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Lot Essay
The bustling artistic milieu of Shiraz in the mid-16th century is recorded by the traveller and calligrapher Burdaq Qazvini, who visited in AH 984 / 1577-8 AD. He wrote that ‘should anyone want to obtain a thousand illuminated books, they could be produced at Shiraz within a year’. He also added that such was the level of professionalisation among the scribes and illuminators of Shiraz that the manuscripts they produced ‘all follow the same pattern, so there is nothing to distinguish them’ (Sheila Blair, Islamic Calligraphy, Edinburgh, 2008, p.461).
Though this manuscript does not have a colophon, the overall layout of the second bifolio of the Qur’an, which contains the Fatiha, finds a close comparable in a Qur’an in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection which bears a date of AH 972 / 1564-65 AD (David James, After Timur. Qur'ans of the 15th and 16th Centuries, London, 1992, pp.186-187, no.45). Even more similar is a manuscript which was exhibited at the Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin, 14 July - 31 August 2006 (Will Kwiatkowski and Marcus Fraser, Ink and Gold, Berlin, 2006, no.35, p.118). That manuscript bore a waqf inscription indicating that it has been endowed by Huseyin Paşa during his stint as governor of Damascus between 1582 and 1583. The accompanying note by Kwiatkowski indicates that that manuscript is also similar to an example sold Sotheby's London, 12 October 2000, lot 17, which is believed to have been presented to Selim II by Shah Tahmasp in 1586. Collected by Ottoman sultans and ministers, the fame of the Shirazi school of Qur'anic illumination extended beyond the borders of the Safavid Empire even in the 16th century.
Though this manuscript does not have a colophon, the overall layout of the second bifolio of the Qur’an, which contains the Fatiha, finds a close comparable in a Qur’an in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection which bears a date of AH 972 / 1564-65 AD (David James, After Timur. Qur'ans of the 15th and 16th Centuries, London, 1992, pp.186-187, no.45). Even more similar is a manuscript which was exhibited at the Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin, 14 July - 31 August 2006 (Will Kwiatkowski and Marcus Fraser, Ink and Gold, Berlin, 2006, no.35, p.118). That manuscript bore a waqf inscription indicating that it has been endowed by Huseyin Paşa during his stint as governor of Damascus between 1582 and 1583. The accompanying note by Kwiatkowski indicates that that manuscript is also similar to an example sold Sotheby's London, 12 October 2000, lot 17, which is believed to have been presented to Selim II by Shah Tahmasp in 1586. Collected by Ottoman sultans and ministers, the fame of the Shirazi school of Qur'anic illumination extended beyond the borders of the Safavid Empire even in the 16th century.