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 111.6
Library Location
Persian collection
Date
c. 1330
Notes
The reign of Bahram Bahramiyan, folio from the Book of Kings (Shahnama). 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 (such as this painting Per 111.6), 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. 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 (the reign of Bahram was three years, three months and three days, on recto), and two further captions (the reign of Bahram son of Bahram was nineteen years; the reign of Bahram Bahramiyan was four months long) 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
