646, fifteen miniatures painted by Fazl Allah Musavvir Husayni (Richard, Splendeurs, 222).

2. See the article by Maria Subtelny in this volume, 602–04.

3. Soudavar, A., “The Concepts of ‘Al-Aqdamo Aṣaḥḥ’ and ‘Yaqin-e Sābeq’, and the Problem of Semi-fakes,” Studia Iranica 28 (1999): 255–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. “A Royal Manuscript and its Transformation: The Life History of a Book,” in Atiyeh, G. N., ed., The Book in the Islamic World: The Written Word and Communication in the Middle East (New York, 1995), 179–208Google Scholar.

5. Stchoukine, I., “Les images de Sultan Hosayn dans un manuscrit de son Divan de 897/1492,” Syria 53 (1976): 141–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar (fol. 2, ill. Pl. VII: 1); illustrated in color in Rogers, J. M. (translation, expansion, and edition of Caπman, F. and Tanindi, Z.), The Topkapi Saray Museum: The Albums and Illustrated Manuscripts (Boston, 1986), pl. 61Google Scholar (dated 897/1492, copied by Sultan-ᶜAli Mashhadi, considered by the authors to be a late Timurid Herat work [90]); also a manuscript of the same text in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Ms., Suppl. turc 993, dated 1493 (mentioned by Stchoukine, I., Les peintures des manuscrits timurides [Paris, 1954], 70–71Google Scholar, but not described in full because he considered the paintings to be late sixteenth-century Ottoman); Dīvān of Shaykhzadeh ᶜAtaᵓi, St. Petersburg, B-2456 (Petrosyan, Pages of Perfection, 208–09) (see Soudavar, “Al-Aqdamo Aṣaḥḥ,” who recognized a common feature in these images, the insertion of a pointed cone in the headdress).

6. For example, the Paris manuscript described by Richard, Splendeurs, n. 1 above.

7. Purchased from Sotheby’s, London, sale of 23 April 1997, Sale No. LN7255, Lot No. 86, through the generous assistance of the ROM Reproductions Fund of the Royal Ontario Museum Foundation.

8. Laura Whatley, who researched this manuscript for a paper in my course at the University of Toronto, pointed out the comparable insertion of faces into a shamsah-like waq-waq pattern on a yurt in a painting of the Tabriz school, ca. 1525. (Canby, S., Princes, Poets & Paladins: Islamic Paintings from the Collection of Prince and Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan, [London, 1998], 46, no. 23Google Scholar.

9. The only published scene from the mid-seventeenth century Safavid illustrated manuscript in St. Petersburg (Petrosyan, Pages of Perfection, 253) illustrates this story, showing the castle with the slain Abu Jafifar, watched by the slave, and the Daylamite, having escaped by leaping into the moat; this manuscript also has ten miniatures.

10. I would like to thank Sonja Mann, research assistant for the study of this manuscript, who offered this suggestion.

11. For a description, see Semenov, A. A. et al., Sobranie vostochnykh rukopisei Akademii nauk Uzbekskoi SSR, 11 vols. (Tashkent, 1952–87), 3: no. 2036Google Scholar.

12. My thanks to Eriko Ho, who arranged for the photography of selected folios from the Tashkent manuscript, and to the Library of the Beruni Institute of Oriental Studies, Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan. I am also grateful to Maria Subtelny for giving me access to her complete set of photographs of this manuscript.

13. The reading of the verses and the date (on which see below) are by Maria Subtelny.

14. On fol. 6 the illuminator has inserted two “jogs” to accommodate earlier emendations to the text. The text in the margins, which was probably added later, contains a work by Kashifi and another possibly by his son, Fakhr al-Din ᶜAli Safi, entitled Tuḥfat al-ṣalāt (positively identified as a work by Kashifi), and Targhīb al-ṣalāt, respectively.

15. For example, compare the arabesques of fol. 67b with the frontispiece of the Gulistān of Safidi in St. Petersburg, D-716 (Petrosyan, Pages of Perfection, 234–35, no. 42), attributed to Bukhara around 1540.

16. C. van Arendonk, “Hātim al-Ṭāᵓī,” EI 2, 3: 274.

17. As suggested by Maria Subtelny.