AN ALBUM CONTAINING ILLUMINATED PAGES FROM THE GULISTAN OF SA'DI WITH THREE BORDERS ATTRIBUTED TO SULTAN MUHAMMAD, PERSIA, TABRIZ, CIRCA 1525-40.

P.W. Schulz, Germany, early 20th century

For a full discussion of the manuscript from which these folios originate, see lot 74 in this sale.

This album consists of ten pages, of which eight are from a manuscript of Sa'di's Gulistan with borders decorated in gold and silver. Of these eight, three (pages 1, 2, 4) have borders depicting a variety of scenes of animals, birds, mythical beasts and human figures in forested landscapes and are of the superlative quality associated with the Tabriz School of the second quarter of the 16th century, and more specifically with the hand of the master Sultan Muhammad.  Four others (pages 3, 5, 6, 8) have borders of a slightly more modest character, and one (7) has a border of very high quality but with a scene more redolent of Mughal work.

As well as the superb quality of the borders of these pages, whose origin and provenance is fully discussed in the footnote to the lot 74, page 4 of this album has a small scene of a prince and a greybeard at the lower left corner which is worth examining in more detail. There are two figures seated either side of a tree. The figure on the left is a young prince wearing a Safavid turban, seated on a low throne and reading a book. He bears a stiking resemblance to Shah Tahmasp and other Safavid princes as depicted in various paintings and drawings of the first half of the 16th century, such as a well-known painting of a Reclining Prince of circa 1530 now in the Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. (see Lowry 1988, no.65, pp.194-5) a drawing of a Seated Youth reading a book in the same collection (Lowry 1988, no.64, pp.192-3), and a painting of a prince reading a book seated by a tree in St. Petersburg (see Kuhnel 1922, pl.63). The other figure, on the right, is an elderly Sufi with a long beard and over-long sleeves, kneeling on the ground, painted in an almost Behzadian manner. This aspect of these borders, in which individual vignettes echo scenes and figures in other paintings and drawings of the same period, is a feature of several other pages from this manuscript. In particular, a folio illustrated in Die persisch-islamische Miniaturmalerei of 1914 (Vol.II, pls.73) showed a host of angels which is reminiscent of the scene of the Ascent of the Prophet in Shah Tahmasp's copy of the Khamsa of Nizami of 1539-43 (see Welch 1979, no.63); and an album sold in these rooms 12 October 1990, lot 255, had several vignettes which could be linked to other known works of the Tabriz  School (see footnote to lot 74 for further details).

Cary Welch discussed this particular vignette of the Prince and the Greybeard, and the whole phenomenon of these splendid borders, in his discussion of the artist Sultan Muhammad in volume one of the monumental publication The Houghton Shahnameh, which he published with Martin Dickson in 1981 (p.86). His text is as follows:
"...several drawings exist that should be assigned to Sultan Muhammad. A series brushed in gold and silver, datable to the later 1520s, was added to the borders of a superb manuscript of Sa'di's Bustan [sic], said to have been copied by the great scribe Sultan-Ali Mashhadi, who died about 1520. Although this magnificent manuscript has been scattered, many pages from it are known. Most of these drawings can be attributed to Sultan Muhammad. Some of the margins are adorned with motifs of flowering vines, flapping cranes, or other conventional elements; but others, composed with utmost invention, place this manuscript in the company of a 1410 Anthology in the British Library and the Divan of Sultan Ahmad Jalayir in the Freer Gallery, two earlier manuscripts with border illustration. One seems to contain a charmingly idealized portrait of Shah Tahmasp as a youth, seated beneath a plane tree listening to a graybeard's wisdom. It includes a stunning mass of foliage that recalls a closely related passage in Zahhak Slays the Cow Birmayeh. Another folio, boldly designed in slashing diagonals, describes a fantastic wood inhabited by playful dragons and qilin, fiery descendants from designs adapted from the Chinese by the Turkman." (Dickson and Welch 1981, vol.II, p.86. The Fantastic Forest referred to is the previous lot in this sale).

Lot 76 in this sale is also from the same manuscript.