Persian MS 28 (The John Rylands Research Institute and Library, The University of Manchester)
Persian Manuscripts
Contents
.این نامه که خامه کرد بنیاد * توقیع قبول روزیش باد | طغراش بنام پادشاهی * کافراشت چو عرش بارگاهی
Physical Description
Persian foliation in ink, with folio 1 omitted from numbering.
Persian foliation has been corrected in pencil.
Layout
Hand(s)
Decoration
Sixteen miniatures, probably of the mid 16th century. Noteworthy features include the form of turban worn by the male characters, the prominence given to tigers in the animal scenes, a fondness for mauve and yellow and non-Persian forms of thrones, crowns, swords, interior architecture, tents, the sun, moon and sky. The spindly trees are also characteristic of Western Indian manuscripts and are without parallel sixteenth-century Persian miniatures. These characteristics seem to point to somewhere in non-Mughal India in the mid-sixteenth century.
Illumination: Folio 1a bears the remnance of a scalloped domed headpiece original to the manuscript, with a horizontal gold cartouche inserted underneath to replace one lost and later replaced, and a finely worked intercolumnar vertical band of floral and palmette scrollwork against a dark ultramarine background.
31 × 65 mm.
22 × 65 mm.
9 × 81 mm.
Binding
Probably rebound in the Indian subcontinent for an unidentified former owner.
Sewn at two stations, unsupported. Edges trimmed and traces of endband threads remaining at the head and tail, now lost. Covered in full black morocco goatskin leather over pasteboards, flush-cut, but without a flap (Type III binding per Déroche). Spine subsequently rebacked in medium-brown goatskin leather, with repairs to the upper corners of the boards exeuted in medium brown calfskin. The interior now bears thin-weight, bright blue machine-made paper flyleaves with a serrated decorative cut hinges applied to the doublures when last repaired over top of earlier rehinging in red leather, attesting to repeated repairs to the same binding.
Remnants of of gold blocked paper onlays that feature large lotus blossoms for the scalloped mandorlas, together with quatrefoil pendants floral scrollwork cornpieces, all since severely abraded and damaged, with those on the right board exterior delaminated and readhered out of place, perhas as a result of water damage.
196 × 131 × 25 mm.
Handle binding with caution. In poor condition, with friable leather and severely damaged decoration, extensive water stains to the doublures, and weak joints.
History
Provenance and Acquisition
While the circumstances under which this volume arrived in Britain remain unclear, an unidentified bookseller offered it for sale as per a pasted catalogue entry found on the right doublure.
Formerly part of the collection of the Persian scholar Nathaniel Bland (1803-1865). Bland’s oriental manuscripts were sold through Bernard Quaritch in 1866 to Alexander Lindsay, 25th Earl of Crawford.
Purchased by Enriqueta Rylands, on behalf of the John Rylands Library, in 1901 from James Ludovic Lindsay, 26th Earl of Crawford.
Record Sources
Bibliographical description based on an index created by Reza Navabpour circa 1993. Identification of provenance based on manuscript catalogue by Michael Kerney, circa 1890s.
Manuscript description based on B.W. Robinson, Persian Paintings in the John Rylands Library: A Descriptive Catalogue (London, 1980).
Availability
To book an in-person or online appointment to consult the manuscript, visit Using the Special Collections Reading Rooms. For any other enquiries please email uml.special-collections@manchester.ac.uk.
Funding of Cataloguing
Iran Heritage Foundation
The John Rylands Research Institute
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