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‘Chinese’ Paper and Margins of Gold in a Fifteenth-Century Shiraz Anthology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 June 2022
Abstract
Within the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, is a small, but especially interesting anthology of Persian poetry. Although the manuscript's colophon is missing, the stylistic evidence of its badly damaged illustrations and illuminations indicates that it was produced in Shiraz in the 1430s or 1440s. The discussion considers two unusual features of the manuscript, the first of which is that seven folios of a type of paper, generally thought to be of Chinese manufacture, are included among its 171 folios of otherwise Islamic paper. As is typical of this so-called Chinese paper, the folios are coloured—in this case an olive green—and one is decorated with a gold painted design of what appears to be an immature fruit of some sort, along with lobed leaves on a curling vine. Equally intriguing are the scenes and patterns, painted exclusively in gold, that fill the margins of the folios throughout the manuscript. No other such margins are known in any other contemporary manuscript.
- Type
- Article
- Information
- Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 32 , Special Issue 4: Studies in Honour of Barbara Brend , October 2022 , pp. 808 - 826
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal Asiatic Society
Footnotes
All photographs are copyright of the Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library (CBL), Dublin. I would like to thank Sinead Ward, Jenny Greiner, and Jon Riordan of the CBL photographic services for kindly facilitating their reproduction. (A list of abbreviations is included at the end of the article.)
References
1 See Robinson, B. W., in Arberry, A. J., Robinson, B. W., Blochet, E. and Wilkinson, J. V. S., The Chester Beatty Library. A Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts and Miniatures. Vol. 3, MSS 221–398 (Dublin, 1962), pp. 62–63Google Scholar; available at https://chesterbeatty.ie/assets/uploads/2018/11/A-Catalogue-of-The-Persian-Manuscripts-and-Miniatures-Vol-III_Part1.pdf (accessed 21 April 2022). The manuscript was repaginated in 1998 to exclude from the page count the seven front- and eight back-flyleaves; therefore, the folio numbers given here do not coincide with those given by Robinson. At the time of writing, the manuscript is scheduled to be digitised and to appear online shortly; see https://viewer.cbl.ie/viewer/ (accessed 21 April 2022). The manuscript is accession no. 643 and was purchased in France for £13. No date of acquisition is recorded but based on those of other manuscripts recorded at the same time, it was probably bought in May or June of 1955. I would like to thank Hyder Abbas of the CBL for kindly providing this information.
2 The illustrations occur on ff. 88a, 120b, 141b, 149a, and 161a; the illuminations are on ff. 1, 27, 36, 40, 54, 73, 102, 152, 170, and 171. The shamsas are in the well-known style of Shiraz, typified by tiny, un-outlined floral motifs in gold on a dark blue ground; what little is visible of the original, undamaged headings indicates they were in the floral/palmette-arabesque style that appeared in Shiraz in the early 1430s and which used a broader palette and made greater use of the palmette-arabesque than the earlier blue-and-gold Shiraz style of the shamsas. As here, these two illumination styles were frequently used side-by-side in manuscripts. See Elaine Wright, The Look of the Book: Manuscript Production in Shiraz, 1303–1452. Freer Gallery of Art Occasional Papers, New Series, Vol. 3 (Washington DC, Seattle and Dublin, 2012), pp. 106–111 and figs. 63–68 and 70.
3 The manuscript as a whole has suffered considerable damage: most folios are water stained, mainly at the upper edge; frequently the outer edge of a folio has been patched (e.g. ff. 142, 146, 148 and 169) with, where necessary, the marginal decoration being repainted using a now-green pigment, probably some sort of tarnished metallic pigment originally intended to replicate gold (e.g. on ff. 54-65 and 75-80); the same now-green pigment has been used to decorate the margins of two replacement folios (ff. 137-38), as well as the margins of the ‘modern’ flyleaves at the beginning and end of the manuscript (see note 1, above); the main body of all headings, except the one on f. 102b, has been overpainted with this now-green pigment; and there appear to be both disordered and missing folios throughout the manuscript.
4 For CBL Per 127, see Arberry, A. J., Minovi, M. and Blochet, E., The Chester Beatty Library. A Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts and Miniatures. Vol. I, MSS 101–150 (Dublin, 1959), pp. 55–57Google Scholar; and also Lentz, Thomas W. and Lowry, Glenn D., Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century (Los Angeles and Washington DC, 1989), p. 202Google Scholar and cat. no. 103, p. 350. Two other safinas with paper decorated in this same manner, both in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Suppl. persan 1798, circa 1450, and Suppl. persan 1425, circa 1480), are reproduced in Richard, Francis, Splendeurs persanes, Manuscrits du XII au XVII siècle (Paris, 1997)Google Scholar, no. 49, p. 83 and no. 55, pp. 88–89 and 100, respectively.
5 Robinson identifies the second of the three manuscripts (the current location of which is unknown) as no. XXII in his 1953 unpublished catalogue: B. W. Robinson, ‘The Kevorkian Collection, Islamic and Indian Illustrated Manuscripts, Miniatures and Drawings’. It has not been possible to obtain a copy of the catalogue, but it is said to indicate that the manuscript is written on the same type of Chinese paper as BL Add 16561; see Denise-Marie Teece, ‘Vessels of Verse, Ships of Song: Persian Anthologies of the Qara Quyunlu and Aq Quyunlu Period’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 2013, p. 242.
6 The earliest reference to paper of this type being of Chinese manufacture appears to have been Armenag Sakisian (see App.B.a) followed a few years later by M. Aga-Oğlu (see App.B.b).
7 CBL Per 294 is the only manuscript known to me that includes only a few folios of ‘Chinese’ paper. Twelve manuscripts consisting only of ‘Chinese’ paper have previously been published and are listed in the Appendix, along with bibliographic sources. However, new research currently underway has revealed other, as yet unpublished, manuscripts. Ilse Sturkenboom (Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich) and Yusen Yu (University of St. Andrew's) are currently engaged in (separate) studies of so-called Chinese paper. At the workshop ‘Decorated Papers in Early Modern Islamic Manuscript Culture’, sponsored by The Islamic Manuscript Association, held on 23 November 2019 in Istanbul, each presented a paper on the current state of their research, noting, between them, five manuscripts previously unknown to me: Sarikhani Collection, London, Ms 1029; National Museum of Tehran, Mss 3598 and 4236; Suleymaniye Library, Istanbul, AS 4334; and Tareq Rajab Museum, Kuwait (inv. no. unknown).
8 See App.B.e; Tanındı notes that these separate sheets of paper, which ‘may be green, violet, blue, pink and dark blue’, are mainly the work of Qara Quyunlu and Aq Quyunlu calligraphers.
9 Of the other folios of ‘Chinese’ paper, some have margins filled with the types of painted gold decoration discussed below and which is contemporary with the production of the manuscript, either landscape scenes (ff. 72a, 133a, 165a, 166b and 167a) or large floral motifs (ff. 134b and 168b); the margins of the other folios are filled merely with tiny sprinkles of gold paint (ff. 72b, 133b, 165b, 166a) or both gold sprinkles and a tiny sort of floral motif (ff. 167b and 168a), probably also contemporary with the production of the manuscript.
10 See App.B.g, pp. 15–16 and figs. 15, 17 and 19. Soucek's argument suggests that the size of the two sheets of paper used was dictated by the intended size of the bifolios. The problem of manufacturing such long, unseamed sheets of paper (the larger of the two is suggested to have been 44 x 280 cm) needs to be considered.
11 Folio 72 of CBL Per 294 is a single ‘tipped in’ folio, while ff. 134 and 135 form a bifolio; however, the rebinding of the manuscript is too tight to be able to determine if the other folios are ‘tipped in’ singles or bifolios.
12 The late Don Baker, personal conversation with the author, July 1994.
13 A. F. L. Beeston speaking in reference to BOD Pers. e. 26 (see App.B.c), and, speaking more generally, Wright (see App.B.n).
14 See App.B.i.
15 The paper of BOD Pers. e. 26 was tested in early 2019 using X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF). I am grateful to David Howell, Head of Heritage Science, and Marinita Stiglitz, Head of Paper Conservation, at the Bodleian Libraries, for kindly providing me with the test results. A third paper presented at the 2019 Istanbul workshop (see note 7, above), by Claudia Colini (University of Hamburg), who is working with Ilse Sturkenboom, discussed the preliminary results of a project concerning the scientific testing of paper used in Islamic manuscripts, including ‘Chinese’ paper. The results for the ‘Chinese’ paper tested so far are in line with those of the Bodleian tests, with the precise source of the lead not yet determined.
16 But see note 9, above.
17 However, in these later examples the gold is generally manipulated as indicated above.
18 O'Kane, Bernard, ‘The Bihbihani Anthology and its antecedents’, Oriental Art 45.4 (1999–2000), p. 9Google Scholar; available at https://aucegypt.academia.edu/BernardOKane (accessed 21 April 2022).
19 According to O'Kane, ‘the landscape miniatures of the Bihbihani Anthology can . . . be considered the culmination of the outdoor aesthetic of the Muzaffarid style of painting’; O'Kane, ‘The Bihbihani Anthology’, p. 12. Although TIEM 1950 is dated a few years after the end of Muzaffarid rule, it is still very much a Muzaffarid manuscript in terms of its style and overall aesthetic; indeed, many years earlier, in 1382 (ah 783), and thus working for a Muzaffarid patron, the scribe of TIEM 1950 signed the colophon of the Shahnama section of a composite manuscript made in Shiraz (TPL H. 1510); see O'Kane, ‘The Bihbihani Anthology’, p. 11, and, especially, Priscilla Soucek and Filiz Çağman, ‘A royal manuscript and its transformation: the life history of a book’, in The Book in the Islamic World: The Written Word and Communication in the Middle East, (ed.) George N. Atiyeh (Albany, 1995), pp. 182, 186 and fig. 10.2.
20 O'Kane, ‘The Bihbihani Anthology’, p. 12.
21 For example, f. 180b, reproduced in O'Kane, ‘The Bihbihani Anthology’, fig. 2.
22 For example, f. 181a, reproduced in O'Kane, ‘The Bihbihani Anthology’, fig. 2.
23 Included among the many pages of CBL Per 294 on which this motif occurs are ff. 3b, 13b, 27b, 34b, 52b, 94b, 95a, 99b, 103b, 105b, 107b, 114b, 115b, and 130a. On other pages, such as ff. 100a, 113a, and 116a, the tree trunk itself curves, also recalling, though to a much lesser extent of course, the vine-wrapped trees of the Bihbihani Anthology.
24 For example, ff. 85b and 181a, reproduced in O'Kane, ‘The Bihbihani Anthology’, figs. 3 and 2, respectively.
25 For example, see the sole landscape painting to have survived intact in the Khamsa of Nizami portion of a composite manuscript (for which also see note 19, above), now in the Topkapi Palace Library (H. 1510, f. 682b); the date in the colophon of this section of the manuscript has been altered, but was probably 1374–75 (ah 776). See Soucek and Çağman ‘A royal manuscript’, pp. 182, 192 and fig. 10.8; and also O'Kane, ‘The Bihbihani Anthology’, pp. 9–11.
26 Also of interest are three paintings in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery detached from an anthology, the current location of which is unknown. As noted in the catalogue description of the paintings, they relate in many ways to Muzaffarid paintings, while the landscape details in two of them (but in particular cat. no. 50) especially recall the landscapes of the Bihbihani Anthology. The authors have assigned the paintings to Iran, along with the date 1417–18 (ah 820), noting that a Sultanate provenance has also been suggested. See Lowry, Glenn D. and Beach, Milo Cleveland, An Annotated and Illustrated Checklist of the Vever Collection (Washington DC and Seattle, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, cat. nos. 48–50, pp. 37–38.
27 Reproduced in Oktay Aslanapa, ‘The art of bookbinding’, in The Arts of the Book in Central Asia, 14th–16th Centuries, (ed.) Basil Gray (London, 1979), fig. 39 (and figs. 42–43 for similar bindings of the same period); and in Aga-Oğlu (see App.B.b).
28 See http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_27261 (accessed 21 April 2022).
29 Unlike the Chester Beatty Anthology, the text of the London Anthology is arranged as a central block of text with a marginal column on its three outer sides filled with oblique lines of text. The pages on which this marginal column is filled with decoration, not text, all occur in the second half of the manuscript: ff. 339a–345a, 403b–420a, 533b, 534b–539a, 540a, 541b, and 542b.
30 In many margins, both in Iskandar's anthology and that in the Chester Beatty, the pattern has been altered somewhat to fit within the long outer margin, as is the case here, on f. 405b, where the leonine faces do not appear in the long outer margin. (Generally, descriptions given here are of a pattern as it appears in the upper and lower margins of a page.)
31 See Atil, Esin, Chase, W. T. and Jett, Paul, Islamic Metalwork in the Freer Gallery of Art (Washington DC, 1985), pp. 137Google Scholar and 140, for a metal bowl made in Egypt or Syria for Sultan Najm al-Din Ayyub in about 1240.
32 See CBL 127.153b, a detached folio from the safina dated 1449, referred to previously (see note 4, above), and CBL Per 292.5, an undated folio possibly also detached from a safina. On both of these, paired fish form a medallion shape around the head of a div. For waqwaqs, see an unpublished and undated, but fifteenth-century, safina, BL Or. 13193, ff. 28a and 64b–65a.
33 For details of Iskandar's life, see Priscilla Soucek, ‘Eskandar Solṭān’, in Encyclopaeida Iranica, Vol. VIII, Fasc. 6, pp. 603–604; available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/eskandar-soltan (accessed 21 April 2022); and for the life of Ibrahim-Sultan, see Priscilla Soucek, ‘Ebrāhīm Solṭān’, in Encyclopaeida Iranica, Vol. VIII, Fasc. 1, pp. 76–78; available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ebrahim-soltan (accessed 21 April 2022).