Khamsa of Nizami (British Library, Or. 12208)
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The illuminated manuscript
Khamsa of Nizami (British Library
, Or. 12208) is a lavishly illustrated manuscript of the Khamsa or "five poems" of Nizami Ganjavi, a 12th century Persian poet, which was created for the Mughal Emperor Akbar in the early 1590s by a number of artists and a single scribe working at the Mughal court, very probably in Lahore
in North India
, now in Pakistan
. Apart from the fine calligraphy
of the Persian text, the manuscript is celebrated for over forty Mughal miniatures of the highest quality throughout the text; five of these are detached from the main manuscript and are in the Walters Art Museum
, Baltimore
. The manuscript has been described as "one of the finest examples of the Indo-Muslim arts of the book".
rhyming couplets. The first poem is a collection of moral discources illustrated by stories or parable
s drawn mostly from the lives of historical figures, while the remaining four poems are romances, including many stories found in Persian tradition and earlier works such as the Shahnameh
of Ferdowsi
.
s, though the main artist, Khvaja Abd-al Samad, is Muslim. One miniature, of Khusraw hunting, is the latest known work of Abd al-Samad, former head of the imperial workshop and one of the artists Humayun
had brought from Persia some forty-five years earlier, at the start of the Mughal tradition. The single scribe was Abd al-Rahim, a leading calligrapher of the day. Unusually, when the manuscript was inherited by Akbar's son Jahangir
, an extra miniature was added by order of the new emperor with a double portrait showing the scribe at work facing Dawlat, the artist of the new miniature, making a drawing of him. This is dated, with an illegible last digit, between 1611 and 1620. Some miniatures are the work of more than one artist, typically dividing the work between drawing the overall composition, colouring and faces. This had been a common method in the imperial workshop, but was giving way to having miniatures all painted by a single artist, as the Mughal style became increasingly concerned with fine detail and realistic depiction. Apart from their main origin in the tradition of Persian miniature painting, the style of the miniatures reflects Indian art and the Western art that was known in Akbar's court from contacts which included material brought by Jesuit missionaries.
The choice and emphasis of the miniatures has certain distinctive features; the selection of subjects was probably made by the royal librarian and approved by the emperor, or possibly the emperor himself, possibly also in consultation with some of the artists. One of the colophon
s, unusually, mentions that the book was "commissioned for the treasury of books and august library, servants of his majesty...". The emphasis on the duties, difficulties and splendour of kingship is to be expected in a royal commission, but another recurring theme, of the difficulties of relationships between fathers and sons, is much more individual to this book (miniatures 5, 14, 16, 18, 20). There is a particular interest in visual art; apart from the unusual added portrait of the scribe and a painter, both Western-style art works and Hindu sculptures are depicted (miniatures, 25, 36, 44). Events in the stories are probably also intended to refer to victories of Akbar, and his generousity to the conquered.
decoration of plants, birds and animals, with some rocks and other landscape elements. Outside this are further plain frames, with a final zone of simple pen decoration which is probably recent as the form is different between the pages in London and those in Baltimore.
The main London portion of the manuscript has 36 full-page figurative miniatures, one a double page spread. Baltimore has four miniatures, also including one double page subject. Two further miniatures (or one double one) are missing, as shown by a small and apparently early system of numbering the miniatures. The manuscript therefore originally had 42 pages of miniatures, counting double pages as two. Some miniatures are out of their natural sequence, but the numbering suggests the manuscript was made in this way. Apart from the figurative miniatures, there are a number of pages with decorative panels of abstract motifs, plants and animals, especially at the beginning and end of sections of the work. The original lacquer
ed book covers each (front and back) have one side with a gold and brown scene of animals attacking other animals in a landscape and on the other side a scene with muted colour, one of a hunt and the other of an enthroned ruler being presented with the catch of game. All four scenes are enclosed in a frame with two borders of elaborate decoration, which like much of the abstract decorative work is similar in style to Persian, or Mughal, carpet decoration.
family), who bequeathed it to the British Museum
at his death in 1958. It came to the British Library when it inherited the British Museum libraries on its foundation in 1973. The Baltimore leaves had already been separated before 1909.
Illuminated manuscript
An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations...
Khamsa of Nizami (British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
, Or. 12208) is a lavishly illustrated manuscript of the Khamsa or "five poems" of Nizami Ganjavi, a 12th century Persian poet, which was created for the Mughal Emperor Akbar in the early 1590s by a number of artists and a single scribe working at the Mughal court, very probably in Lahore
Lahore
Lahore is the capital of the Pakistani province of Punjab and the second largest city in the country. With a rich and fabulous history dating back to over a thousand years ago, Lahore is no doubt Pakistan's cultural capital. One of the most densely populated cities in the world, Lahore remains a...
in North India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, now in Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
. Apart from the fine calligraphy
Calligraphy
Calligraphy is a type of visual art. It is often called the art of fancy lettering . A contemporary definition of calligraphic practice is "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious and skillful manner"...
of the Persian text, the manuscript is celebrated for over forty Mughal miniatures of the highest quality throughout the text; five of these are detached from the main manuscript and are in the Walters Art Museum
Walters Art Museum
The Walters Art Museum, located in Baltimore, Maryland's Mount Vernon neighborhood, is a public art museum founded in 1934. The museum's collection was amassed substantially by two men, William Thompson Walters , who began serious collecting when he moved to Paris at the outbreak of the American...
, Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
. The manuscript has been described as "one of the finest examples of the Indo-Muslim arts of the book".
Text
The collection of five works by Nizami or Nizami is a classic of Persian poetry of which many luxury illuminated manuscript versions have been made; in particular this manuscript should not be confused with British Library, Or. 2265, a Persian manuscript of 1539-43 which is even better known. The poems are in masnaviMasnavi
The Masnavi, Masnavi-I Ma'navi or Mesnevi , also written Mathnawi, Ma'navi, or Mathnavi, is an extensive poem written in Persian by Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, the celebrated Persian Sufi saint and poet. It is one of the best known and most influential works of both Sufism and Persian literature...
rhyming couplets. The first poem is a collection of moral discources illustrated by stories or parable
Parable
A parable is a succinct story, in prose or verse, which illustrates one or more instructive principles, or lessons, or a normative principle. It differs from a fable in that fables use animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as characters, while parables generally feature human...
s drawn mostly from the lives of historical figures, while the remaining four poems are romances, including many stories found in Persian tradition and earlier works such as the Shahnameh
Shahnameh
The Shahnameh or Shah-nama is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c.977 and 1010 AD and is the national epic of Iran and related societies...
of Ferdowsi
Ferdowsi
Ferdowsi was a highly revered Persian poet. He was the author of the Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran and related societies.The Shahnameh was originally composed by Ferdowsi for the princes of the Samanid dynasty, who were responsible for a revival of Persian cultural traditions after the...
.
Miniatures
The miniatures are attributed by inscriptions to at least twenty artists, most of them apparently HinduHindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
s, though the main artist, Khvaja Abd-al Samad, is Muslim. One miniature, of Khusraw hunting, is the latest known work of Abd al-Samad, former head of the imperial workshop and one of the artists Humayun
Humayun
Nasir ud-din Muhammad Humayun was the second Mughal Emperor who ruled present day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of northern India from 1530–1540 and again from 1555–1556. Like his father, Babur, he lost his kingdom early, but with Persian aid, he eventually regained an even larger one...
had brought from Persia some forty-five years earlier, at the start of the Mughal tradition. The single scribe was Abd al-Rahim, a leading calligrapher of the day. Unusually, when the manuscript was inherited by Akbar's son Jahangir
Jahangir
Jahangir was the ruler of the Mughal Empire from 1605 until his death. The name Jahangir is from Persian جهانگیر,meaning "Conqueror of the World"...
, an extra miniature was added by order of the new emperor with a double portrait showing the scribe at work facing Dawlat, the artist of the new miniature, making a drawing of him. This is dated, with an illegible last digit, between 1611 and 1620. Some miniatures are the work of more than one artist, typically dividing the work between drawing the overall composition, colouring and faces. This had been a common method in the imperial workshop, but was giving way to having miniatures all painted by a single artist, as the Mughal style became increasingly concerned with fine detail and realistic depiction. Apart from their main origin in the tradition of Persian miniature painting, the style of the miniatures reflects Indian art and the Western art that was known in Akbar's court from contacts which included material brought by Jesuit missionaries.
The choice and emphasis of the miniatures has certain distinctive features; the selection of subjects was probably made by the royal librarian and approved by the emperor, or possibly the emperor himself, possibly also in consultation with some of the artists. One of the colophon
Colophon
Colophon was a city in the region of Lydia in antiquity dating from about the turn of the first millennium-BC. It was likely one the oldest of the twelve Ionian League cities, between Lebedos and Ephesus and its ruins are in the eponymously named modern region of Ionia.The city's name comes from...
s, unusually, mentions that the book was "commissioned for the treasury of books and august library, servants of his majesty...". The emphasis on the duties, difficulties and splendour of kingship is to be expected in a royal commission, but another recurring theme, of the difficulties of relationships between fathers and sons, is much more individual to this book (miniatures 5, 14, 16, 18, 20). There is a particular interest in visual art; apart from the unusual added portrait of the scribe and a painter, both Western-style art works and Hindu sculptures are depicted (miniatures, 25, 36, 44). Events in the stories are probably also intended to refer to victories of Akbar, and his generousity to the conquered.
Description
The manuscript in London has 325 folios of "light-brown polished paper" with a page size of 302 x 198 mm. On text pages the nastaliq script is in four columns of 21 lines. There is also some text on most of the miniature pages, inside the rectangular frame in compartments of varying size, shape and placing. The miniatures have somewhat variable rectangular frames of plain lines and bands of colour, outside which there are generous borders filled with very high quality gold grisailleGrisaille
Grisaille is a term for painting executed entirely in monochrome or near-monochrome, usually in shades of grey. It is particularly used in large decorative schemes in imitation of sculpture. Many grisailles in fact include a slightly wider colour range, like the Andrea del Sarto fresco...
decoration of plants, birds and animals, with some rocks and other landscape elements. Outside this are further plain frames, with a final zone of simple pen decoration which is probably recent as the form is different between the pages in London and those in Baltimore.
The main London portion of the manuscript has 36 full-page figurative miniatures, one a double page spread. Baltimore has four miniatures, also including one double page subject. Two further miniatures (or one double one) are missing, as shown by a small and apparently early system of numbering the miniatures. The manuscript therefore originally had 42 pages of miniatures, counting double pages as two. Some miniatures are out of their natural sequence, but the numbering suggests the manuscript was made in this way. Apart from the figurative miniatures, there are a number of pages with decorative panels of abstract motifs, plants and animals, especially at the beginning and end of sections of the work. The original lacquer
Lacquer
In a general sense, lacquer is a somewhat imprecise term for a clear or coloured varnish that dries by solvent evaporation and often a curing process as well that produces a hard, durable finish, in any sheen level from ultra matte to high gloss and that can be further polished as required...
ed book covers each (front and back) have one side with a gold and brown scene of animals attacking other animals in a landscape and on the other side a scene with muted colour, one of a hunt and the other of an enthroned ruler being presented with the catch of game. All four scenes are enclosed in a frame with two borders of elaborate decoration, which like much of the abstract decorative work is similar in style to Persian, or Mughal, carpet decoration.
History
The history of the manuscript is unknown after its ownership by Jahangir; the Mughal library amounted to some 24,000 manuscripts at its height, though many were taken by the Iranian Nadir Shah when he overran much of the Mughal empire in the 18th century. The known history resumes in 1909, when the London portion was bought by the collector C. W. Dyson Perrins (of the Worcestershire sauceWorcestershire sauce
Worcestershire sauce , or Worcester sauce is a fermented liquid condiment; primarily used to flavour meat or fish dishes.First made at 60 Broad Street, Worcester, England, by two dispensing chemists, John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins, the Lea & Perrins brand was commercialised in 1837 and...
family), who bequeathed it to the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
at his death in 1958. It came to the British Library when it inherited the British Museum libraries on its foundation in 1973. The Baltimore leaves had already been separated before 1909.