.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This painting depicts 'Ubayda ibn al-Harith, 'Ali ibn Abu Talib and Hamza ibn 'Abd al-Muttalin responding to the challenge of the Meccan brothers Shaiba and 'Ataba during the Battle of Badr.
This folio comes from the Majma’ al-Tawarikh, or ‘Assembly of Histories’, written by the historian Hafiz-i Abru at the court of the Timurid ruler Shah Rukh between 1423 and 1425. The manuscript from which our folio comes is closely related to a holograph copy now in the Topkapi Saray Library in Istanbul (H.1653) which was copied for Baysunghur, the son of Shah Rukh on 6 Muharram AH 829/18 November 1425 AD. Stylistically the two manuscripts are so close that it is presumed that they were produced by a single group of artists in the royal atelier in Herat. The manuscript was largely copied from Rashid al-Din’s famous Jami 'al-Tawarikh and the pictorial style is slightly archaic for the early 15th century – harking back to that of the Rashid al-Din manuscripts.
Three folios from this manuscript, from the Yale University Art Gallery, were recently exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the Court and Cosmos exhibition (Sheila Canby, Deniz Beyazit, Martina Rugiardi and A.C.S. Peacock, Court and Cosmos. The Great Age of the Seljuqs, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2016, no.2a-c, pp.48-49). Others are in museum collections across the world including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the David Collection, the collection of Prince and Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan, the Chester Beatty Library, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Folios have also appeared on the art market - most recently at Sotheby’s, 22 April 2015, lot 124 and in these Rooms, 25 April 2013, lots 90, 91 and 92, and more recently, 20th October 2016, lot 1.
This folio comes from the Majma’ al-Tawarikh, or ‘Assembly of Histories’, written by the historian Hafiz-i Abru at the court of the Timurid ruler Shah Rukh between 1423 and 1425. The manuscript from which our folio comes is closely related to a holograph copy now in the Topkapi Saray Library in Istanbul (H.1653) which was copied for Baysunghur, the son of Shah Rukh on 6 Muharram AH 829/18 November 1425 AD. Stylistically the two manuscripts are so close that it is presumed that they were produced by a single group of artists in the royal atelier in Herat. The manuscript was largely copied from Rashid al-Din’s famous Jami 'al-Tawarikh and the pictorial style is slightly archaic for the early 15th century – harking back to that of the Rashid al-Din manuscripts.
Three folios from this manuscript, from the Yale University Art Gallery, were recently exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the Court and Cosmos exhibition (Sheila Canby, Deniz Beyazit, Martina Rugiardi and A.C.S. Peacock, Court and Cosmos. The Great Age of the Seljuqs, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2016, no.2a-c, pp.48-49). Others are in museum collections across the world including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the David Collection, the collection of Prince and Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan, the Chester Beatty Library, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Folios have also appeared on the art market - most recently at Sotheby’s, 22 April 2015, lot 124 and in these Rooms, 25 April 2013, lots 90, 91 and 92, and more recently, 20th October 2016, lot 1.