ARTISTIC INNOVATION AT THE LIBRARY OF PRINCE BAYSUNGHUR
Dr Shiva Mihan
Convenor: Professor Anna Contadini
ReSIA
(Research Seminar in Islamic Art)
Thursday 8 May 2025, 18:00h
Khalili Lecture Theatre – SOAS, University of London
Timurid prince Baysunghur (1397–1433) established his royal library and atelier (kitabkhana) in Herat circa 1420. In the brief but prolific period before his untimely death, the library produced over thirty manuscripts and advanced the arts of the book. Under his patronage, significant advancements were made in calligraphy, illumination, textual editing, mise-en-page, and album making (muraqqaʿ).
This paper introduces the structure and ambitions of Baysunghur’s kitabkhana, offering a reassessment of the oft-cited project report, the Arzadasht, and drawing on extant manuscripts and primary sources. Special attention is given to the Jung-i Marathi (Book of Elegies), a hitherto overlooked source that sheds light on the intellectual and aesthetic ambitions of the Baysunghur’s atelier.
Dr Shiva Mihan is Curator of Islamic Collections (Persianate World) at the British Museum. She received her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2018, where her dissertation Timurid Manuscript Production: The Scholarship and Aesthetics of Prince Baysunghur’s Royal Library (1420–1435) was awarded the Leigh Douglas Memorial Prize by the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies in 2019. She has held curatorial and academic positions at leading institutions, including a postdoctoral fellowship as Curator of Islamic Art at the Harvard Art Museums (2018–2020) and a subsequent fellowship in Islamic Art at the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. She has also taught Islamic art as a visiting professor at Washington University in St Louis. Mihan’s research centres on the history of Islamic manuscript production, artistic patronage, and the transmission of texts in the Persianate world. She is currently also the founder and President of the Persian Manuscripts Association. Her forthcoming monograph, Patronage and Manuscript Production in Timurid Herat, offers a new reading of manuscript culture under Prince Baysunghur. Bridging art history and intellectual history, the book explores the material and textual richness of manuscripts produced in Herat during the early 15th century, underscoring the often-overlooked significance of their literary content.
A REVIEW OF EARLY MANUSCRIPTS OF NASR ALLAH MUNSHI’S KALILA VA DIMNA
This presentation will focus on early manuscripts of the Persian version of Kalīla and Dimna—a book of (mostly) animal fables that is a classic of premodern world literature—by Naṣrallāh Munshī, written at the Ghaznavid court ca. 540/1145–46. Naṣrallāh’s text is considered one of the foundational works of classical Persian prose literature.
Among its noteworthy characteristics is that a few very early manuscript copies have survived, the oldest of which is dated 551/1156. In fact, although this Persian Kalīla and Dimna is based on the Arabic version attributed to Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ (ca. 750 CE), the very earliest extant copies of the Arabic are more recent, from the seventh/thirteenth century! The talk will discuss the curious phenomenon of the well-preserved codicology of Naṣrallāh Munshī’s work, showing example pages from three or four early manuscripts (as time permits).
Unsurprisingly, these Persian manuscripts from the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth century have interesting features of their own, in terms of orthography, calligraphic style, text layout, and more.
Dr Theodore Beers
Theodore Beers (PhD, University of Chicago, 2020) is a historian of classical Persian literature, with particular interests in premodern literary exchange between Persian and Arabic, and in the development of digital corpora and tools to strengthen the study of these traditions. He is currently based at Drexel University in Philadelphia as a research software engineer, and he also maintains an affiliation with the Kalīla and Dimna Project at the Freie Universität Berlin.
17 April 2025, 5 – 7 pm BST
Online Lecture on Zoom
PERSIAN MANUSCRIPT CATALOGUES IN CAMBRIDGE, A DOOR INTO DIGITAL HUMANITIES
The talk explores the use of computational methods for manuscript descriptions. It begins with an overview of Cambridge’s Persian manuscript collection in the context of UK collections. The speaker discusses how enhancing access to these collections motivated the use of computational techniques on descriptive data. A case study using data from the FIHRIST Union Catalogue of Islamicate Manuscripts is presented. The talk concludes by emphasising the significance of open access, standards, and data provenance in such research.
Yasmin Faghihi
Yasmin Faghihi is Head of the Near and Middle Eastern Department at Cambridge University Library. She is the editor of FIHRIST, the online union catalogue for manuscripts from the Islamicate world and chairs the Board of Directors. She has been leading on using and promoting standardised practices in text encoding for manuscript description and teaching to foster awareness about compatible approaches to data creation and use. Her work with the Middle Eastern and African manuscript collections has evolved around Islamic codicology including paper-making and distribution and the history of collections and collecting. Her Digital Humanities interests focus on the exchange of knowledge both as a historical and contemporary phenomenon, and how DH methodologies can impact the recognition of cultural diversity and offer new approaches to analysing cross-disciplinary frameworks.
13 March 2025, 5 – 7 pm
Online Lecture on Zoom
STUDIES ON PERSIAN PAPER IN MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS OF THE MALEK NATIONAL LIBRARY
This lecture, which will be delivered in Persian, focuses on the study of Persian paper used in the manuscript collections of the Malek National Library.
The talk will be presented by Noshad Rokni, head of the Library Department at the Malek National Library and Museum since 2024.
Noshad Rokni
Noshad Rokni is a distinguished expert in manuscript preservation, codicology, and Persian paper studies. Currently serving as the Head of the Library Department at the Malek National Library and Museum since 2024, he previously led the Cultural Information and Technical Preservation Department at the same institution for over a decade. Holding a Master’s degree in Restoration and Iranian Studies with a specialisation in Codicology, Rokni has dedicated his career to the study and preservation of historical manuscripts. As an instructor, he has contributed to multiple courses on codicology, paper studies, museology, and manuscript preservation. He has written over twenty publications on manuscripts and restoration.
20 February 2025, 5 – 7 pm GMT
Online Talk on Zoom
The talk will be delivered in Persian.
COBALT AND GOLD: RE-EXAMINING LAJVARDINA WARES AND LINKS TO PERSIAN MANUSCRIPT PAINTING
This lecture draws on some of the key themes explored in my recently completed monograph on lajvardina wares. There are significantly more tiles than vessels, and they have been subject to far less restoration an overpainting in most cases and will be the main focus. Striking as the tiles are, they are almost all decontextualised. By looking at some of the motifs seen not only on other tiles, but also on lajvardina vessels and other types of glazed ceramics, as well as other media, it can be possible to get a clearer idea of how lajvardina wares fit into the wider Ilkhanid aesthetic. In addition, a series of manuscript paintings will be examined in order to understand how the tiles may have appeared in their original architectural context, and to investigate if the ceramics and manuscripts can be used to better understand both media.
Dr Richard Piran McClary
Dr Richard Piran McClary is a Senior Lecturer in Islamic Art and Architecture at the University of York. He received his doctorate from the University of Edinburgh in 2015. He has lectured extensively on a range of subjects related to medieval Islamic art and architecture, and has conducted fieldwork in India, Iran, Turkey, Central Asia and across the Middle East. He has published three monographs with EUP; Rum Seljuq Architecture 1170-1220. The Patronage of Sultans (2017) and Medieval Monuments of Central Asia. Qarakhanid Architecture of the 11th and 12th Centuries (2020), and Mina’i Ware: A Reassessment and Comprehensive Study of Iranian Polychrome Overglaze Wares through Sherds (2024). He has published articles in numerous journals, including: Muqarnas, Iran, and the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. He has served as a trustee and the Research Director for the British Institute of Persian Studies, and is managing editor of the Journal of Islamic Art and Architecture.
23 January 2025, 5 – 7 pm GMT
SWLT, Paul Webley Building, SOAS University of London
In-person and Online
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