Folio from the Gulshan Album

Folio from the Gulshan Album, compiled for Mughal emperor Jahangir (1569-1627). This is a single page from a renowned album (or muraqqa`) prepared for the Mughal emperor Jahangir, and completed under his son Shah Jahan. Each page offers a selection of images on one side, and Persian calligraphy on the other, all gathered together to show a diverse art collection. Throughout the album, the Mughal Indian borders follow a consistent presentation, binding the full sequence together: the arranged groups of images sit in borders decorated with gold foliage and brightly-coloured birds, while the calligraphy pages are mounted in borders with a golden landscape full of lightly-painted people and animals. Here, three tinted drawings from Iran are placed together with a Nuremberg engraving and a line of Persian calligraphy quoting the poet Sa`di. The tinted drawing of a seated figure is signed by Reza `Abbasi (d. 1635), of Isfahan. On the verso, illuminated panels of Persian verses quote the poet Imad al-Faqih (d. 1371): the surrounding Mughal border shows a prince resting during a hunt with his hawk, dog and horse, while an attendant cooks fowl over a fire, and another prince listening to a scholar holding a book. Most of the Gulshan Album is in the Gulistan Palace Library in Tehran (90 folios), and the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin (25 folios). Many more single folios are also dispersed in international collections. The facing page for this folio (In 47.12, recto) is in the Gulistan Palace: that folio presents a closely-related group of drawings and a second Nuremberg print by Solis (Jupiter, from the same series on the planets), and the Persian text follows the same Sa`di quotation as used in the Chester Beatty folio. Folio, ink, colours and gold on paper, mounted on card, three tinted drawings from Iran (one by Rezā `Abbāsi, d. 1635, Isfahan), a German print labelled Luna (the moon) by Virgil Solis (d. 1562, Nuremberg), and Persian text in nasta`liq script quoting Sa`di's Gulistan (Book 7), all five grouped on recto, and Persian poetry in nasta`liq quoting `Imād al-Dīn Faqīh (d. 1371), with surrounding illumination on verso, album page with decorated borders of painted birds on gold foliate scrolls (on recto) and tinted drawings of hunters in gold landscape (on verso), folio from the Gulshan Album compiled for Mughal emperor Jahangir, India, c. 1600-1618.