THE SUN AND THE RAINBOW: FOLIO FROM A MANUSCRIPT OF QAZWINI'S AJA'IB AL-MAKHLUQAT, INDIA, DECCAN, LATE 16TH CENTURY

This folio originates from a manuscript of the important and popular medieval cosmographical text Aja'ib al-Makhluqat wa Ghara'ib al-Mawjudat (The Marvels of Creation and their Singularites) of the Persian scholar Al-Qazwini. The text on this folio discusses the formation of rainbows, with illustrations of the sun (with a human face) and on the reverse a rainbow crowned by a stylized lotus-motif. At least three closely related manuscripts of the same text were produced in the Deccan around 1570. Two, dated 979/1571 are in the India Office Library, London, and a third of the same date is in the Raza Library, Rampur. Schmitz and Desai suggested that all three, plus the dispersed volume from the which the present folio originates (along with other from the same volume in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Diego Museum of Art and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) are all products of the same Bijapur workshop (see Schmitz and Desai 2006, pp.90-91). Three other leaves from the same manuscript have been sold in these rooms 27 March 1973, lots 62, 63, 64. A folio from a very similar manuscript, possibly the same one, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

The author Zakariya Ibn Muhammad Ibn Mahmud Al-Qazwini was born at Qazwin circa 1203. He spent time in Damascus with the scholar Ibn al-Arabi and served as qadi of the towns of Wasit and Hilla in Iraq under the last Abbasid caliph Al-Mu'tasim (r. 1242-58). He was celebrated as a geographer and natural historian, and was known as the Muslim Pliny. Brockelmann described the Aja'ib al-Makhluqat as the most precious cosmographical text in Islamic culture. The scope of the subjects covered in the original text include the firmament and the angels, the planets and elements, meteorology, fire, thunder, the earth, mountains, rivers, sea, fish, monsters, minerals, plants, animals, birds and reptiles. The author cites more than a hundred sources including Aristotle, Ptolemy and Dioscorides.