Divan,

featuring one mughal and three safavid miniatures

Amir Shahi Sabzavari (d. 1453) was a Timurid poet whose work flourished in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Some of his influence in this Divan were compiled as a response to Divan of Hafez Shirazi.

This volume was put together in the early Safavid period and is presented as a very luxurious manuscript with exquisite calligraphy and three Safavid miniatures in the text. These miniatures portray an unusual stylistic mix of the Herat and Tabriz schools of painting: the painting on folio 34r both schools are merged together with the young men painted in the new Tabriz style and the elderly are rendered in a more Herati style. Furthermore, there is a curious latter addition of a Mughal painting to the front free endpaper. This is the portrait of a young lady wearing fine brocade gold dress and holding out a flower. There is a possibility that this volume was gifted to this lady and her portrait was included in the manuscript as a personal touch to indicate ownership and status.

The calligrapher, 'Abdullah bin Shaykh Murshid al-Katib al-Shirazi, copied a Kulliyat of Sa'di in the Topkapi Palace Library, Istanbul, in AH 960⁄1532-3 AD (acc.no. H. 739), and he is probably the calligrapher mentioned by Dost Muhammad in his preface to the Bahram Mirza album as Mawlana Nuruddin 'Abdullah of Shiraz (Dost Muhammad, 'Preface to the Bahram Mirza Album', in A Century of Princes: Sources on Timurid History and Art, W. M. Thackston (transl.), Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1989, p. 348). In addition to the Topkapi Kulliyat, an illuminated and illustrated manuscript of the same text copied by 'Abdullah bin Shaykh Murshid al-Katib is in the Walters Art Museum (acc.no. W.618).

Single volume, illuminated manuscript on gold-speckled paper, some leaves dyed yellow, in Farsi, complete in 45 leaves plus two flyleaves, 194 x 118 mm; two columns, 11 lines fine black nasta'liq, text-block ruled in gold, illuminated polychrome head-piece opening the text, three contemporary Safavid miniatures and one additional Mughal miniature painted on the first leaf (added later), some very slight areas of rubbing, leaves re-margined (probably in the Qajar period); housed in an attractive Qajar lacquered binding, covers painted with floral decorations and doubleurs of the narcissus flower, corners and spine ends worn.