Persian Painting : The Arts of the Book and Portraiture
The Arts of the Book and Portraiture
Adel T. Adamova
This is a luxuriously illustrated catalogue of more than forty extraordinary Persian miniature paintings, illuminated manuscripts and elaborately decorated bookbindings in The al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait, dating from the period before the Mongol invasions (11th–12th centuries CE) to the early 20th century. It includes rare examples from the pre-Mongol invasion period; fine illuminations of Qur’an manuscripts; Mu’nis al-Ahrar , an important early fourteenth-century anthology by Muhammad ibn Badr al-Din al-Jajarmi; material from dispersed manuscripts of Firdawsi’s Shah-nameh ; two previously unpublished copies of Qazwini’s ‘Aja’ib al-Makhluqat ; three copies of Nizami’s Khamsah; Sa‘di’s Golestan; and Jami’s Yusuf and Zulaykha and Subhat al-Abrar – as well as paintings from dispersed Safavid and post-Safavid albums, and seventeenth- century bookbindings and oil paintings from the Zand and Qajar periods.