So my work at the Clinton Library started with an intriguing manuscript, as Emily so beautifully presented,
allow me to share my PowerPoint so that I can see you illustrations of this.
Manuscript. Just one second, please. OK, so the odd one, which was producing fifteen sixty five,
I said intriguing because besides the usual illustrations of royal feasts and battle scenes, this manuscript contains images like these.
Which can be interpreted to mean that the text was not known.
So I came to the library to study the work and review the connexion between the text and its images.
But we discovered a lot more than what I came for, because the manuscript at the bottom left me to the discovery of an extremely important manuscript
which had remained hidden to the scholars who were looking for its content for decades.
I will talk about the significance of that other manuscript which is currently preserved in the British Library later.
But first, let me introduce the body in manuscript. So this manuscript contains or takes this finely illuminated pages beginning of each day.
We do not know the original title of the book, so it is just called Catalpa Dostana, which means Book of Tales.
This title, as you can see up there, is written by a modern hand on the finding work in manuscript.
So the terms are written in a simple language, and by that I mean that the use of literary devices in the text is limited.
The terms are basically love stories, and I will come back to the theme of each day later,
but because of the simple language and content of the tales, they are generally classified as folk tales.
But as we shall see, they were mostly used for the entertainment and education of the elite.
The manuscript contains one hundred seventy one folios, which measure twelve point two by seven point five inches,
and the date of completion of the work, as provided by described,
is the twenty fifth of shotgun, 972 of the entry calendar, which is March sixty five.
It does include Frontispiece depicting a royal picnic,
opens the manuscript and follows a double patients staff, or sunburst, which is badly damaged and restored.
As you can see, the inclusion of the royal banquet scene and the chanson suggests that the work was not produced for an ordinary person.
It's third double page, heavily decorated with gold, almost, and.
Here we have two Arabic verses written in the two central medallions, wishing the owner of the manuscript a long life of glory and good fortune.
Here is the details of the fighting in the middle.
These are big verses also appear on the opening pages of a copy of the Shahnameh or Depression Book of Kings dated
fourteen ninety five and also on a copy of something which is a historical writing dated fourteen seventy five.
So both toward the end of the 15th century.
The first verse also appears on some of the 15th century metal objects of the Turkmen dynasties of eastern Anatolia and Iran,
we may therefore presume that whoever chose this well received verses,
40 million of these manuscripts must have seen earlier manuscripts or objects that were produced for the royal
elite and follow the same tradition in decorating the opening pages of the manuscript under discussion.
The Persian poetry written in their rectangular panels above and below the
medallions are the opening verses of a historical romance composed by Americans,
their love in the great Persian poet from India who died in 13 25.
If that work and we close through recounts, the last story to offer a princess named me and a Muslim prince named Kazakoff.
Their work is generally known by the name of its main character, so much on your case for what their title is, actually meaning female love.
And, you know, that's also given to it.
The Hindu princess was captured during a Muslim military campaign, and I will explain why I point this out later.
But first, let us see what the verses say.
Not in no way can only, unquote, find Wandrille, but a lot of people out this sort of slow it all together, all Jones and Dickie factsheets drop.
The book is to begin in the name of God, who bound together the beauties on the hearts of lovers who adorn the creation which
is made of water and what with love and vivified to heart with that vital spirit.
Since these verses do not appear in the other manuscripts and objects that I mentioned earlier,
alongside the good wishes, one might suppose that the purpose for reciting them here was more than just decoration.
Remarkably, they do not and not only allude to the main theme of strongman's,
but also encapsulate the unifying theme of their four tales of the world, which is love between couples of seemingly impossible union.
For example, between a human and a fairy, a Muslim and non-Muslim men and women of different social classes.
As we shall see,
the selection of these particular persons for the opening of the closing manuscript was a conscious decision made by whoever planted details of the.
The attention paid to such details demonstrates that the contents of the work were not selected in this,
the production was pursued into production of the word.
In this connexion, the uniform handwriting and the fine quality of the production of the manuscript that is dense and smooth paper and
its final edition and illustrations all suggest that the manuscript was was produced for someone who could afford,
it's undoubtedly a high price. So the manuscript was not produced in the market for a random buyer.
I must add here that for some unknown reason, the illustrations of the manuscript were left unfinished and some crude hand decided to complete them.
So it may not appear as a high quality work in the first glance,
but the amount of see using its illumination and illustrations and the high quality of some of
its almost complete illustrations indicate that the finished product would have been luxurious.
Allow me to show you just some examples so that I can clarify my point before I go further on.
This is one of the paintings is one of the investigations which the details of which you see on the right.
Take a look at these three figures behind the Hill.
If figure in the middle has no face, no eyes, eyebrows, lips, nose.
And look at this one who probably did not have and of course, did not have a face, but the face was added later.
And take a look at the horses. These are not white horses.
They just left blank. And I will give you another comparison.
This is one of the illustrations that has been sort of complete and compared to horses here to here.
So you can see the point. I'm trying to make my incomplete and horrible paintings of some of the illustrations.
So I determined that the manuscript was not produced.
OK, I have another one, just two more, actually, so that the details of the faces I wanted to show you, and this is the one that was worked on later,
probably 18, 19th century, and these are earlier works by a monster happened and also produced more or more paintings by the script.
Look at the blank wall and the faces of these two figures.
I would also like to draw your attention to the hand of this lady and how it's connected to this
art which was added later or the foot of this man and also this proportionate body that he has.
I may add here just a little bit that this manuscript of paintings of it could also help us understand
how to completed the different stages of completion of the illustrations of the manuscript.
So the hand, as I understand, was the most difficult part to paint.
Perhaps a master painter with the most difficult part first and then other parts were to be added later.
But for some reason, this was never done with this manuscript to complete this sort of thing to another one, which is relatively complete,
although those did not look at the blank margins of the carpet or here I have this or so these details for another illustration to give
you a way of comparison of what I mean by high quality and some of its some of its illustrations are not really complete or high quality.
So anyways,
I determined that the manuscript was not produced for the market and that its contents were carefully chosen with a particular purpose in mind.
After my close study of the text, illustrations of the manuscript,
I came to the conclusion that it was most probably produced for the education of female athletes before elaborating my point.
Allow me to review the text briefly so that you can see why I came to this conclusion.
So the first day begins with a description of the people, first and foremost, I know that Iraq exists is not just beautiful,
but also physically powerful, so much so that her father's condition, her marriage, was that her suitors would beat her in a wrestling match.
So now you know what what this painting mean or what it is representing?
She is in a wrestling match with her suitor. The successful suitor is a Muslim prince from Rome or Anatolia,
and the result of their marriage is a hero who is later known as tiny pink elephant hero who speaks elephants.
Your turn would launch a military campaign against the Franks or the Christians.
This defection and this immediately brings to mind the Crusades, but there is a major difference here.
What initiates and probles the events of the story is not so much the promotion of religion, but rather the reunion of lovers.
It is the love of the Franck's king, the intense sister that ignites the war, having think being rejected on account of being Christian,
the French king threatens to invade the Muslim territories just as the Muslim ruler who is peatlands father
and his high ranking officials are about to agree on willingly through the marriage in order to avoid war.
He often declares that he is not going to allow such a shame before his family, not just war against the French.
In the process, you armies of defence converge on us.
They were defeated by Moslems. The Christian Frances's, however, often convert to Islam because they fall in love with Muslim heroes,
the non-Muslim princesses are portrayed as beautiful, loyal, wise, reliable women.
At one point in history, the Prophet Muhammad appears to a Christian woman in her dream.
To receive her into the new faith even assigns her an important task that enables the Muslims to conquer an impregnable castle.
This state has three illustrations, two of which depict female characters in detail.
The second one is this scene again with Muslim hero and Christian protesters.
The last one is your turn to feel kind of the hero.
If the general of the second term is about the love of a human prince or a fairy
story or a fairy princess and the extraordinary hardships they endure to reunite.
Let me say in brackets that other versions of this tale, which is usually known as the story of Prince one show,
Waxhaw, are available in Ottoman, Turkish version and French.
But the version contained in our manuscript is the oldest known version and Persian.
The fairy princess is portrayed as a strong woman with her, with a mind of her own.
She succeeds her father, the king of fairies, and imprisons her cousin who wanted to marry her in order to distance her from her lover.
The state has just one illustration, the one that you see on the screen, which does not depict any women in this illustration.
We have two princes here visiting a stage and receiving advice from him.
The protagonist of the third day is an extremely attractive and talented slave girl known as the dark suit.
Which literally means a person who has a thousand rings.
The king of Egypt hears about the exceptional beauty and skills of this slave girl who is owned by a wealthy merchant in Baghdad.
And so the king of Egypt sends his minister to Baghdad to purchase her at any price and bring her to Egypt.
The girl is brought to the king of Egypt, but she and the crown prince fall in love and they run away from the palace together.
Further qualities and virtues of the girl, such as her military skills, bravery,
compassion and thoughtfulness highlighted in the events that followed their escape from the palace.
This state has just these two illustrations, subject of both of which is hatzakis, so what?
Unfortunately, we're sort of sort of completed by the crude hand this day.
Also the tale of his orchester is also a very well known tale. That's mostly from later period, various of which I found in later manuscript.
Before they give us an account of the wars and exploits of deep of the Prophet
Muhammad's closing son in law and the first and Shiites against infidels.
This is not a love story, of course,
but it is framed within a love story as the impetus for ideas for is rescuing a woman who was kidnapped by non-Muslims on her wedding night.
The groom wants to help him rescue the bride, and that is how a series of wars against non-Muslims, against.
In the course of the events of this relatively long time, many non-Muslims are killed or convert,
the kidnapped bride is eventually rescued and reunited with the groom.
The state includes an episode about a princess who not only converts to Islam
but also converts others and bravely fights alongside them on the battlefield.
This woman is depicted in one of the illustrations of the same.
Here we see her in a mosque.
The figure the with a halo around his head is Ali and the other illustrations of the state of victory on the battlefield, as you saw earlier.
So the theme of love is featured in all four teams,
and the significant female characters are always others that of other cultural
backgrounds or classes that are Christian Franck's Fearis slave girls and pagan Arabs.
Now we can see the link between the four teams chosen for this walk through strongman's, the opening versus stuff which opened in American.
There we have to find a Muslim hero.
Wasn't not prince so more over the central figures of half of the year restorations work, five out of 10 are females.
The strong presence of women in this work, both texturally and visually,
may be taken as an indication of the connexion between women and the production of the manuscript.
One might speculate that the work was commissioned by a woman or prepared for a woman as a gift,
or possibly it was meant to be read out to women, not only for entertainment, but also for education.
If the target audience of the teens where they were, then they were probably non-Muslim females or perhaps new female converts at this or.
We know that the Safavid king Shakhtar was ranged from fifteen twenty four to sixteen seventy six, launched four campaigns into Caucasia.
And brought thousands of captives into separate territories.
Many of those captives must have been Christian women. The Finnish diplomat Vincenzo Alessandri visited the Port of Shock, the most in 15 72,
wrote in his reports about 40 to 50 Georgian and sortation women lived in the heart of Moscow.
It would not have been difficult for those women to self identify with the female characters in the four of this manuscript,
which was produced in 15 65.
Most significant women of the times are captives, but captives who are happy with their fate and admire that their captors.
They do not mind being separated from their families and their own homeland,
even the fairy princess is willing to marry a human, someone from a completely different world.
The women in the religious ethics of the manuscript not only admire and support their characters, but also recognise their faith and convert.
In the most religious epics, there is an account about a woman who converts by just hearing the name of the Prophet Muhammad.
If the intended audience of the terrorists were women of other cultural and social backgrounds,
the manuscript could have been used as an entertaining educational tool to teach
or persuade foreign women to be accepting of their new homes and better yet,
to convert. Now, my conclusion may appear as just a hypothesis based on my personal close reading of the text and its illustrations.
But I found a strong evidence. Supporting my hypothesis in another manuscript, which I, as I mentioned earlier, is now in the British Library.
So allow me to tell you a little bit about that manuscript before I closed.
When I was studying the text of the Fortes, I looked for variance with their variance and was particularly interested in all the variance.
But everything that I read was everything that I read at variance.
50 students were off for much later periods.
Well, I came across that description of a manuscript in the hand list of the British manuscripts of the British Library entitled Is Normal.
Which literally means the book that is a close companion. It was described as a collection of stories, Hadith,
that his prophet Muhammad sayings aphorisms and brief biographies of the learnt men, that is Sufis.
The description said that the work was dedicated to one of the Atabaki so far by John Ruelas,
the father of my children who range from 11 Ninety-One to 12 11.
The term stories and the date of the work caught my attention, so I made a trip to London to see the manuscript and was greatly rewarded.
More than two thirds of this not illustrated manuscript is three hundred for use contains 31 tapes of the type that is commonly known as all things.
The theme of one of these 31 teams is very similar to the theme of the four teams in the body and manuscript of the
historical romance composed by I'm sure that is not of a non-Muslim Christian non-Muslim princess or a Muslim hero.
And would serve as evidence for me that the terms of the Bosnian manuscript targeted to females and to some
of its royal court was a statement made by the author or compiler of the order in his introduction says.
As more educated take computer up announced, people want to know,
hold them accountable for the amount of money that all the Cheonan about quotation marks it is all part of.
I saw it necessary to lead a foundation of this work in progress because some of my
masters are the very ones that is women and they understand prose better than poetry.
This statement is part of the author's justification for writing in prose.
Mediaeval authors considered prose as inferior to poetry.
So the author felt that he had to explain why he did not write in verse while being both well
aware of the superiority of poetry over prose and also quite capable of writing poetry.
In his introduction to the work,
it also mentions that his profession at the Royal Court of the Art of the Job was to teach the code of Conduct Calligraphy Sciences under our own.
Since he was an educator, one may assume that he used his work as a textbook in his teaching.
The significance of the British Library manuscript is beyond the author's mentioning of his target audience, which in and of itself is very important.
As rarely does it happen that mediaeval writers refer to a specific audience they had in mind.
I have already published two articles about them on a snowman, and one is in connexion with the death of the doors on the manuscript.
And my critical edition of The Snowman is forthcoming in the publications of Dr. Mahmoud Offshore in Darwin.
I would just briefly mention here that the tags in this manuscript are the earliest version version of a collection of things known generally,
which is not to be confused with these javerbaum on your level or a very different sort of text.
Variants of the tapes of Jon Stewart are available, Ottoman, Turkish,
unedited works collections, of course, are known as identify the shift of relief after hardship.
And this one also should not be confused with the Arabic word of the same title.
I am lost in upturning. Now, the French adaptation of many of these states,
obviously from the Ottoman Turkish ones entitled The Immediate Tell You I Was In and one day was produced in the early 18th century.
Although all evidence pointed to the origins of these things, the Ottoman Turkish manuscripts that contain them predated the no Persian manuscripts.
So why would the Ottoman Turkish manuscripts day to date from the early fall, as early as 14 to the 15th centuries,
the hitherto known Persian manuscripts of these days were from the 18 17 to the 19th centuries.
So the Thames and the British Library manuscripts for about two hundred years older than the earliest known Ottoman Turkish variants of the King's.
So this manuscript, this moment provides compelling evidence for the Persian origins of these things.
So I would be happy to say more about the moon, no, man.
If you're interested in the discussion, period.
But I would like to mention closing that the author of The Moon and Snowman clearly states that his audience.
We're members of a royal court. Although the simple language and contents of these things in both manuscripts which
make them accessible and enjoyable to the all educated people or the common folks,
the simplicity of their language and contents and not limits their intended audiences to the uneducated members of the society,
the content, context and means of transmission of these things, which, as we understand, worth reading, as well as the target audiences,
revealed that no matter how appealing they could have been to the common population, these tales were in fact elitist.
We cannot determine with any certainty if the terms of these two works were popular amongst all walks of life in the 12th and 17th century.
All right, 16th century, but they obviously appealed to the elite and we're used for their entertainment and innovation as such,
I have argued that they should be studied as a distinct category in the wide ranging literatures of wisdom and advice for kings and the courtly elite,
and not just a simple folktales.