English: A TURKOMAN PRISONER AND NASTA'LIQ CALLIGRAPHY

SAFAVID IRAN, SECOND HALF 16TH CENTURY

Recto with a tinted drawing of a heavily armed Turkoman prisoner, his arm fettered to his neck, a bowl in his free hand, some staining, laid down between gold and polychrome rules on pink margins with gold floral illumination, verso with a folio from a manuscript on gold-sprinkled paper, with 15ll. of neat black nasta’liq in two columns, floral gold intercolumnar rule laid down between blue border with gilt highlights on similar pink margins Painting 9 x 5 5/8in. (23 x 14.5cm.); calligraphy 6 ¾ x 3 ¼in. (17.1 x 8.2cm.); folio 11 3/8 x 6 7/8in. (29 x 17.6cm.)

The Turkoman prisoner was a popular subject in Persian painting from the mid-16th century. In her discussion on a version in the Louvre, attributed to Shaykh Muhammad, Sophie Markariou writes that more than twenty pages illustrating the figure are known (Sophie Markariou (ed.), Islamic Art at the Musée du Louvre, Paris, 2012, p.443). The Uzbek amir or warlord, depicted as heavily armed as the prisoner but without his arm fettered to his neck, was another take on the subject, an example of which sold in these Rooms, 5 October 2010, lot 207. Three others are attributed to Shaykh Muhammad and are dated between 1557 and 1564. Shaykh Muhammad encountered Uzbek princes on several occasions whilst in the retinue of Ibrahim Mirza and it is therefore perhaps unsurprising that he chose them as subjects in his work (Abolala Soudavar, Art of the Persian Courts, New York, 1992, p.236, no.91).

Two versions of Turkoman prisoners, each wearing the traditional yoke restraint, are published in Sarre and Martin, 1985, Tafel 25. Both are dated circa 1500. A third is published in E. Borshchevskii (ed.), Persian Miniatures of XIV-XVII Centuries, Moscow, 1968, no.69. Another is in the Bodleian (B.W. Robinson, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Persian Paintings in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, 1958, p.143, no.1036, pl.XXI). Until half-way through this century, this group of paintings were dated to the late 15th century and in a number of cases attributed to Bihzad. Robinson and Stchoukine did much to correct this, and Robinson dates the Bodleian example circa 1575. A similar date seems likely for our prisoner. Perhaps the closest to ours is a painting exhibited in the Reza Abbasi Cultural and Arts Centre (Catalogue of the Reza Abbasi Cultural and Arts Centre, exhibition catalogue, Iran, 1977). Attributed to 16th century Khorassan, that prisoner shares with ours the similar stocky physique and defined rounded cheeks.