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The Tale and the Image
Part Two: Illustrated manuscripts and album paintings from Iran, Turkey and Egypt

VOLUME XXVI

2023

J.M. Rogers and Manijeh Bayani with contributions
by Emily Shovelton and Behnaz Atighi Moghaddam

This volume is mainly devoted to the Collection’s illustrated manuscripts and detached folios with painted illustrations – primarily romantic poetry and anthologies – and single page compositions – mostly portraiture and genre painting – from Iran, dating from the 14th to the mid-19th centuries. Many items
are of major artistic importance. The volume also includes significant works from Mamluk Egypt and late 15th-century Ottoman Turkey.
Illustrated Persian manuscripts include several copies of the Khamsah of Nizami and a Divan of Hafiz dated ah 975 (ad 1567–8) with superbly illuminated margins and two exquisite paintings, one by Muhammadi and the other by ‘Abdallah al- Mudhahhib al-Shirazi.
The large group of detached folios from Iran includes several of the late 15th century in the style of Muhammad Siyah Qalam (otherwise best represented in albums in the Topkapı Palace Library). Particularly strong in drawings from 17th-century Isfahan, it includes works by its most famous painters, Riza-yi ‘Abbasi, Muhammad Qasim, Mu‘in Musavvir, and the eclectic artists Muhammad Zaman, ‘Aliquli Jabadar and Shaykh ‘Abbasi.
Ottoman paintings include two folios from the Siyer-i Nebi (‘Life of the Prophet’) made for Sultan Murad III, and an exquisite 16th-century drawing of a dragon in foliage in the style of Süleyman the Magnificent’s court painter, Shah Quli.

About the author(s)

Professor J.M. Rogers – Fellow of the British Academy; Honorary Curator, Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art; Former Deputy Keeper of the Department of Oriental Antiquities, British Museum, London; inaugural Nasser D. Khalili Chair of Islamic Art and Archaeology, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; specialist in many aspects of Islamic culture and history, especially Seljuk and Ottoman arts

Manijeh Bayani – Specialist in Persian and Arabic epigraphy; contributor to most of the catalogues in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art series

Dr Emily Shovelton – Independent researcher and lecturer, currently tutor for the Islamic Art module at the Victoria and Albert Museum; specialist in illustrated Persian and Indo-Persian manuscripts

Behnaz Atighi Moghaddam – Curator and research assistant at the Victoria and Albert Museum; specialist in calligraphy and painting from Iran and South Asia up to the 19th century

Details

fully illustrated in colour section on documentary inscriptions with translations, hardback with dust jacket (slipcased), 36 × 26 cm, Isbn: 978-1-874780-81-6

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