Page 43 - 2021 April 1, ART OF THE ISLAMIC AND Indian Worlds Including Oriental Rugs, Christie's London

One side of this elegant album page contains the
work of the preeminent calligrapher Sultan ‘Ali
Mashhadi (fl.1453-1519), who was born in Mashhad
around 1437. Qadi Ahmad in his famous treatise
describes his writing among other writings as the
sun among other planets (V. Minorsky, Calligraphers
and Painters, A Treatise by Qadi Ahmad, son of Mir
Munshi, Washington, 1959, pp.101-3). Sultan ‘Ali was
Sultan Husyan Mirza Bayqara’s (r.1469-1506) favourite
court calligrapher and was acquainted with both
Amir ‘Ali-Shir Nava’i and ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami. His
works include some of the finest Persian and Turkish
manuscripts composed for the Timurid court, such
as a copy of ‘Attar’s Mantiq al-Tayar or ‘Conference of
the Birds’ now in the Metropolitan Museum in New
York (MS.63.210). Based on the dates of the earliest
manuscripts he wrote in Herat, it appears that Sultan
‘Ali immigrated there sometime before the onset of
the sultanate of Sultan Husayn and remained there
until his return to Mashhad in 1506. On our album
page, Sultan ‘Ali states that he completed the work in
the dar al-sultaneh in Herat, indicating that this panel,
and the album from which it comes, was made at the
royal court.
The frontispiece of the album from which this folio
comes is in the Harvard Art Museum, published also
by Sheila Canby in the Hunt for Paradise exhibition,
and illustrated below. In that exhibition catalogue,
Canby writes that the illuminator who worked on
the album may have been Mawlana Ghiyath al-Din
Mudahhab al-Mashhadi, a master illuminator who
was known to have worked with Sultan ‘Ali Mashhadi
(Jon Thompson and Sheila R. Canby (eds.), Hunt
for Paradise. Court Arts of Safavid Iran 1501-1576,
exhibition catalogue, New York, 2004, pp.138-9,
cat.5.2). He is also the illuminator credited with
the invention of the gold sprinkling technique (zar
afshan), as visible on the margins of on our folio. In
this technique, the paper was primed and then flecked
with gold, conveying a particularly precious quality to
the folio it illuminates. It is likely that our folio is also
decorated by the same illuminator.
In addition to the frontispiece only four other folios
from this album are presently known. Two are
at Harvard (1958.246 and 1958.237), one at the
Metropolitan Museum (acc.no. 1982.120.4) and
one at the Cleveland Museum of Art (inv.1983.1115).
The folios are each the work of different prominent
calligraphers of the period – the Metropolitan folio
and one of the Harvard ones are copied by Sultan
Muhammad Nur, the second Harvard one is by
Muhammad al-Abrishami al-Mashhadi and the
Cleveland one is by Sultan Muhammad Khandan. The
calligraphy of the frontispiece, like ours, is by Sultan
‘Ali Mashhadi. Clearly this was an album for which no
expense was spared. All the folios have identical gold
speckled borders, and the illumination and format
of each is very similar to ours. Four of the five folios
have lines from a mufradat very similar to ours. All,
including ours, have pencil markings, which are likely
to be in the same hand – ours bears the numerals
6 and 7. This suggests that the album was at some
stage in the hands of a European or perhaps more
likely, American, collector who later dispersed it.
Verso
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