I don't have any. On the subjects of manuscript production in the court of the media with print space and at Tabriz during the early 15th century.
She'd undertake an undergraduate and master's studies in Tehran in fine arts and her areas of scholarly interest.
Broadly speaking, Islamic arts and architecture, including the art of the book.
She was at Pembroke College in Cambridge, she tells me, and then needing a grand a college, she undertook work at King's College in Cambridge,
where she catalogued manuscripts in Persian, Indian and Arabic held in the Poot collection of Islamic manuscripts.
And there is catalogue descriptions are now available online in the Union catalogue, which is called Fear is the Fairest.
A joint venture put together by several institutions,
including the Bodhran and Dr Mohan has recently held a shredder curatorial fellowship at the Harvard Museums,
and her articles on the Manuscripts in Our Face and Girls Library can be found in the Journal of the
British Institute of Persian Studies and in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society and elsewhere.
And you will see her subject, which I think is what you're very much what you're currently working on.
Um, which is piecing together in mutilated timber leaves.
Masterpiece, thank you very. Thank you very much, Professor Harrison.
Thank you, Alex. Um, yes, this is my research, part of my Pew Research that I completed in 2018.
What I'm doing at the Public Library is closely connected is another publication production library.
And they are both produced around 14 30 and they come from the same libraries, so they're closely connected.
But my research on this manuscript is completed.
At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a surge in Western communities, and Western dealers have this enthusiasm to collect Islamic book art.
And it led the dealers to feed and respond to market forces,
which in turn resulted in many of the books and manuscripts of the Islamic background being mutilated or enhanced.
Oh, to maximise the profit. And this practise actually started sometime in the 19th century and a few decades, it's reached its peak around 1910.
Perhaps the most famous example is the Great Mongol Army, which survived the royal collections and Persia for 600 years.
But when the bound manuscript was taken from Iran and brought to Europe by Jack Kevorkian, it was sold to another dealer called George Demand.
And it is known as the Molchanov man in it, so he could not get the price that he demanded for.
So he started to sell them individually. Like all day, folios are now in the collection and they are scattered around the world.
And that is one of the crimes, I think, to the Islamic art or in that market to be beautiful display of all objects,
illustrations and to some extent, illuminations and bindings were prised over text, which was little studied or valued.
We could see that this practise of mutilation of manuscripts could happen frequently
with little intellectual or cultural concern for preserving the integrity of texts.
Manuscripts were literally mined or carved off to satisfy the inflated hunger of our dealers or collectors for exotic and beautiful images.
The subject of my presentation today is one of these manuscripts,
and it is a very interesting case in which the illuminations of the manuscripts were taken out by the illustrations are still in the codex.
And it is a very high quality royal production, every page with text is adorned with illuminations,
and probably that was why the manuscript was not mined further.
The remaining manuscript is known as the Berenson anthology and is located in the Princeton Collection at the Villa 880 in Florence.
Now, the Centre for Italian Renaissance Studies of the Harvard University in 2015,
I studied the Princeton manuscript as part of my help to do research on manuscript production under the team where it prints by so-called.
And I noticed signs of mutilations which appear to have gone entirely unnoticed for over a century.
Since Bernard Berenson, the figure on the right, purchased a manuscript in 1910.
Fortunately, I've been able to track down most of the pieces and reconstruct a manuscript in its original form.
I should add that this manuscript was on display on the Harvard art museums in 2017 in an exhibition,
and the catalogue of that exhibition is not out yet, and I'm not really updated with the current contributions it is so set to be out in 2020.
But my research is completely different from that, and it is publishing my thesis.
So to start with, I will introduce a manuscript and it's textual content identifying for the first time each of the rare treatises and the authors.
It's an important aspect of my research to redress the balance between text and image in illustrated manuscripts,
which is mainly neglected by the art historians.
In the second part, I will discuss the science of mutilations and make arguments for reconstruction of the original Codex.
To the extent that is now possible. So let's start with a bit of background.
Various branches of the arts flourished under the Timorese and Timor dynasty ruled greater Iran and parts of Central Asia from 13, 70 to 50 in 07.
It was founded by the Timor are, as is known in the West Tamilian, who somehow established a tradition of patronising the arts.
He chose Summer Account as his capital and try to make it to the glorious city in the world.
So who was his youngest son and took control after his father?
He changed the capital to Herod and his son by board was also based in Hobart, so he had several sons.
And all of them were given refined literacy. Sorry, do you find literary education?
And they were all bibliophiles, very great patrons of the arts.
But probably the most famous one was really by Suha.
He established his utterly in her art in 14 20, which is six hundred years up to now.
And they were active for 15 years until 14 thirty five, and during this time they produced some 30 to 35 manuscripts.
Unlike his grandfather, who was a conqueror, he was a man of fun and mostly interested in hunting and garden parties.
The manuscript that I'm talking about is one of those productions that produced under paints by Singer.
It is a collection of seven rare treatises and it was copied in 14 27.
It also contains seven high quality illustrations, sumptuous decorations and beautiful calligraphy.
It was copied by the royal scribe, Shams, by somebody who was the prince's calligraphy tutor.
The manuscript was known as the restoration, meaning treatises.
But today it is known as the Princeton Anthology. So from now on, I refer to this manuscript as a rescue.
The bulk of the Codex is now has into bear, not Berenson collection of Islamic art in Florence, belonging to Harvard University.
The title ISIL is found in a Temeraire document of 14 27, which is called the hours it dashed,
and it is a report to the Prince about the ongoing projects in the library.
There were several projects of art and architecture going on in the court and library of Passover at the same time,
and the project supervisor was Jafar Tabrizi or later on it got the sobriquet Boysenberry,
and he is reporting about what was going on with the artists and craftsmen, the projects, everything about the library.
It is written in one single folio and it is now preserved in the Topkapi Palace Library in Istanbul.
And it is like it's cruel. So I cut it to show the image better, and it is one single foliar piece it in an album.
The rest are you is one of the works that is referred to in this report, and it is referred to in that paragraph 80C on the top.
I could identify all the manuscripts that were referred to in this document,
but one which I say it was one of those manuscripts that previous caller is trying to identify.
According to the hours attached to this document, we know that biosimilars actually started to illustrate manuscripts in this year, meaning 14 27.
And we know that the rest are you and the Golisano of Saudi, where the two manuscripts that received the first illustrations.
In a final full year of the so-called Berenson anthology, also, we know that the name of the manuscript is referred to you.
I saw you as you see there or more clear in here to date of the completion also agrees with the data the.
As I mentioned, the Rozario contains seven treatises and I'm going to introduce the justices now the reserves and the wine lover's delight,
the sword and the pen to riches of the hard certainties of a spring chess and backgammon and treatise of the lab.
Photo of those appear in an anthology in the Chester Beatty Library, which was copied by Shea Mahmood,
who was a calligrapher who started his career under boysenberry and then later joined the library.
FP Widdop and a few decades later, he copied this manuscript with four of these treatises for people to sew in what comes next.
I excluded that copy from the other extant copies that I'm going to talk about.
The first cities in the U.S. are. It is a heck of a year to go, learn more, which is a debate between rows and the wide to front.
His space contains a two page preface as part of the first treatises.
There are at least two works in Persian literature with the same title, but this one was written by Zang.
There are two other copies of this treatise one in Tehran Majlis Library,
and the other one is in an ontology in Istanbul University, both from the 14th century.
The second serious case is not our city, which is another work by the same author.
Thank you. It is the longest treatise of the manuscript written in the manner of Golisano Sadie.
There are two other copies of this story. It is in Istanbul and one is earlier than our manuscript, and the other one is dated 14 56.
Recycling It is a short debate between the sword and the pen, which opens with the most sumptuous silo of the manuscript silo or the heading over.
Numerous works with the same title have been composed by different authors.
The truth is in this manuscript is why gelatine coffee in the 14th century the only other copy of this work is now in Tehran Much Less Library,
which was compiled for Chakra by Stonebwoy's father Reza Chang.
The traces of the harp was written by Camera Latin America in the 13th century.
This theory is narrates the story of a mystic conversing with a harp about the profound sadness the music of the harp conveys.
We know of two other copies of this work one in an anthology in the Istanbul University Library and the other one in Taskin Museum resonated.
There is a text in praise of spring.
It is the twist from the martial arts by ferry to an actor who was emergency at the courtyard of the Abu Sayyaf in June.
The early manuscript I'm aware of containing the same treatise is preserved in the neuroscience library,
which is dated 15 83, and that makes our text the earliest extant copy of this.
Hour later at their monastery near the Shatterhand is a debate between chess and backgammon.
This is an ancient topic, and there have been numerous examples in pairs in literature from pre-Islamic Prager to
through to the Islamic era to treatise is attributed to Sarah for me within the text itself.
And usually, this treatise does not begin with praise of God or the prophet, but only has a brief introduction.
And unlike other debates, no Koranic verses are included because they were known as gambling games and they were forbidden in Islam.
Bessemer Runescape is the only copy of the treaties again, I exclude appeared without a manuscript.
Sally Sara, G.A., the treaties of the lab is different from the well-known treaties where hard you
care money and is so also different from other treaties with the same name.
So we have lots of treatises with either homonym as title or very similar in the wordings or meaning, such as Israel, etcetera.
You are least Liz out here. Sarah Jane Bahadur sham or Sham SIU sham operative ANI having compared to text of our sun.
Yes, Sarugaser. With all of these texts, I found that the bar, similar to Sally Sara, is the same as a sham.
But the treaties of the candle by General Coffey, who was also the author of In Rescue.
The only other copy of this work is in the Trinity College Cambridge.
And that work is dates back to much later than by some great copy, and it makes our work the earliest extant treaties.
All treatises of the Recién are extremely important editions of the text are there as the base text or as one of the few existing examples.
As you have seen, the manuscript is adorned with this beautiful programme of nations and dazzling colours,
and we see that there are lots of highlights of orange and lilac in this colour
palette of which is so very innovative and decorative by so far to critics,
is currently closed in 19th century Ottoman binding,
which has a velvet fabric on top and a marble paper on the inside cover ready to block the paper of the manuscript has it chickpea
be turned on as well burnished and starched the extent folios are in pristine condition and all of them have catch words.
The opening and final folios bears a celebration of the Ottoman sultan.
Why is it the second which is coming in by simply manuscripts in parallel with the rest of our year?
We know from the Exodus that the ateliers was producing a copy of the Golisano Saudi.
It has the same number of illustrations, the same number of folios and very similar in dimensions.
It is quite possible that the same artist. They are 13 and amicably.
We're working on both manuscripts simultaneously. We can't compare the lady offering drink to Sadie.
I'm going to start with the lover below the ladies window in the rescue and see how similar they are in design,
setting, composition, text and image relation. And even the closing of the male.
I'll figure. One chapter in each manuscript receives nearly half of the illustrations,
which is again meaning they are an evil eye unevenly distributed throughout the manuscripts, both of them are the same in this regard.
And here is the illustration of the chess and backgammon, which has been regarded as the finest illustration of this manuscript.
The Golden Sky is the trademark of royalty myriad manuscripts and as we see it is in contrast the way they read about history.
Loosely speaking, Chester presents reason and backgammon emphasises the role of chance and fate.
This scene would be illustrated again in the most famous by some great manuscript economy that is now in the godless some palace in Tehran.
It was just at the early stages of copying at the same time, but it finished three years later.
Over there, I saw it looked pristine at the first glance,
but I examined the folios closely and I found that not only where some of the folios loose in the gutter,
but also I also found traces of internal damage to the paper.
Almost every folio from the beginning of each treatise has marks of mutilation.
You see wrinkles, creases, air bubbles.
And with the help of a light, I found that even more damage had been done to the paper, indicating that folios had been split at some point.
Having worked with myriad manuscripts,
I suspected a decorated medallion or a shamsi had been removed from the beginning of each treatise by splitting the paper.
What I mean by splitting is a delicate operation by which the rector anniversary of the folio are being separated,
usually with the use of a sharp blade similar to peeling a sticker from its support.
Perhaps this would have been done to remove a half folio bearing a title, some say from the beginning of each treatise to sell or display separately.
This hypothesis was strongly supported when I discovered an imprint of one such shamsie at the first full year of the chess and backgammon.
You can see the imprint better here.
It was visible even without backlighting to conceal the traces of the removed chances and to reinforce what remained.
The vandals pasted a thin sheet of paper onto the reverse of the remaining page or in cases, the blank page.
A full year was appearing. Before that, they split the previous folio and pasted the remaining halves together.
We don't know when or where this happened, but at least one split folio was pasted over with European paper.
Which was carrying a watermark with three circles, as you see here and a crescent at the top.
The paint stain watermark database suggests that this type of paper was in production in Italy from around the midst of 17th century.
So that's the earliest of folios could have been a split.
Now, one important question was, could this sham says, possibly the extent I began to search for any trace of the missing chances?
Having studied study the text after I saw it, at least I knew the correct title of the treatises and I knew what to hunt for,
and I was amazed to come across a Christie's auction describing a tumour of the album containing for some stars, which was sold in London in 2009.
I very quickly recognised they read the title stamps as is stolen from their I Saw You after a lengthy mediated confidential correspondence.
The owner of the stamps has contacted me and you can imagine how happy I was knowing that we knew each other.
And the collector of the sham says was a famous art historian and collector of art.
And Sue Pseudovirus was not aware of the treasure that he had, and he was thinking that it belonged to a period later than by St. Mary's home period.
So we established that the shape and size of one of the detached Sam says match those of the imprint in the backgammon and chess.
Not only that, but the inscription of the scamsters matched the title of the treatises perfectly well.
One of the sham cells was particularly interesting to me. That's half the truth is to speak the inner circle.
I mean this it is an exact duplicate of the title, Sham says another production of was library called Kelly No.
ID. Then. And superimposing, the two confirms that the same Stanciu was used for both of them, although with a different colour palette.
The similarity of is the fake and the sham says, and the fact that both of them were copied by the same scribe,
some said by somebody, as well as a resemblance of intra textual eliminations.
Let me to hypothesise, a similar arrangement for both of them manuscripts.
The caseload begins with a double page illustration, followed by a double page illuminated.
It seems very likely. It seemed very likely that the sale would originally have begun with a similar double page illustration as well.
And also, I would have expected to see a double page illuminated like sleepers, but both of them were absent in the Berenson codex.
The illustration appearing at the beginning of them, there is a type of illustration that was very common with boysenberry manuscripts.
The illustrated manuscripts usually open with a double page illustration depicting the prince in a royal garden with his entourage,
and the prince is usually drinking wine even if it is a hunting scene.
And we know that he loved drinking, and he actually died of excessive enjoyment of drinking wine at the age of 35.
There might well have been a similar opening illustration for the rest are two.
And I suspect I found it.
There is a double page painting now in the Sackler Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which depicts a young prince in a similar setting.
Here we go. The prince is in a royal garden and drinking wine.
Musicians are playing everything says that this might be our story.
In addition to the matching physical dimensions of the folios, the subject of the first activities is a debate between the rivers and the wine,
as I mentioned before, which the wine wins bursting of its place in the hands of kings.
This story is perfectly reflected in this painting.
The young prince is being served by holding a bowl of wine in his hand and the flower depicted in four places.
And here and finally here is broken and looking down.
Is it more clear in this fight? Yeah.
So it is placed right above the bottle of wine, which is another reason to believe that this was the opening illustration of the wine.
The illustration was previously suspected to be a boysenberry production, but from a lost manuscript.
Notice the traces of mutilation in the margins of this double page.
After the Prince Frontispiece illustration in the no dam, now we see an illuminated ex-Labour is seen here.
Descriptions, it state that the manuscript was produced. The commander of Prince questioned her and was dedicated to his library.
I argued that Straayer likes to carry a load them.
They would have contained a double page, illuminated ex-Labour with the prince's name on it,
and I believe I have located that also and its exist as two folios in the Chesapeake library.
These two full years, and they were long considered to have been part of a lost manuscript of Arabic proverbs and sayings.
That's how it all was based on the translation of the inscription of this ex-Labour.
But actually, the inscription explains that these rare gems were collected, transcribed and illustrated on the command of Prince by sword.
The text of this ex-Labour is emphasises the value and rarity of the treatises.
I still, some mentioned that only the only bracingly manuscript with this particular design of ex-Labour are these two manuscripts.
The rest are you and the name. The other ones there, the ex-Labour is within a round medallion.
So to conclude, we are now in the position of being able to reconstruct the original manuscript digitally.
But before that, let's consider when the mutilation of this beautiful manuscript happened.
So as I said, Bernard Berenson purchased his manuscript in Paris in October 1910 from an art dealer with a pseudonym,
Clode Any the studio album containing for some says purchase was purchased into in 2009 in Christie's,
and the previous owner of that album was known as Jack Sarkozy or Jaafar Jaafar Zodiac RC,
who died in 2007, and he was a very well known book dealer and collector.
And after his death, his collection was scattered. And now we see one part of it appears in their auctions every season.
Actually, this season in April, there will be a divan of office by Mahmoud Paper Daily increases auction from his collection.
But he had very likely purchased the album in Istanbul.
The exact date the illuminated X was acquired by Sir Alfred Sabeti is not known, but it is documented to be as in the collection in 1938.
But there is a possibility that it might have been purchased in the late 1920s.
The detached double page illustration. Now in the Sackler Gallery of Art was acquired by Frederick Martin in 1912,
and his short space of time to folios were passed from Martin to several other art dealers.
At some point, they were travelling separately. I mean, each folio.
It is not known when and where the mutilation of the manuscript took place,
but they Sackler double page illustration has a note and a reverse with the date 1867.
Based on this date, we can say probably it happened at this time or before, since the binding is Ottoman.
There is a strong possibility that the manuscript was mutilated in Turkey,
and we have other examples of manuscripts that were butchered the same way and carved up whether
some says and they were used to compile albums for Western or European collectors and art lovers.
This is another burst of water sensor that is found in the Dates albums, which was also compiled in Istanbul.
Although three of the rest are you, Sam says, have not yet been identified.
And I hope that they appear at some point, either in an album or in a collection.
It is now possible to gather together the dispersed folios and portfolios and to reconstruct the original manuscript either digitally or in print.
And thus, we can come close to seeing what was offered to print on board in 14 27.
I want to show you the reconstruction of the manuscript now that I.
Managed to have with the help of my dear friend, Mr Tracy.
Thank you. So this is a reconstruction of the manuscript that I made, but it is not entirely as it is at the moment.
So I told you that it has in 19th century Ottoman binding with a velvet top.
But I replaced that with a typical boysenberry binding.
This is a binding for another manuscript of the Chester Beatty Library, which is called Nassau U.s.-canada and was produced in 14 29.
If we open the manuscript, we see that a double or inside cover is also replaced by a an original by somebody to.
Now it has a marble paper, but we are looking at the manuscript as a prince would have looked at.
There's something very interesting. Whoever took out the stamp says, write down the name of the treatises here.
And this is probably another reason for me to think that they were not Persian because they couldn't read the title of each treatise correctly.
Two of them have minor errors. And it opens with a secular gallery, double page illustration.
And did you submit a library double page illumination with the name of by were mentioned and this page horribly, we can't see it closely.
Oh, it is actually here, my hon.
And this is one of the sham says that is not found yet, and I replaced it with another sham set up by some manuscripts.
It must have been something look like that. This is the preface to the first two.
And as you see, it, has this beautiful illumination. And we go on with the first three days with an illuminated heading.
And these are intra textual eliminations that I talked about.
You can see them throughout the manuscript. The second theory is also has lost a sound.
Some say it is a another sham Superman by some very many groups giving the title to an RCMP or lover's delight.
It opens with another beautiful illumination with the typical arabesque and wine
motifs of bison were library with lots of what we call them Chalamet's arabesque.
And this is the longest three days of the manuscript, and it has five illustrations.
Some of them are hunting scenes. Again, this way, unfortunately, the face of the prince has been defaced in these two illustrations.
And this is a an illustration of much noon and a messenger.
We looked at a lover below the window of the beloved and.
Again, in this series, illuminations within the text. And as we saw this image before, this is Prince by singer himself,
and he probably very much looked like this portrait because we have this portrait repeated in other manuscripts,
and we know for sure that he looked like this.
This is really interesting because it also has an illustration of a falcon, and it shows the love of falconry of the prince.
And for those of you don't know, by word means master falcons.
It wasn't his real name, it was his title, somehow.
This is the third replaced, I would say, something by myself, so it is not one of those cells that we found and.
Here you see signs of mutilations all over this folio at the top, for example,
you just look at this line and signs of splitting the paper or what is very important and
interesting about this is that the rest of the text here was on the reverse of this folio.
They cut that bit pasted here so that they could split the folio and paste it to the next one.
This is one of the chances for Mrs to their collection.
And it is saying this is a treatise of the harp.
You can see how the folios were loose in the gutter, and they used tapes to put them in place.
Another say from Mr Saudaveis Collection. This is Resolve Rabie or Treatise of Spring.
And again, Prince Spencer is very busy drinking wine, having fun with the musicians,
playing hard and probably something very delicious is being prepared.
And this is the duties of backgammon and chess.
And before I showed you the imprint on the other folio, but we didn't have the same set,
but now we have the Shamsa on this side and we can see it in print again the other side.
The illustrations are backgammon and chess. And the final treatise is the result, etc. It's a year to treat yourself to lamb.
And this is from Mr Pseudovirus Collection. And.
Another salvo in the rest of the text until we get to the cornerstone of the work and we see the name of the scribe Mohammad Hassan,
known as Shamsi Soltani, the royal scribe. And as I mentioned, the C-love visit comes at the back of the manuscript.
Another boysenberry deplore. And that is the ends of the manuscript.
Thank you very much for your attention. I would be happy to take questions.