English: SHAH TAHMASP HOLDING COURT

ATTRIBUTABLE TO MU'IN MUSAVVIR, SAFAVID ISFAHAN, CIRCA 1670

An illustrated folio from Bijan's Tarikh-i jahangusha-yi khaqan sahibqiran, opaque pigments heightened with gold on paper, Shah Tahmasp sits beneath a tented canopy with courtiers and 'ulema in attendance, 2ll. of black nasta'liq in clouds reserved against gold ground, key words in red, panel within gold and blue rules and borders with scrolling floral vine on wide margins with gold minor water staining, old collection label on the reverse Painting 6 7/8 x 6in. (17.4 x 15.3cm.); folio 14¼ x 9¼in. (36 x 23.6cm.)

This miniature, and that of the following lot, come from two different dispersed copies of Bijan's text Tarikh-i Jahangusha-yi Khaqan Sahibqiran, the known illustrations of which, Eleanor Sims writes, present the first Safavid shah of Iran as a divinely inspired ruler and a princely hero following the mode of Firdawsi's Shahnama (Eleanor Sims, 'A Dispersed Late-Safavid copy of the Tarikh-i Jahangusha-yi Khaqan Sahibqiran, published in Sheila R. Canby (ed.) Safavid Art and Architecture, Cambridge, 2002, p. 54). The text was compiled in the 1680s by a 'minor late-Safavid historian, almost certainly a Georgian, who signs himself as qissa-yi safavi-khwan' (Sims, op. cit., p.54). It is known that in the second half of the 17th century, the artist Mu’in Musavvir worked on two or three editions of this work, and it is likely that the manuscripts from which this, and the following lot, originate are amongst them.

Other folios from the same manuscript are in the Nasser David Khalili collection and the Art and History Trust Collection. One sold at Sotheby's, 30 June 1980, lot 243, four in the same Rooms (Property of the Baltimore Museum of Art), 22nd/23rd March, 1986, lots 151-4, and another on 20 June, 1980, lot 243. All of the above, and the others known, have illustrations found between panels of prose set in cloud bands against gold ground. All are mounted on variously coloured card with gold floral illumination.