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The “Historical Style” of Painting for Shahrukh and Its Revival in the Dispersed Manuscript of Majmaʿ al-Tawarikh

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Mohamad Reza Ghiasian
Mohamad Reza Ghiasian*
Affiliation:
Islamic Art History and Archaeology at the University of Bamberg
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Abstract

One of the most exquisite illustrated books produced under the patronage of Shahrukh is a copy of Majmaʿ al-Tawarikh which was widely dispersed during the twentieth century. The dispersal of the manuscript has strongly influenced and limited its scholarly examination. The present research has traced the folios of this manuscript in numerous collections. By means of comparison with other dated codices, the illustrations of the dispersed manuscript can be classified into three distinctly different groups. This article gives an explanation of why these three styles appear side by side in the manuscript. Thereafter, it focuses on the problem of the authenticity of some of the illustrations of the manuscript.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 6 , November 2015 , pp. 871 - 903
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2015

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Footnotes

This article presents some results of the author's ongoing PhD project at the University of Bamberg. Mohamad Reza Ghiasian is greatly indebted to his primary advisor, Professor Lorenz Korn, for guidance and invaluable suggestions. Warm thanks to Professor Karin Rührdanz for her suggestions and valuable criticisms. The author is grateful to Professor Robert Hillenbrand, Dr. Massumeh Farhad, and Dr. Sussan Babaie for the encouragement and help they gave him. He would like to express his appreciation to Ilse Sturkenboom and Abolala Soudavar for their help, as well as Ami Potter in the Yale University Art Gallery for providing numerous photos of the relevant folios. Thanks to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Chester Beatty Library, Aga Khan Museum, David Collection, Harvard Art Museums, Cincinnati Art Museum, Freer and Sackler Galleries, Yale University Art Gallery, and Metropolitan Museum of Art for providing images. Qurʾan passages follow the translation by Aminah Assami (“Saheeh International” version of Qurʾan translation).

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