¹ For a brief general survey of the material, see Sims, E. G., “The Timurid Imperial Style: Its Origins and Diffusion,” Art and Archaeology Research Papers, 6 (1974): 56–67Google Scholar—an article that has worn very well. See also Grube, E. J., “The School of Herat from 1400 to 1450,” in The Arts of the Book in Central Asia, ed. by Gray, Basil (Paris, 1979), 147–178Google Scholar; and Thomas Woodward Lentz, “Painting at Herat under Baysunghur ibn Shahrukh” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1985), which has been a first-class resource for this article.

² Perhaps the first of these new-style patrons was Sultan Ahmad Jala'ir—see Klimburg-Salter, D., “A Sufi Theme in Persian Painting: The Diwan of Sultan Ahmad Ğala'ir in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.,” Kunst des Orients, 10 (1976–77): 42–85Google Scholar and Fitzherbert, T., “Khwājū Kirmānī (689–753/1290–1352): An Éminence Grise of Fourteenth-Century Painting,” Iran, XXIX (1991): 137–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ Gray, Basil, Persian Painting from Miniatures of the XIII.–XVI. Centuries (London, 1947), pl. 4.Google Scholar

⁴ Roxburgh, David, Prefacing the Image. The Writing of Art History in Sixteenth-Century Iran (Leiden, Boston and Köln, 2001), 167–169.Google Scholar

⁵ Ibid., 46.

⁶ Abdullaeva, Firuza and Melville, Charles, The Persian Book of Kings: Ibrahim Sultan's Shahnama (Oxford, 2009), 56–57.Google Scholar But his inscription (on the carpet page of f. 17r, which twice trumpets the titles of his master), tiny though it is, sits on the chord of the composition and stands out in white against the gold of the frame.

⁷ See the pioneering work of Abolala Soudavar, which has set a new benchmark in studies of Persian painting: “The Saga of Abu-Sa‘id Bahādor Khān. The Abu-Sa‘id-nāmé,” in The Court of the Il-khans 1290–1340, ed. by Raby, Julian and Fitzherbert, Teresa, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art, XII (Oxford, 1996), 95–211.Google Scholar

⁸ Roxburgh, David, The Persian Album 1400–1600. From Dispersal to Collection (New Haven and London, 2005)Google Scholar, passim, but especially 117–121, 133–147.

⁹ Roxburgh, Prefacing the Image, 99.

¹⁰ Ibid., 48–49.

¹¹ For a full biography, see Lentz, “Painting,” 1–64; for a brief summary of his life and importance, see Roemer, H. R., “Bāysongōr, Gīāt-al-Dīn,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 4: 6a–9a.Google Scholar

¹² In what follows it will be referred to as the Gulistan Shahnama.

¹³ Curatola, Giovanni, ed., Eredità dell'Islam. Arte islamica in Italia (Milan, 1993), 365–367Google Scholar (contribution by Eleanor G. Sims); Ettinghausen, Richard, Persian Miniatures in the Bernard Berenson Collection (Milan, 1961), 4Google Scholar and pls. II–VI; Gray, Basil, Persian Painting (Geneva, 1961), 84–86Google Scholar (hereafter PP); Lentz, “Painting,” 83–89.

¹⁴ Lentz, “Painting,” 75–83, an account packed with subtle and challenging observations; Verna Russillo Prentice, “The Illustration of Sa‘di's Poetry in Fifteenth Century Herat” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1977), 7–44; Hillenbrand, R., “The Message of Misfortune,” in Asian Art, 2, ed. by Tilden, Jill (London, 1996), 32–45Google Scholar, 186–188.

¹⁵ Wellesz, E., “Eine Handschrift aus der Blütezeit der frühtimuridischer Kunst,” Wiener Beiträge zur Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte Asiens, X (1936): 3–20Google Scholar and eadem, “The Baysonghor Manuscript in the Vienna National Library,” in The Memorial Volume. Fifth International Congress of Iranian Art and Archaeology, Tehran (1968), ed. by Yusuf Kiani, Muhammad and Tajvidi, Akbar (Tehran, 1972), 2: 223–227Google Scholar; Lentz, “Painting,” 89–93.

¹⁶ Stchoukine, Ivan, Flemming, Barbara, Luft, Paul and Sohrweide, Hanna, Verzeichnis der orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland (Wiesbaden, 1971), 17–18Google Scholar and pl. 13/1–2; Lentz, “Painting,” 67–72 and 303–307.

¹⁷ Sims, E. G., “Prince Baysunghur's Chahar Maqaleh,” Sanat Tarihi Yıllığı, 6 (1974–75): 375–409Google Scholar; for other relevant manuscripts or detached leaves, see Lentz, “Painting,” 116–121. One should also consider the impact of the illustrated Anthology produced in Shiraz and presumably sent to Baysunghur by his brother, Sultan Ibrahim, as a gift; see ibid., 72–75; Kühnel, E., “Die Baysonghur-Handschrift der islamischen Kunstabteilung,” Jahrbuch der preuszischen Kunstsammlungen, LII (1931): 133–152Google Scholar; and Enderlein, Volkmar, Die Miniaturen der Berliner Baisonqor-Handschrift (Frankfurt, 1970)Google Scholar, and of other paintings whose style, though markedly different, nevertheless has points of contact with his atelier, such as the St Petersburg Nizami of 835/1431, for which see Adamova, A., “Repetition of Compositions in Manuscripts: The Khamsa of Nizami in Leningrad,” in Timurid Art and Culture: Iran and Central Asia in the Fifteenth Century, ed. by Golombek, Lisa and Eva Subtelny, Maria, Studies in Islamic Art and Architecture, 6 (Leiden, New York and Cologne, 1992), 67–75.Google Scholar

¹⁸ And of course there were yet more contemporary styles that were developed at other courts, as is shown by the enigmatic St Petersburg Nizami.

¹⁹ Asma Serajuddin, “Architectural Representations in Persian Miniature Painting during the Timurid and Safavid Periods” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, SOAS, University of London, 1968): 82–84.

²⁰ For example, on pages 13 (the four poets) and 219 (Rustam lassoes the Khaqan of Chin).

²¹ Grube, E. J., “The Spencer and the Gulestan Shah-Nama,” Pantheon, 22 (1964), 21 and 26Google Scholar; Schmitz, Barbara, Islamic Manuscripts in The New York Public Library (Oxford, 1992), 105–111Google Scholar, with the information that chemical analysis of the colors used points to a nineteenth-century date for some of these paintings. But this discovery does not materially change the discussion to which Grube and Gray have contributed; no matter when the paintings that have a Timurid air were executed, they seem to have been based on some now lost early Timurid original.

²² Lentz, “Painting,” 566. If the image of the prince watching the hunt in the frontispiece of this Shahnama is indeed Baysunghur (and the other portraits of him, including not only the ones where an assured identification is implied—which total eight in Lentz's list, 565–566—but also the probable and possible ones listed by Lentz, 566–568, allow one to pinpoint the nature of his features), it seems at least possible that other images in the same manuscript should also be intended as representations of him.

²³ Amara bi-bina hadha'l-‘imara al-sultan al-a‘zam Baysunghur Bahadur Khan khallada Allah mulkahu.

²⁴ This shows Zal embracing Rudaba (Gray, Basil, The Shahnameh of Ferdowsi. The Baysonghori Manuscript. An Album of Miniatures and Illuminations [Tehran, 1971], pl. XVIIIGoogle Scholar). It reads amara bi-bina hadha'l-‘imara al-sultan al-a‘zam wa'l-khaqan Ghiyath al-Saltana wa'l-Dunya wa'l-Din Baysunghur Bahadur Khan khallada Allah mulkahu. Zal too has no facial hair.

²⁵ For a translation of, and commentary on, this key text, see Thackston, Wheeler M. (selected and trans.), A Century of Princes. Sources on Timurid History and Art (Cambridge, MA, 1989), 323–327Google Scholar: see also Woodward Lentz, Thomas and David Lowry, Glenn, Timur and the Princely Vision. Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century (Washington and Los Angeles, 1989), 364–365.Google Scholar

²⁶ It may be no accident that a slightly earlier (and characteristically spare) version of this same scene occurs in the Anthology made for Baysunghur's brother Sultan Ibrahim, another patron of the arts (Enderlein, Miniaturen, pl. 2). I am grateful to Charles Melville for bringing this image to my attention. The iconography employed for Jamshid in turn seems to owe a good deal to the image of Iskandar building the wall against Gog and Magog in the Great Mongol Shahnama; see Glenn David Lowry with Nemanzee, Susan, A Jeweler's Eye. Islamic Arts of the Book from the Vever Collection (Seattle and London, 1988), 87, pl. 12.Google Scholar

²⁷ Teresa Fitzherbert, “‘Bal‘ami's Tabari’. An Illustrated Manuscript of Bal‘ami's Tarjama-yi Tarikh-i Tabari in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington (F59.16, 47.19 and 30.21)” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2001), 1: 222–223 and 295–300.

²⁸ See Binyon, Laurence, Wilkinson, James Vere Stewart and Gray, Basil, Persian Miniature Painting. Including a Critical and Descriptive Catalogue of the Miniatures Exhibited at Burlington House January–March 1931 (London, 1933), 71Google Scholar (hereafter, PMP).

²⁹ Khaleghi-Motlagh, Dj., “Bāysongōrī Šāh-Nāma,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 4: 9.Google Scholar

³⁰ Ibid.

³¹ The recto and verso of the folio numbers can be recovered by means of the facsimile mentioned below.

³² For inconsistencies of page numbering, see below, p. 116.

³³ Lentz, “Painting,” 100–109 and 385–421. Other accounts of this manuscript are to be found in V. Minorsky, “Two Persian Manuscripts,” Apollo, XIII (1931): 7; Binyon et al., PMP, 69–71; Stchoukine, Ivan, Les peintures des manuscripts timurides (Paris, 1954), 53–54Google Scholar; Gray, PP, 85 and 88; Grube, “The Spencer and the Gulestan Shah-Nama,” 9–28 (which considers the manuscript in the context of a later free copy of fifteen of its paintings and of several others of apparently Timurid origin); Gray, B., “The Pictorial Arts in the Timurid Period,” in The Cambridge History of Iran. Volume 6. The Timurid and Safavid Periods, ed. by Jackson, Peter and Lockhart, Laurence (Cambridge, 1986), 856–857Google Scholar; Lentz, T., “Bāysongōrī Šāh-Nāma ii. The Paintings,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 4: 10–11Google Scholar with further bibliography (a splendid concise summary explaining why this manuscript is so important); and Sims, E., “The Illustrated Manuscripts of Firdausi's Shahnama commissioned by Princes of the House of Timur,” Ars Orientalis, XXII (1992): 44–45Google Scholar and 49–57. See also n. 24 above.

³⁴ Sharifzada, A., Namvar-nama (Tehran, 1991), 10–20Google Scholar, with color reproductions of the frontispiece and of Yazdagird addressing Mundhir, plus two illuminated pages; Najafi, M. Bagher, Handschriften-Sammlung von Firdusis Schahnameh im Iran (Cologne, 1997), 486–490Google Scholar, with six paintings and several illuminated pages.

³⁵ See Gray, Shahnameh, 15–26 for a general introduction to the manuscript; he also provides a commentary on each painting. A companion 70-page volume of the plates only, with no text by, or reference to, Basil Gray, was published at the same time.

³⁶ It seems unlikely that Basil Gray, the author, realized that the illustrations were to be modern water-color copies of the originals; indeed, he notes “the miniatures … are here reproduced in facsimile from the original in the Golestan Public Library” (ibid., 15).

³⁷ Semsar, Mohammad-Hasan, Golestan Palace Library. A Portfolio of Miniature Paintings and Calligraphy (Tehran, 2000), 41Google Scholar (unpaginated) and pls. 42–66; and Rajabi, Muhammad-Ali, ed., Masterpieces of Persian Painting (Tehran, 2005)Google Scholar, fourth unpaginated page (“The Slaying of Arjasp”); see also above, n. 34.

³⁸ It is hard to shake off the suspicion that these panegyrics derive, at several removes, from the adulation lavished on this manuscript at the Burlington exhibition of 1931, which is reflected in the scholarship of the following decade. A separate volume, published by the Soroush Press in Tehran in 1991 under the title The Shahnameh of Ferdosi. The Baysonghori Period Manuscript: An Album of Miniatures and Illuminations, contains similarly doctored images from a manuscript that is clearly not the Baysunghur Shahnama, and not even a Timurid one. The volume, put together by Karim Safa'i and Jaber Anasseri, was published to mark the millennium of the composition of the Shahnama, and clearly felt it necessary to trade on the name of the Baysunghur ms.

³⁹ The fullest account of this manuscript and its importance is given by Lentz, “Painting,” 127. The ms. is no. 6031 in the Malik National Library and Museum, bound with a copy of the Khamsa of Nizami, dated Sha‘ban 833/May 1430. An account of the ms. was presented by Said Khoddari Naini at the Shahnama Conference in Cambridge in December 2007, under preparation for publication.

⁴⁰ Binyon et al., PMP, 69 (with the information that this manuscript is in Tehran, is dated 831 AH, is in private hands and contains “portraits of the writer, gilder and artist, as well as of Baysunqur, to whom they presented it”); and Gray, PP, 85 and 88, who cites as evidence the copies of Timurid painting not from the Gulistan Shahnama in the Spencer Shahnama. This is certainly the same as the Malik ms. noted above, which contains an endpiece painting (of somewhat dubious authenticity), of the Shahnama being presented to Baysunghur surrounded by his courtiers. The ms. is otherwise unillustrated.

⁴¹ See William Robinson, Basil, “Prince Baysunghur and the Fables of Bidpai,” Oriental Art, NS, 16 (1970): 145–154Google Scholar; Grube, E. J., “Two Kalilah wa Dimnah Codices made for Baysunghur Mirza: the Concept of the ‘Classical Style’ Reconsidered,” in Atti del III Convegno Internazionale sull'Arte e sulla Civilità Islamica. “Problemi dell'età timuride” (Venezia 22–25 Ottobre 1979) (Venice, 1980), 115–122Google Scholar plus an appendix of xi pages (he deals with H.362 and R.1022, both in the Topkapi Saray Library); Lentz, “Painting,” 94–100, 109–113; Lentz, and Lowry, , Princely Vision, 332Google Scholar; E. J. Grube, “Fifteenth-Century Kalilah wa Dimnah Manuscripts,” in A Mirror for Princes from India. Illustrated Versions of the Kalilah wa Dimnah, Anvar-i Suhayli, Iyar-i Danish, and Humayun Nameh, ed. by idem (Bombay, 1991), 78–97; idem, “Prolegomena for a Corpus Publication of Illustrated Kalilah wa Dimnah Manuscripts,” Islamic Art, IV (1992): 382 and 385Google Scholar; and Bernard O'Kane, Early Persian Painting. Kalila and Dimna Manuscripts of the Late Fourteenth Century (London, 2003), 42 and 256–260.Google Scholar

⁴² For the specific background see Lentz, “Painting,” 143–145.

⁴³ These are the punishment of Zahhak (Sims, “Illustrated Manuscripts,” 44 and 52); Zal embracing Rudaba (ibid., 44 and Atasoy, N., “Four Istanbul Albums and Some Fragments from Fourteenth-Century Shah-Namehs,” Ars Orientalis, VIII [1970]: 29–30)Google Scholar; and Isfandiyar hunting the wolves (ibid., 29 and Sims, “Illustrated Manuscripts,” 44).

⁴⁴ This is the scene of Gulnar falling in love with Ardashir, which owes a good deal to the image of Prince Humay at the gate of Humayun's castle in the London Kirmani manuscript (Gray, PP, 46).

⁴⁵ Titley, N. M., “Persian Miniature Painting: The Repetition of Compositions during the Fifteenth Century,” in Akten des VII. Internationalen Kongresses für Iranische Kunst und Archäologie München 7.–10. September 1976, ed. by Kleiss, Wolfram (Berlin, 1979), 471–491Google Scholar; Adamova, “Repetition,” 67–75; O'Kane, Early Persian Painting, 207–11; Lentz and Lowry, Princely Vision, 376–379.

⁴⁶ Or persons? There is no way of telling.

⁴⁷ See Malihe Sattarzade, “Persian Institutions under the Saljuqs: As Reflected in the ‘Mirror for Princes’ Literature” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, 1971), especially 4–65; Fitzherbert, “Bal‘ami's Tabari,” 1: 301–305.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 1: 295–300 and 372.

⁴⁹ Eleanor Sims with Marshak, Boris I. and Grube, Ernst J., Peerless Images. Persian Painting and its Sources (New Haven and London, 2002), 55Google Scholar; cf. eadem, “Illustrated Manuscripts,” 44–45.

⁵⁰ Pages 3–4; cf. the Nasihat al-Muluk, commonly attributed to al-Ghazali: Ghazālī's Book of Counsel for Kings (Nasihat al-Muluk), trans. by Bagley, Frank R. C. (repr. London, 1971): 79Google Scholar (hereafter NM); anon, The Sea of Precious Virtues (Baḥr al-Favā’id). A Medieval Islamic Mirror for Princes, trans. by Scott Meisami, Julie (Salt Lake City, 1991), 144–146Google Scholar (hereafter BF); and Kai Ka'us b. Iskandar, A Mirror for Princes. The Qābūs Nāma, trans. by Levy, Reuben (London, 1951), 83–85Google Scholar (hereafter QN).

⁵¹ Page 572; NM: 79–80; BF: 144 and 192; and QN: 67–69 and 188.

⁵² Page 92; BF: 138–139, 171, 188 and 218; QN: 186–190.

⁵³ Page 31; QN, 237–39; Khass Hajib, Yusuf, Wisdom of Royal Glory (Kutadgu Bilig). A Turkic Mirror for Princes, trans. by Dankoff, Robert (Chicago, 1983), 185Google Scholar (hereafter WRG).

⁵⁴ Page 362; see al-Mulk, Nizam, The Book of Government or Rules for Kings. The Siyāsat-nāma or Siyar al-Mulūk of Nizām al-Mulk, trans. by Darke, Hubert (London, Henley and Boston, 1960), 117–118Google Scholar; WRG, 171–175; cf. Sattarzade, Persian Institutions, 180–184.

⁵⁵ Page 498; QN, 45–48; WRG, 77–83.

⁵⁶ Page 335; BF, 29–30; WRG, 114–119; QN, 87–90, 132–139 and 219–221.

⁵⁷ Page 604.

⁵⁸ Page 393; BF, 120; SM, 75.

⁵⁹ Page 318.

⁶⁰ Page 257.

⁶¹ Page 401.

⁶² Page 101.

⁶³ Page 163; NM, 65; BF, 125–126; QN, 88 and 141; and SM, 131.

⁶⁴ Page 335.

⁶⁵ Page 219.

⁶⁶ Page 40.

⁶⁷ Page 469. Cf. the Sasanian version of this rebellion as cited by Ettinghausen, Richard, From Byzantium to Sasanian Iran and the Islamic World. Three Modes of Artistic Influence (Leiden, 1972), 42–43.Google Scholar This is the deeper significance of the painting that depicts the moment that Ardashir exchanges glances with his lord's slave-girl Gulnar.

⁶⁸ The remaining three images are Faramarz (who is not of royal blood) mourning before the biers of his father and uncle; Zal (again not of royal blood) and Rudaba embracing; and the four poets at Ghazni, which of course occurs outside the Shahnama text proper.

⁶⁹ For this image, see Sims, E., “The Earliest Recorded Barzunama Manuscript?,” in Shahnama Studies I, ed. by Melville, Charles (Cambridge, 2006), 191.Google Scholar It may be that the image of Bahram Chubina fighting Sava-Shah is also a scene not found in earlier Shahnamas; and it too contains little that is new.

⁷⁰ Faramarz, Luhrasp, Mundhir, and Gulnar falling in love with Ardashir.

⁷¹ Though the ambitious album (jung) which he ordered and which was intended to copy key masterpieces of Jala'irid art, though long under way, was not completed at the time of his death (Lentz, “Painting,” 143–145).

⁷² Sims, “Illustrated Manuscripts,” 65, has 319 with a question mark. Back to back images are surely unlikely here.

⁷³ Sims has 357 (ibid.).

⁷⁴ Sharifzadeh, Namvarnama, 16 has 235. Sims correctly has 335 (“Illustrations,” 65).

⁷⁵ Sims has 415 (ibid.).

⁷⁶ See also Sharifzadeh, Namvarnama, 14–20.

⁷⁷ Kay Kavus (Semsar, Golestan, pl. 47).

⁷⁸ Jamshid (ibid., pl. 46).

⁷⁹ Luhrasp (ibid., pl. 55).

⁸⁰ Anushirvan (Semsar, Golestan Library, pl. 65).

⁸¹ Yazdagird (ibid., pl. 64).

⁸² Ibid., pl. 63. I am grateful to Charles Melville for his comments on this scene, and for noting that it is rather misplaced vis-à-vis the text.

⁸³ Or uncle—there are two coffins, one in front of him and one behind him.

⁸⁴ Ibid., pl. 59. The tiled text reads, in Arabic, al-maut bab wa kull nafs dakhalahu (“Death is a gate and every soul must enter it”).

⁸⁵ Grabar, Oleg and Blair, Sheila, Epic Images and Contemporary History. The Illustrations of the Great Mongol Shahnama (Chicago, 1980), no. 19.Google Scholar The Baysunghuri painting is a solemn and melancholy amplification of the image of Bahman viewing the biers of earlier heroes in the Bahman-nama of 800/1397 in the British Library, Or. 2780, f. 171v (Stchoukine, Manuscrits, pl. XV).

⁸⁶ For this device see Gray, “Pictorial Arts,” 854.

⁸⁷ As in the killing of Arjasp (Semsar, Golestan, pls. 56–58).

⁸⁸ Rustam lassoes the Khaqan of Chin (p. 219), Kay Khusrau fights Afasiyab (p. 335) and Bahram Chubina attacks the Turk Sava-Shah (p. 604).

⁸⁹ A third such scene, involving two riders brandishing maces (one of them suspiciously like a calque from the Great Mongol Shahnama—see Grabar and Blair, Epic Images, no. 31) is almost lost in the fury of the charge.

⁹⁰ Gray, PP, 89.

⁹¹ Such as the Anthology of 1410 in the Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon (Gray, PP, 69–72 and 74–77, 79).

⁹² See Brend, B., “Beyond the Pale: Meaning in the Margin,” in Persian Painting from the Mongols to the Qajars. Studies in Honour of Basil W. Robinson, ed. by Hillenbrand, R. (London and New York, 2000), 39–55.Google Scholar

⁹³ Abdullaeva and Melville, Book of Kings, passim; William Robinson, Basil, Persian Paintings in the Bodleian Library (Oxford, 1958), 16–25Google Scholar; Sims, “Illustrated Manuscripts,” 45–48.

⁹⁴ Lentz and Lowry, Princely Vision, 110–111.

⁹⁵ See Gray, Shahnameh, between 6 and 45.

⁹⁶ See, however, the prolonged 17-page overture to the first illustration in Baysunghur's Kalila wa Dimna of 833/1429 (Lentz, “Painting,” 97). Baysunghur was himself a practitioner of this art; see Huart, Claude, “Bāysonghor,” The Encyclopaedia of Islam (1960), 1: 1139b.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ Roemer, “Bāysongor,” 7, casts doubt on his participation in this exercise.

⁹⁸ Lentz, “Painting,” 8–14, summarizes and assesses the scattered evidence.

⁹⁹ See the remarks by Khaleghi-Motlagh, “Bāysongōrī Šāh-Nāma,” 9–10; he also cites ‘Abd al-Hayy Habibi, Hunar-i ‘ahd-i Timuriyan (Tehran, 2535 = 1355 ASH/1976), 449–480, which gives a detailed description of the manuscript's decoration.

¹⁰⁰ See, however, the very similar layout adopted for a list of the works of Sa‘di in the Institute of Oriental Studies in St Petersburg (Akimushkin, Oleg F., Khalidov, Anas B. and Rezvan, Efim A., De Bagdad à Ispahan. Manuscrits islamiques de la Filiale de Saint-Pétersbourg de l'Institut d'Etudes orientales, Académie des Sciences de Russie [Lugano, 1994], 154Google Scholar); for a reduced version of this idea, see the five books of the Khamsa of Nizami in an undated manuscript in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Stewart, Desmond, ed., Early Islam [Weert, 1975], cover and 187).Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ This feature recurs in some of the very finest Timurid Qur'ans, such as the one written by Baysunghur's brother Ibrahim Sultan and dated 827/1424, now in the Mashhad shrine library; see Jones, Dalu, ed., The Art of Islam. Exhibition at the Hayward Gallery (London, 1976), 338Google Scholar and Lings, Martin, The Qur'anic Art of Illumination (London, 1976), 80–81.Google Scholar

¹⁰² The authorship of this preface is contested; see Rypka, Jan, History of Iranian Literature, trans. by van Popta-Hope, P. (Dordrecht, 1968), 157CrossRefGoogle Scholar and 170, n. 77. This preface is currently the object of intense study by Olga Davidson, who is also translating it; she has given a preliminary account of her findings in a paper entitled “A Multiform Reception of the Shahnama as Reflected in the Baysonghori Preface,” delivered at a Shahnama conference held at Pembroke College, Cambridge, on 13–15 December 2007. See also Shahbazi, A. Shapur, Ferdowsī: A Critical Biography (Costa Mesa, CA., 1991), 6–7.Google Scholar For the older preface to the Shahnama see Minorsky, V., “The older Preface to the Shāh-Nāma,” in Iranica. Twenty Articles (Publications of the University of Tehran, vol. 775) (Tehran, 1964), 260–273Google Scholar; Merck Davidson, Olga, Poet and Hero in the Persian Book of Kings (Ithaca, NY, 1994), 29–53.Google Scholar

¹⁰³ For Timurid examples, see Lings, Qur'anic Art, 81–82, 86 and 88; Lentz and Lowry, Princely Vision, 78 and 84.

¹⁰⁴ For example, the British Library Anthology (Add. 27261) of 813–814/1410–11 (ibid., 116; but here the effect is rather of the calligraphy laid out on a gold ground).

¹⁰⁵ I was able to study the manuscript briefly in September 2000.

¹⁰⁶ Semsar, Golestan Palace Library, 41 (unpaginated). He adds that this, the “manuscript's only weakness,” “is no fault of the calligrapher.”

¹⁰⁷ Elaine J. Wright, “The Look of the Book. Manuscript Production in the Southern Iranian City of Shiraz from the Early fourteenth Century to 1452” (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1997).