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King Manuchihr, unfinished text folio from the Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi

Title	King Manuchihr, unfinished text folio from the Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi
Publication Date:	1880-1900
Type	Document
Language	Persian
Digital	Yes
Manuscript	Yes
Physical Dimensions	592 mm x 400 mm (height x width)
Library:	Chester Beatty
Record ID	Per 111.9
Library Location	Persian collection
Date	1880-1900
Notes	King Manuchihr, unfinished text folio from the Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi. This folio was produced in late nineteenth-century Tehran, for a major restoration project on a damaged earlier manuscript, known as the Great Mongol Shahnama (and also as the Demotte Shahnama). Dateable to the era of late Mongol Ilkhanid rule in Iran (the 1330s), this dramatic manuscript is today dispersed across many international collections, including eleven folios in the Chester Beatty collection. Heavily worn, the manuscript was extensively restored in late nineteenth-century Tehran, probably at the Gulistan Palace library: the folios were trimmed, remargined, and renumbered, with missing text supplemented on new paper folios (such as this folio Per 111.9), written out by Tehran calligraphers following fourteenth-century style. At the start of the twentieth century, the manuscript was sold to a Paris-based dealer, Georges Demotte (d. 1923), reportedly with another dealer Dikran Kelekian as his buying-partner. From 1913, Demotte began selling single illustrated folios cut from the manuscript to art collectors and museums, in Europe and the USA: his main focus was on the paintings, for which there was strong market interest. The original fourteenth-century text folios rarely survived this process, and the nineteenth-century folios (such as Per 111.9) rarely survived without being pasted over with paintings irrelevant to the text. By the time Beatty bought his eleven folios (CBL Per 111.1 to Per 111.11, seven with paintings) from Demotte's firm in October 1937, he would have known the so-called "Demotte Shahnama" well: its fifty-eight (known) illustrated folios had been widely exhibited and published. Folio, ink on paper, Persian text in naskh script, with gaps left for captions, as well as smaller gaps throughout the columns, spacing out the text, from a dispersed Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi, produced as part of restoration of a c. 1330 manuscript, Tehran, Iran, c. 1880-1900.
Materyal	Paper (material), Ink (material)
Nesne Adı	Folio / Bi-Folio (Codex)

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Chester Beatty

King Manuchihr, unfinished text folio from the Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi

Publication Date 1880-1900

Type Document

Language Persian

Digital Yes

Manuscript Yes

Physical Dimensions 592 mm x 400 mm (height x width)

Library Chester Beatty

Record ID Per 111.9

Library Location Persian collection

Date 1880-1900

Notes King Manuchihr, unfinished text folio from the Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi. This folio was produced in late nineteenth-century Tehran, for a major restoration project on a damaged earlier manuscript, known as the Great Mongol Shahnama (and also as the Demotte Shahnama). Dateable to the era of late Mongol Ilkhanid rule in Iran (the 1330s), this dramatic manuscript is today dispersed across many international collections, including eleven folios in the Chester Beatty collection. Heavily worn, the manuscript was extensively restored in late nineteenth-century Tehran, probably at the Gulistan Palace library: the folios were trimmed, remargined, and renumbered, with missing text supplemented on new paper folios (such as this folio Per 111.9), written out by Tehran calligraphers following fourteenth-century style. At the start of the twentieth century, the manuscript was sold to a Paris-based dealer, Georges Demotte (d. 1923), reportedly with another dealer Dikran Kelekian as his buying-partner. From 1913, Demotte began selling single illustrated folios cut from the manuscript to art collectors and museums, in Europe and the USA: his main focus was on the paintings, for which there was strong market interest. The original fourteenth-century text folios rarely survived this process, and the nineteenth-century folios (such as Per 111.9) rarely survived without being pasted over with paintings irrelevant to the text. By the time Beatty bought his eleven folios (CBL Per 111.1 to Per 111.11, seven with paintings) from Demotte's firm in October 1937, he would have known the so-called "Demotte Shahnama" well: its fifty-eight (known) illustrated folios had been widely exhibited and published. Folio, ink on paper, Persian text in naskh script, with gaps left for captions, as well as smaller gaps throughout the columns, spacing out the text, from a dispersed Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi, produced as part of restoration of a c. 1330 manuscript, Tehran, Iran, c. 1880-1900.

Materyal Paper (material), Ink (material)

Nesne Adı Folio / Bi-Folio (Codex)