AN ILLUMINATED BIFOLIUM FROM A MANUSCRIPT OF THE PANJ GANJ OF JAMI, THE TEXT BY SULTAN ALI AL-MASHHADI, CIRCA 1520, THE BORDERS AND ILLUMINATION COMMISSIONED BY ABD AL-RAHIM KHANKHANAN AND EXECUTED PROBABLY BY MUSHFIQ, INDIA, MUGHAL, 1012 AH/1603 AD

Ink, opaque watercolour and gold on paper, text written horizontally and diagonally in three columns of fine nasta'liq script in black and gold ink on cream paper, intercolumnar gold illumination, the text areas with three small triangular panels painted in colours and gold with animals, birds, reptiles or fish, the wide borders of coloured paper finely illuminated with birds perched and fluttering amidst meandering vines and flowering trees

The evidence in the parent volume of this manuscript in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (see below), would indicate a possible provenance for the manuscript of the Panj Ganj as follows:
Text commissioned by Badi' al-Zaman Mirza, ruler of Herat, early 16th century
Shah Isma'il Safavi, circa 1520
Abd al-Rahim Khankhanan, circa 1603-1624, borders added by Mushfiq
Emperor Jahangir, 1624-1627
Emperor Shah Jahan, 1628-1657
Emperor Aurangzeb, 1658-1707
Emperor Farukhsiyar, 1713-1719
Possibly Nader Shah, 1738
Mirza Ya'qub Khan, 1906-7
Demotte, Paris, early 20th century

This superb bifolium is from one of the most striking and aesthetically original manuscripts of the Perso-Mughal tradition. The text is the Panj Ganj of the 15th-century Persian poet Jami, and this copy is said to have been written by Sultan Ali Mashhadi, the great Persian master calligrapher of the late 15th and early 16th century. The manuscript has a fascinating royal history: the majority of the manuscript is in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (see Leach 1995, vol.II, pp.567-579; Wright 2008, pp.223-4), and the colophon, inscriptions and seal impressions in that volume provide interesting information:

The manuscript was commissioned in the very early 16th century by Badi' al-Zaman Mirza, ruler of Herat, from the eminent master calligrapher Sultan Ali al-Mashhadi. Badi al-Zaman was taken to Constantinople in 1514 and Sultan Ali died in 1520, so the copying of the text was probably completed by one of his pupils for a different patron. The manuscript entered the royal Library of the first Safavid Emperor, Shah Isma'il, in 1522-23. By 1603 it was in the possession of the Mughal general and bibliophile Abd al-Rahim Khankhanan, who spent many years campaigning in the Deccan during the later years of Akbar's reign and much of Jahangir's. As well as a general of great military skill and success, he was also a great lover of the arts of the book. Leach tells us that "from at least the period of his late twenties, Rahim maintained a notable personal library. By the time he had reached his full military status, this library was renowned across the empire, supposedly attracting about one hundred scholars a day" (Leach 1995, vol.II, p.568). Such was his love of books and painting that he kept a library and an atelier while on campaign in the Deccan. It was during this time, in the year 1603, that the Mughal artist Mushfiq, who was in the employ of Abd al-Rahim Khankhanan, seems to have adorned the manuscript with the distinctive decorated borders and the small, exquisite illustrations of animals, birds and plants in the triangular panels around the edge of the text area, for he signed his name and the date 1012 (1603) on one of the small triangular panels on folio 54r. The style of the borders and the small triangular panels is consistent throughout the manuscript, and Leach attributed all of them to Mushfiq, an attribution upheld by Elaine Wright in her recent publication Muraqqa (2008, p.223). In 1034/1624-5 Abd al-Rahim Khankhanan presented this copy of the Panj Ganj to Emperor Jahangir. It remained in the Mughal Royal Library for several generations, with seal impressions of Shah Jahan (r.1628-58), dated 1037/1627-8, and Aurangzeb (r.1658-1707), dated 1070/1659-60 featuring on folio 1r, along with an inscription indicating its transfer to Farrukhsiyar (r.1713-19).

The decorative scheme created by Mushfiq is an interesting and unusual one. While most of the borders feature individual motifs and scenes in keeping with the general style established for border decoration in the Perso-Mughal arts of the book - meandering foliate branches and scrolls, birds and beasts amongst foliage, etc. - some feature highly unusual designs, such as fish swimming in a rocky pool (see Leach 1995, p.576). Many feature motifs of an unusually large scale (such as one page of the present lot) and all of them are marked by a highly original palette with strongly contrasting colours, often utilizing orange and gold elements against a black background or black, or dark blue elements against paler backgrounds. This creates quite mesmerising designs, with silhouette and gold highlights adding dramatic effects.

Despite the familiar nature of individual elements in the border designs, the overall character of their design owes a certain amount to Chinese influence. Linda Leach, discussing the Chester Beatty Library volume, describes them thus: "These distinguished borders feature Chinese-derived patterns adapted with great expressive freedom. The whiskered fish, the wind-blown lotus leaves, and the elegantly animated water birds are particularly good paraphrases of Chinese nature painting. Each border is conceived as a unified pictorial composition.... . The gold illumination sparkles with maximum dramatic effect against the mainly dusky background colours such as navy, olive green, or rust" (Leach 1995, vol.II, p.571). This distinctive style of border decoration appears on only two manuscripts: the present Panj Ganj and another manuscript of Persian poetry, this time the Khamsa of Amir Khusrau Dihlavi, whose borders were also illuminated in the atelier of Abd al-Rahim Khankhanan (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Or.fol.1278, see Seyller 1999, pp.273-283).

The small triangular panels which feature on the inner corners and mid-points of the outer edge of the text panels on every page are also unusual. Small illuminated panels of this shape and positioning had been features of manuscript illustration in the Persian tradition since the early 15th century, but were mostly decorated with small foliate motifs in a standard illuminated style. Those on the Panj Ganj contain a variety of animals and birds, including unusual examples such as frogs and fish (as here on the present lot), as well as occasional human figures.

Mushfiq was a talented and highly regarded artist who spent his whole career in the atelier of Abd al-Rahim Khankhanan. It is possible that he was a house-born of the "Lord of Lords" (Verma, 1994 p.308) and we are told by Abd al-Baqi Nihavandi in his biographical work the Ma'asir-i Rahimi of 1026/1617 that Mushfiq was personally trained by Abd al-Rahim Khankhanan, and that the general had a transforming effect on the artist's skills and qualities, bringing about an almost alchemical enhancement of his talents (Seyller 1999, p.318). As well as one of the key painters of the atelier, Mushfiq was also a personal attendant of the Khankhanan.

Signed examples of his work are relatively rare, and are present in the collections of the British Museum, the Preussische Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., and the Free Library of Philadelphia (see Verma 1994, p.308).

For a very thorough account of Abd al-Rahim Khankhanan and his extraordinary bibliophilic patronage see Seyller 1999. For a full analysis of the parent volume in the Chester Beatty Library see Leach 1995, vol.II, pp.567-579; Wright 2008, pp.223-4.

Dispersed folios from this copy of the Panj Ganj are extremely rare. Only two others are known – a single folio in the Musée d'art et d'histoire, Geneva (formerly Pozzi Collection, see Geneva 1974, no.253) and a single folio sold at auction in Paris, Hotel George V, 30 October 1975, lot 472. A folio with a similar border was donated to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, by Archbishop Laud in 1640, although it is not likely to have originated from the Panj Ganj since the complete manuscript was given to Emperor Jahangir in 1624 and was still in the Mughal royal library in 1640.