A FINELY ILLUMINATED FOLIO FROM A MANUSCRIPT OF THE GULISTAN OF SA'DI, THE BORDERS ATTRIBUTED TO SULTAN MUHAMMAD, PERSIA, TABRIZ, CIRCA 1525-40

P.W. Schulz (1864-1920), Germany, early 20th century

Wonders of the Age, The British Library, London; The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; and The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, 1979-80
Islamic Art and the Written Word, Harvard Art Museums, 1983
Linear Graces (Part 1), Harvard Art Museums, 1994

Welch 1979, no.46, pp.130-131
Dickson and Welch 1981, vol.1, fig.119

This folio and the following two lots all originate from a remarkable manuscript whose borders are ravishingly illuminated in gold. The borders have been attributed by Cary Welch and others to Sultan Muhammad, the great Safavid master of Shah Tahmasp's atelier (Welch 1979, no.46; Canby 1999, fig.42; Paris 2001, no.71, p.106). Many leaves have been published over the last century, but the exact origins of the manuscript have remained enigmatic. However, what all scholars, curators and collectors have agreed upon is the spectacular quality of the border decoration and the elegance of the nasta'liq script.

The history of these folios is interesting, both art historically and in terms of provenance. According to F.R.Martin, the whole manuscript was in the collection of the German art historian P.W. Schulz at the beginning of the 20th century.  A folio belonging to Schulz was exhibited in the 1910 Munich exhibition of Islamic art Meisterwerken Muhammadanische Kunst (see Sarre and Martin 1912, vol.I.pl.31). At least two folios were in the collection of F.R.Martin himself by the time he published his monumental book The Miniature Painting of Persia, India and Turkey in 1912, for two were illustrated in that work (vol.II, pls.250-251), listed as being in his own collection. This implies that the manuscript was disbound and at least partially dispersed by this time. Martin described them as being folios from a manuscript of Hafez, rather than Sa'di, and attributed the calligraphy to Sultan Ali Mashhadi. A further indication that the manuscript was dispersed by this time, and that at least some borders had been re-used in other album contexts, comes via a drawing of a Young Dervish by Reza-i Abbasi, whose border is from the same manuscript. This drawing was also published in F.R. Martin's work The Miniature Painting of Persia, India and Turkey in 1912, pl.166, where it is listed as being in the collection of Charles Vignier. However, the border is not illustrated. The drawing entered the Rothschild Collection, and was included in the sale of Persian and Indian miniatures from that collection at P and D Colnaghi in London in 1976, where the illustration in the accompanying catalogue again does not show the border (Colnaghi 1976, no.42). The drawing was published again by Soudavar in 1992, this time showing the splendid border (Soudavar 1992, no.105, p.266).

Schulz published two folios of his own (one with borders splendidly decorated with scenes of angels) in his book Die persisch-islamische Miniaturmalerei of 1914 (Vol.II, pls.71,73), where he described the text as Sa'di's Bustan and suggested an early 16th century date. In the same book three folios in the Kunstgewerbe Museum, Leipzig were also published (ibid, pls.68,69,70). Two folios were in the Goloubew Collection (formed between 1908 and 1911) and were acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston as part of that exceptional acquisition in 1914. They were published by Coomaraswamy in Les Miniatures Orientales de la Collection Goloubew au Museum of Fine Arts de Boston (Coomaraswamy 1929, no.35, p.27, pl.XVII), where Coomaraswamy again described the text as the Bustan of Sa'di and attributed the calligraphy to Sultan Ali Mashhadi circa 1500. It was probably at around this time, between 1908 and 1920, that the single folio in the Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin entered that collection, for it was published in Kuhnel's Miniaturemalerei im Islamischen Orient (Kuhnel 1922, pls.55-56). Perhaps the folio in the Kunstbibliothek, Berlin was also acquired around this time (see Kroger and Heiden 2004, no.166, p.208, where the text is listed as being the poetry of Hafez). So by around 1920, several folios from the manuscript were dispersed in at least six different collections formed in Europe.

At least one folio (and probably several more) were with the dealer Adrienne Minassian in New York in the mid-1950s, for one folio, sold in these rooms 23 April 1997, lot 31, and subsequently at Christie's, London, 7 October 2008, lot 155, bore the inscription "Mrs Philip Hofer, Bot (bought) of Minassian, [19]56". It is likely that Cary Welch acquired the present folio and the others from the same manuscript (lots 75 and 76 in this sale) from Minassian at around the same time.

In 1976 three folios in the Keir Collection, Ham, Surrey, were published by B.W. Robinson, where he mentioned and concurred with Cary Welch's attribution of the borders to Sultan Muhammad, and also mentioned the earlier attribution of the calligraphy to Sultan Ali Mashhadi (Robinson et al.1976, no.220-222, pp.181-2).

In 1979 Cary Welch, having owned the present folio for around two decades, exhibited it, plus one of those from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in the 1979 exhibition Wonders of the Age, and in the accompanying catalogue (nos.45-46) affirmed his attribution of the borders to Sultan Muhammad and corrected the description of the text from the Bustan of Sa'di to the Gulistan of Sa'di. At this time Cary Welch was deeply involved in his study of the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp, a manuscript of which Sultan Muhammad was one of the most important artists and the first director of the production project. Welch was therefore intimately acquainted with the styles and œuvres of the artists of the royal atelier at Tabriz and was in a prime position to attribute the borders to one of their number. Indeed, he published the present folio and one page of the following lot in the two-volume work The Houghton Shahnameh (vol.I, fig.119, p.85).

On 12 October 1990 an album of folios from this same manuscript appeared at auction at Sotheby's London (lot 255). It contained thirteen leaves, amongst which approximately half had borders of the quality and style of those previously attributed by Welch to Sultan Muhammad. Toby Falk, who wrote the catalogue description at the time, concurred with Welch's attribution of these borders to the Tabriz school of the period of Shah Tahmasp, and specifically pointed out two vignettes that were extremely close compositionally and stylistically to elements of known Tabriz paintings of the second quarter of the 16^th century. These were a figure holding a book at the top of folio 8b of the Sotheby's album, which mirrored that of a Reclining Prince in the Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. (formerly in the Vever Collection, see Lowry and Beach 1988, no.349), and a prince on horseback shooting an arrow, at the lower left corner of folio 9a (illustrated in the Sotheby's catalogue), which mirrored that of Bahram Gur hunting, by Sultan Muhammad, on folio 202v of Shah Tahmasp's copy of the Khamsa of Nizami of 1539-1543 in the British Library (see Welch 1979, no.64, and Binyon 1928, pl.XV) and on folio 568r of the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp (see Welch 1972, p.176; see also lot 75 in this sale for further discussion of this theme).

Falk went further in suggesting that other artists of Shah Tahmasp's atelier may have been responsible for some of the other pages from this manuscript, and Cary Welch thought that the borders of some folios might be by Aqa Mirak. A further aspect of the manuscript was revealed by the appearance of the Sotheby's album. The album contained a colophon by the calligrapher Imad al-Hassani, the well-known and revered late 16th-century master. It also gave a date of 1004/1595 and the place as Aleppo. This information raised as many questions as it answered, for it implied either that Mir Imad was finishing off an unfinished manuscript by a previous master (perhaps Sultan Ali Mashhadi himself  - see lot 104 in this sale for a similar incidence of Sultan Ali's work being left unfinished by his illness and death), or that borders from a Tabriz manuscript of circa 1530 were used to furbish a manuscript by Mir Imad around 1595. The fact that Mir Imad stated that he completed the text in Aleppo is also interesting, since although it is known from other signed works that he was in Aleppo in 1595, it indicates that he took the written text back with him to Persia. When he returned to Persia in 1596 Mir Imad joined the famed kitabkhaneh of Farhad Khan Qaramanlu, and later the court atelier of Shah Abbas I in Isfahan, where he was the calligrapher-royal. Might it be that the manuscript under discussion was perhaps re-assembled under the patronage of either Qaramanlu, whose library was a magnet for master artists and calligraphers and produced outstanding literary and artistic manuscripts (see Akimushkin 1996, p.42) or Shah Abbas himself, using an unfinished text by an early Safavid master calligrapher along with the original borders by master artists of Shah Tahmasp's atelier, plus Mir Imad's final textual completions and possibly further borders by artists of circa 1600?

We can get a very good idea of what the original manuscript of the present three lots might have looked like, both art historically and codicologically, by comparison with a copy of Sa'di's Gulistan copied by Sultan Ali Mashhadi in 873/1468-9, margined with ravishing borders of the same style as the present lot datable to the 1530s and attributed by Soudavar to Aqa Mirak, another of Shah Tahmasp's royal artists, and illustrated with six added Mughal miniatures of the mid-17th century by royal artists such as Govardhan. The manuscript was formerly in the collection of the Marquess of Bute and is now in the Art and History Trust Collection, Freer/Sackler Gallery, Washington D.C. (see Soudavar 1992, cat.136, pp.178-9, 332-3). The comparisons with the present leaves are three-fold: firstly that the borders are so alike in style and quality; secondly that the text was originally copied by Sultan Ali Mashhadi; and thirdly that the manuscript went through subsequent re-furbishments and alterations in the context of later owners/patrons.

Falk points out in his description of the Sotheby's 1990 album that several folios had borders of a slightly more modest character, possibly added by artists of the period of Imad al-Hassani, and lot 75 in this sale, which is a similar album containing eight pages from this manuscript, bears this out, since four pages have borders of  magnificent quality and four pages have borders of a fine but relatively more modest character. However, in the same way that at least two figures in borders of the Sotheby's 1990 album mirrored those in paintings of Shah Tahmasp's atelier (as described above) one page of lot 75 has a vignette in the lower left corner that shows a reclining prince wearing a Safavid turban, that very closely mirrors figures in paintings and drawings of the Tabriz School of the second quarter of the 16th century (see footnote to lot 75 for further discussion), again confirming the origin of these borders to that period and atelier.

Thus, while our knowledge of this manuscript is still not complete, its history might be something along the following lines:
1.  A manuscript of Sa'di's poetry was executed during the late 15th or early 16th century century, with calligraphy by an unnamed master (perhaps Sultan Ali Mashhadi, who died in 1520). The manuscript was assembled soon after with borders by artists of the royal atetlier, including Sultan Muhammad.
2. The manuscript may have been unfinished or have fallen into disrepair during the 16th century, and was re-assembled or completed around the end of the 16th century at the kitabkhaneh of Farhad Khan Qaramnlu or the atelier of Shah Abbas I with additions by Mir Imad al-Hassani and others.
3. The manuscript was in the collection of P.W. Schulz in Germany in the early years of the 20th century. It may still have been complete at this time, but is more likely already to have become dismembered and dispersed.
4. Between 1908 and around 1920 at least nine folios had become separated and had entered various museum and private collections in Europe and the United States. Other folios were dispersed singly or mounted in albums, either before or around this time.

Lots 75 and 76 in this sale are also from the same original manuscript as the present leaf, and further aspects of this fascinating manuscript and its exquisite borders can be found discussed under those lots.

As well as the folios mentioned above in the Kunstgewerbe Museum, Leipzig, the Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin, the Kunstbibliothek, Berlin, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Keir Collection, two folios from this manuscript are in the Cleveland Museum of Art.