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The king of India tells his dream to the sage Mihran, from the Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi

Title	The king of India tells his dream to the sage Mihran, from the Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi
Publication Date:	c. 1330
Type	Document
Language	Persian
Digital	Yes
Manuscript	Yes
Physical Dimensions	592 mm x 400 mm (height x width)
Library:	Chester Beatty
Record ID	Per 111.5
Library Location	Persian collection
Date	c. 1330
Notes	The king of India tells his dream to the sage Mihran, from the Book of Kings (Shahnama). In his dream, king Kayd has foreseen Alexander's invasion of India, and Mihran advises him on how to placate the invader. Dateable to the era of late Mongol Ilkhanid rule in Iran (the 1330s), a dramatic but fragmentary manuscript known as the Great Mongol Shahnama (and also as the Demotte Shahnama) 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, written out by Tehran calligraphers following fourteenth-century style. Many of the paintings were retouched, with occasional Persian commentary written onto them. 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. He had not only disbound the manuscript for its paintings, in eight cases he had folios split vertically - thus splicing apart the page - in order to separate two paintings from either side of one folio. He then pasted each painting onto separate folios, containing text only (usually irrelevant to the painting subject. This folio (Per 111.5) is relatively intact, though an earlier owner has smudged the faces of the Indians in this scene, and erased one of the animals in the landscape. 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, colours and gold on paper, Persian text in naskh script, with framed caption (Kayd of Hind tells his dream to Mihran, on recto), and second caption (Account of Iskandar's war against the king of India) and painting (on verso), from a dispersed Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi, Tabriz, Iran, c. 1330, folio remargined and repaired, Tehran, Iran, c. 1880-1900.
Materyal	Paper (material), Pigment (material), Ink (material), Gold
Nesne Adı	Folio / Bi-Folio (Codex)
Yazı Tipi	Naskh script, Thuluth script

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Chester Beatty

The king of India tells his dream to the sage Mihran, from the Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi

Publication Date c. 1330

Type Document

Language Persian

Digital Yes

Manuscript Yes

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

Library Chester Beatty

Record ID Per 111.5

Library Location Persian collection

Date c. 1330

Notes The king of India tells his dream to the sage Mihran, from the Book of Kings (Shahnama). In his dream, king Kayd has foreseen Alexander's invasion of India, and Mihran advises him on how to placate the invader. Dateable to the era of late Mongol Ilkhanid rule in Iran (the 1330s), a dramatic but fragmentary manuscript known as the Great Mongol Shahnama (and also as the Demotte Shahnama) 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, written out by Tehran calligraphers following fourteenth-century style. Many of the paintings were retouched, with occasional Persian commentary written onto them. 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. He had not only disbound the manuscript for its paintings, in eight cases he had folios split vertically - thus splicing apart the page - in order to separate two paintings from either side of one folio. He then pasted each painting onto separate folios, containing text only (usually irrelevant to the painting subject. This folio (Per 111.5) is relatively intact, though an earlier owner has smudged the faces of the Indians in this scene, and erased one of the animals in the landscape. 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, colours and gold on paper, Persian text in naskh script, with framed caption (Kayd of Hind tells his dream to Mihran, on recto), and second caption (Account of Iskandar's war against the king of India) and painting (on verso), from a dispersed Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi, Tabriz, Iran, c. 1330, folio remargined and repaired, Tehran, Iran, c. 1880-1900.

Materyal Paper (material), Pigment (material), Ink (material), Gold

Nesne Adı Folio / Bi-Folio (Codex)

Yazı Tipi Naskh script, Thuluth script