Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-Bukhari al-Ja'fi (d.870 AD), Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume Two, signed by Ya'qub ibn Hasan al-Hasani, Persia, Timurid, dated Rabi' al-Awwal 844 AH/August-September 1440 AD

The scribe of this manuscript, Yaqub ibn Hasan al-Hasani, also known as Siraj al-Hasani is most well-known as the scribe for the royal Zafarnama that was commissioned by the Timurid governor Ibrahim Sultan, grandson of Timur, and completed in 1436 AD. As Sheila Blair notes, at this time in Shiraz, a new style of naskh was developing distinguished by its long swooping tails on letters such as nun, sin and ya’ in their final forms which at times encompass the entirety of the following word or phrase (Blair 2006, p.263-4).

Ibrahim Sultan was an accomplished calligrapher in his own right and this style of script must have been favoured by the governor as he uses a comparably energetic script in a Qur’an now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc. no.13.228.1). The dynamic script of Siraj al-Hasani is amplified here by the particularly elongated horizontal terminal ba’ in the chapter headings which at times take up almost half of the line and contrast with the sublinear rhythm of the swooping curves.

Through the movement of Shirazi artists and scribes, this Shirazi style of naskh and illumination spread to Anatolia and India. This is true of our scribe who composed a manuscript in Bihar in 1454, Tuhfat al-muhibbin. Here, our scribe documents his master of calligraphy was Sadr al-Din Ruzbihan Shirazi and records that his master was also in the court of Ibrahim Sultan (Ernst 2009, p.432).

At the time this manuscript was produced in the years following Ibrahim Sultan’s death, a new style of illumination was emerging characterised by a broader palette and more densely applied palmette-arabesques (Wright 2012, p.106). The illumination of the frontispiece of this manuscript demonstrates the delicacy and intricacy of the blue and gold style in Timurid Shiraz which nonetheless persisted in parallel to the new style of illumination. 

The elegant, restricted palette and minute floral sprays are closely comparable to a double-page frontispiece of a manuscript of Kamil al-ta’bir, dated 1432 in the Topkapi Saray Library, Istanbul (inv. no.A.III 3169, see Wright 2012, fig.69, p.112), and a magnificent Qur’an copied by Ahmad al-Rumi sold in these rooms, 31 March 2021, lot 17. Although this style of illumination was used infrequently in the late fifteenth century, a few examples remain including a royal thirty-part Qur’an produced for the Aqqoyunlu ruler Ya’qub Beg, a volume of which sold in these rooms, 23 October 2019, lot 121.

The colophon to this manuscript states that is the second of thirty volumes of the text. Given the refinement of the illumination and quality of the calligraphy, a commission of this scale would have come at great expense and would have been befitting of an important, possibly royal, patron.