Treasures of Herat: Two Timurid Khamsah of Nizami Manuscripts

with Barbara Brend

The Khamsah of Nizami is one of the most frequently illustrated works of Persian literature and the fifteenth century, under Timurid rule can be considered the most classic period of this art form. Two manuscripts, though copied some decades apart, were illustrated either in, or largely in, the 1490s under the rule of Sultan Husayn. The names of several artists of the period are known, amongst them the most celebrated being Bihzad. The illustrations in these manuscripts have attracted a number of attributions, the dates of their various inscriptions being unknown. It has seemed interesting to compare pictures with a view to establishing the style of individual artists, both as a means of focusing attention on the pictures and in tribute to the painters themselves.

About the speaker:

Barbara Brend read French at Cambridge, and later took an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. in Islamic Art and Archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.  Has lectured for the British Museum and British Library. As an independent scholar, her principal research is into form and meaning in Persian and Mughal manuscript illustration. Books: Islamic Art (1991); The Emperor Akbar’s Khamsa of Niẓāmī (1995); Perspectives on Persian Painting:  illustrations to Amir Khusrau’s Khamsah (2003); Muhammad Juki’s Shahnamah of Firdausi (2010); with Charles Melville, Epic of the Persian Kings (2010), catalogue of an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Treasures of Herat: Two Timurid Khamsah of Nizami Manuscripts (2022).

Illustration: Iskandar, in the likeness of Ḥusayn Bāyqarā, visiting the wise man in a cave. British Library, Or. 6810, folio 273a.