With fine marbled paper borders. A fine illuminated manuscript with remarkable decorated marbled borders, of many varying designs and patterns. The use of marbled paper borders in a bound manuscript, as here, is very unusual. Marbled paper was often used to decorate album pages and calligraphic panels from the sixteenth century onwards and was very much a decorative tool elevating the design and appeal of a single artistic creation (i.e. a miniature or calligraphic exercise). The only other known textual manuscript to include marbled borders to this degree was copied by the same scribe as the present manuscript and was a translation of Voltaire's Histoire de l'Empire de Russie sous Pierre le Grand and Histoire de Charles XII, roi du Suede (Private collection, Christie's, Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds, 26th October 2017, lot 123); a reference to this secondary text is given in the preface of this manuscript: 'Ibn Muhammad Khan Safdar 'Ali is to produce this text as well as the History of Peter the Great' thus confirming that the two volumes were undeniably associated at the time of production and assembled in this style at the bequest for the same patron.

The text deals with Alexander the Great, starting with his origins in Macedonia, his conquests, from Egypt to parts of India and Turkestan along with his burial in Alexandria and was copied by Ibn Muhammad Khan Safdar 'Ali in Kabul on Monday 8th Rabi' II 1291 AH (25th May 1874 AD). Little is known about this particular calligrapher, however they are recorded in Mehdi Bayani as 'an obscure nasta'liq calligrapher of the nineteenth century', with the only recorded work being a calligraphic page in the Archaeological Museum in Delhi, signed Sayyid Safdar 'Ali (see M. Bayani, Ahval va athar-e khawshnavisan, vol. 2, Tehran 1346 AS, p. 330).

This work was originally assembled by James Campbell at the bequest of the Qajar Prince Abbas Mirza in 1813, the present manuscript presumed to be a translation of that original text. James Campbell was an assistant surgeon in the East India Company, who travelled to Persia with Sir John Malcolm. He became Chief Surgeon to the Qajar Prince Abbas Mirza (Governor of Adharbayjan and son of Fath' Ali Shah Qajar) from 1810 to 1814 before travelling to Russia with Sir Gore Ousley in 1814.

Single volume, illuminated manuscript on paper with fine marbled paper borders, in Farsi, 119 leaves, complete, 336 x 230 mm; single column, 11 lines to the page written in neat nasta'liq script in black ink, occasional headings and significant words in blue, inner margins ruled in gold and blue, outer borders throughout decorated with fine marbling, one illuminated opening headpiece, one further illuminated heading; contemporary burgundy leather binding, blind-stamped with corner pieces to covers, a very handsome volume.