Die Freunde Gottes. Die Bilderwelt Only a Year Later, in 1499, He Became Minister of Finance, Einer Persischen Luxushandschrift Des 16
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439 bOEkbESPREkingen — iranica 440 The Berlin manuscript of the Majālis al-῾uššāq so meticu- lously described by Almut von Gladiss comes from the col- lection of the first director of the Museum, Friedrich Sarre (1865-1945). The manuscript is written in nasta῾līq, has 234 folios and contains 77 miniatures; the particulars of this copy and its relation to the other sixteenth-century Majālis al-῾uššāq-manuscripts are treated in some detail by Almut von Gladiss. By way of introducing the Berlin manuscript, she provides the reader with a concise introduction on the author Kamāl al-Dīn Ḥusayn Gāzurgāhī and his cultural background and on the specific nature of the Majālis al-῾uššāq. Kamāl al-Dīn Ḥusayn Gāzurgāhī was born in 1469-70 in Khurasan, where he studied theology and law. After some years of travelling he entered the service of the Timurids in Herat, at that time their capital and a lively cultural centre. In 1498 Kamāl al-Dīn Ḥusayn Gāzurgāhī was appointed by the Timurid ruler Sulṭān Ḥusayn (r. 1469-1506) as the guard- ian of the shrine of the Sufi saint Shaykh ῾Abdallāh Anṣāri (d. 1089) in Gāzurgāh, situated to the north-east of Herat. This shrine was restored during the heyday of the Timurids by the Timurs son and successor Shāhrukh in 1425-6 and had become an important place of pilgrimage. Being selected the guardian of this shrine, which included its financial manage- IRANIcA ment, indicates Kamāl al-Dīn Ḥusayn Gāzurgāhī’s increasing influence at the Timurid court in Herat. GLADISS, A. von – Die Freunde Gottes. Die Bilderwelt Only a year later, in 1499, he became minister of finance, einer persischen Luxushandschrift des 16. Jahrhunderts. and as such he comes up in the Bāburnāma, the famous (Veröffentlichungen des Museums für Islamische Kunst, memoirs of the first Mughal emperor Bābur (1483-1530). Band IV). Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Bābur obviously disliked both Kamāl al-Dīn Ḥusayn Berlin, 2005. (27 cm, 88 + 32 colour plates). ISBN Gāzurgāhī and his Majālis al-῾uššāq. In his description he 388609-523-1. especially criticizes the disrespectful manner in which Kamāl al-Dīn Ḥusayn Gāzurgāhī ascribes carnal love to prophets Kamāl al-Dīn Ḥusayn Gāzurgāhī is the author of a Persian and saints. Bābur also clarifies the matter of the authorship work entitled the Majālis al-῾uššāq (‘the assemblies of the of the ῾ , which is in some sources ascribed lovers’), a collection of more than 70 short biographies of Majālis al- uššāq to the Timurid ruler Sulṭān Ḥusayn. This is in fact due to the mystics, poets and rulers. The prose text is interspersed with fond dedication of Kamāl al-Dīn Ḥusayn Gāzurgāhī to his examples of poetry. Fourteen illustrated manuscripts of this patron Sulṭān Ḥusayn, who is also known as a poet.2) work dating from the 16th century are known, indicating the Though Almut von Gladiss in Die Freunde Gottes treats popularity of the work in this period (for a list of these manu- text and context of the Majālis al-῾uššāq in some detail in the scripts, see pp. 44-45, Die Freunde Gottes). first two chapters, her focus lies on the paintings themselves. A particularly fine manuscript of the Majālis al-῾uššāq (I. She comments on the majority of the 77 miniatures in great 1986.229) is kept in the Museum für Islamische Kunst in detail in the third chapter ‘Die Handschrift der Sammlung Berlin. This manuscript is the main subject of Die Freunde F. Sarre’ and in the following chapter ‘Bildthemen und Bild- Gottes. Die Bilderwelt einer persischen Luxushandschrift des motive der Sufibiographien’, providing, alongside her art 16. Jahrhunderts, by the art historian and curator Almut von historical evaluation, invaluable background information on Gladiss, who sadly passed away in 2013. the figures depicted and described in the text. In the fourth Her in-depth study, illustrated by a great number of high- chapter she has selected a number of themes and motifs, such quality reproductions, is a valuable source of information, as the visit to the Kaaba, the hammam, and life and trade in not only on this particular manuscript and its illustrations, the bazaar, for further discussion. She elaborates on these but also on the pictorial and textual tradition of the Majālis themes and motifs within the wider framework of the genre al-῾uššāq, its author Kamāl al-Dīn Ḥusayn Gāzurgāhī and his of Sufi biographies. position at the Timurid court, as well as the artistic produc- The fifth chapter, ‘Der Stil der Malerei’ deals with the tion of the era. style of painting of the Berlin Majālis al-῾uššāq in relation to As has been noted by Charles Melville, the text of the the tradition of manuscript painting of the 16th century. In the ῾ text has not received much attention, Majālis al- uššāq sixth and last chapter, ‘Das Schirazer Kunstmilieu und die despite the fact that it was apparently a popular text across a large geographical area in the 16th century and beyond, espe- cially in Iran and in the Ottoman Empire.1) literature in Persian: Tradition and dimensions. Volume of papers pre- sented in the seminar, vol. II, Aligarh, 2014, pp. 28-37; p. 28. 2) The Baburnama. Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor, trans- lated, edited and annotated by Wheeler M. Thackston, Washington D.C., 1996; reprinted with an introduction by Salman Rushdie, New York, 2002. 1) Charles Melville, ‘Gazurgahi’s Majalis al-Ushshaq, Amir Khusrau The passage on Kamāl al-Dīn Ḥusayn Gāzurgāhī can be found on pp. 210- Dihlavi and Fakhr al-Din Iraqi’, in Azarmi Dukht Safavi (ed.), Sufistic 211 of this edition (176 & 176b). 441 bIblIOThECA ORIENTAlIS lxxIV N° 3-4, mei-augustus 2017 442 Handschrift Sarre’, Almut von Gladiss discusses the eminent After his studies, he went with his family for ten months to position of the city of Shiraz in Timurid artistic production Iraqi Kurdistan, where he collected material for his doctoral and argues for Shiraz as the place of production of the Berlin dissertation. Majālis al-῾uššāq manuscript. The final part of The volume dedicated to him appeared four years after his the book (‘Bildtafeln’, pp. 57-88) consists of 30 full-page sudden death in 2001. It contains 25 contributions on Old, colour reproductions (2 additional colour reproductions can Middle and New Iranian, in English, German and French. be found in the beginning), to which reference was made in Naturally, many of these include anecdotes on MacKenzie the preceding chapters. and have a relation with some aspect of his work. The con- This fine publication is a superb description and well- tributions are ordered alphabetically, not thematically, which informed evaluation of a rich manuscript copy of the Majālis has resulted in a lively sequence of very different topics. al-῾uššāq, in the context of sixteenth-century (Sufi) manu- Not all of these focus primarily on linguistics; the contri- script production in all its facets. bution by Almuth Degener (pp. 27-34) on date palms for example deals with religious and environmental issues. She Leiden University, Gabrielle VAN DEN BERG discusses the Iranian attitude towards trees on the basis of the 24 April 2017 modern popular novel Nakhl (The Date Palm) in comparison with the Draxt-i Asūrīg (The Babylonian Tree), a well- known Parthian work written in Pahlavi script, describing the * contest between a goat and a palm tree in verse. * * Philip Kreyenbroek (pp. 69-80), MacKenzie’s successor in Göttingen, goes into the particulars of Yezidi communities WEBER, D. (ed.) — Languages of Iran: Past and Present. in East and West and their sacred literature. His contribution Iranian Studies in memoriam David Neil MacKenzie. deals with issues of orality, textuality and the perception of (Iranica, 8). Verlag Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, religion. 2005. (24,5 cm, XXVIII, 307). ISBN 3-447-05299-6. (pp. 35-42) also focuses on religion in ISSN 0944-1271. € 74,-. Philippe Gignoux a short piece in which he analyses certain categories of This memorial volume is dedicated to the remarkable names in the Sasanian period (3rd-7th century AD), during Iranologist David Neil MacKenzie, who died not long after which time, as Gignoux points out, Iran can be qualified as his 75th birthday in 2001. The contributions in the volume a ‘crossroads of religions’, where Mazdeism (Zoroastrian- reflect the various interests of MacKenzie, who is probably ism), Manichaeism, Christianity, Judaism and certain other most widely known amongst Iranologists for his Concise beliefs vied for prominence. In his contribution, he discusses Pahlavi Dictionary and for his work on Kurdish linguistics. and compares categories of proper names, namely theophoric However, as the list of publications in this volume demon- names, names of fires, names related to terms of cult and strates, MacKenzie worked on a variety of Middle Iranian belief and names that have no religious connotation. languages, notably Pahlavi, Khwarezmian and Sogdian, Maria Macuch, also the editor of the series Iranica in and New Iranian languages, specifically Kurdish, Pashto and which this collection is the eighth volume, discusses the legal Judeo-Persian. terminology in the Sasanian epoch in a contribution entitled The volume opens with a short memento by Desmond ‘Language and Law: Linguistic Peculiarities in Sasanian Durkin-Meisterernst, one of MacKenzie’s students in Göt- Jurisprudence’ (pp. 95-108). She treats in detail some exam- tingen, where he spent the latter part of his career until his ples from a chapter of the Sasanian Lawbook Hazār retirement in 1994.1) From 1955-1975 MacKenzie worked Dādestān, to shed light on the ‘linguistic criteria jurists at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London as developed in order to circumvent the ambiguity of language’ a lecturer (and later reader) in Kurdish and in Iranian Studies.