Goobi - ba0d8 - 2020-08-02 18:16:45+0000
Goobi
Shapur and Hormozd Shapur, text folio from the Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi.
This folio was produced in late nineteenth-century Tehran, for a major restoration project on a damaged earlier manuscript, known as the Great Mongol Shahnama (and also as the Demotte Shahnama). Dateable to the era of late Mongol Ilkhanid rule in Iran (the 1330s), this dramatic manuscript is today dispersed across many international collections, including eleven folios in the Chester Beatty collection. Heavily worn, the manuscript was extensively restored in late nineteenth-century Tehran, probably at the Gulistan Palace library: the folios were trimmed, remargined, and renumbered, with missing text supplemented on new paper folios (such as this folio Per 111.11), written out by Tehran calligraphers following fourteenth-century style. At the start of the twentieth century, the manuscript was sold to a Paris-based dealer, Georges Demotte (d. 1923), reportedly with another dealer Dikran Kelekian as his buying-partner. From 1913, Demotte began selling single illustrated folios cut from the manuscript to art collectors and museums, in Europe and the USA: his main focus was on the paintings, for which there was strong market interest. The original fourteenth-century text folios rarely survived this process, and the nineteenth-century folios (such as Per 111.11) rarely survived without being pasted over with paintings irrelevant to the text. By the time Beatty bought his eleven folios (CBL Per 111.1 to Per 111.11, seven with paintings) from Demotte's firm in October 1937, he would have known the so-called "Demotte Shahnama" well: its fifty-eight (known) illustrated folios had been widely exhibited and published.
Folio, ink and gold on paper, Persian text in naskh script, with caption (the reign of Shapur was [number missing] years, on recto), and a second caption (the reign of Hormozd Shapur was one year and two months, on verso), from a dispersed Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi, produced as part of restoration of a c. 1330 manuscript, Tehran, Iran, c. 1880-1900.
Shapur and Hormozd Shapur, text folio from the Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi
Per 111.11
Per_111_11
Persian collection
Persian (language)
Approved Category 2017/Manuscript/Codex/Folio / Bi-Folio (Codex)
Approved Place 2018/Middle East/Iran/Tehran
Folio / Bi-Folio (Codex)
Naskh script
Thuluth script
1880-1900
1880
1900
true
Approved Material 2018/Organic/Plant (material)/Plant fibre/Paper (material)
Approved Material 2018/Materials/Coating material/Ink (material)
Approved Material 2018/Inorganic/Metal (material)/Non-ferrous metal/Gold
Paper (material)
Ink (material)
Gold
GOOD
592 mm x 400 mm (height x width)
cll
Unknown
Unknown
Tehran
Chester Beatty Library
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mailto:photographicservices@cbl.ie
https://viewer.cbl.ie/viewer/ppnresolver?id=Per_111_11
https://viewer.cbl.ie/viewer/ppnresolver?id=Per_111_11