Manuscripts, Painting and Calligraphy in the Timurid World

In the Timurid era, ca. 1370–1507, rulers and princes supported court libraries in Central Asia and Iran, especially at Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan and Herat in western Afghanistan. Their books brought together Persian poetry, religious writing, calligraphy and painting, with patrons, scribes and artists shaping how a text appeared on the page. This production belonged to the wider Timurid court culture.

Baysunghur’s Shahnameh

Timurid prince Baysunghur, son of Shah Rukh, commissioned a copy of Ferdowsi’s Persian epic Shahnameh in 1426; it was completed in Herat in January 1430. The scribe Ja’far Baysunghuri is named in a colophon, a note at the end of a manuscript that records its production. He compared several earlier copies while preparing the text, updating its language and adding verses. The finished version contained more than 58,000 lines.

The manuscript’s pages coordinated reading and decoration. Each was ruled into six columns and thirty-one lines, with gold lines marking the writing area. Floral ornament framed headings, and a double-page frontispiece displayed the patron’s name and title. A note by Ja’far names Mulla Ali and Amir Khalil as painters and Mawlana Qiyam al-Din as binder. Painters filled scenes with vivid colors, animals and imagined palaces, giving readers visual settings for Ferdowsi’s stories.

Painters and calligraphers at Herat

Late-fifteenth-century Herat had a workshop led by Mirak Naqqash, who directed production first for the patron Mir Ali-Shir and then for Timurid ruler Husayn Bayqara (1470–1506). Painter Behzad worked under Mirak alongside calligraphers and other makers. In a Bustan of Sa’di made for the ruler’s library, the text colophon dates the manuscript to 1488, and two paintings bear dates from 1488–1489. The calligrapher Sultan Ali’s text panels fit into the page designs, while the paintings balance figures and architectural settings so that the scenes remain spatially clear. The figures also convey distinct moods and personalities. The integration of text and image suggests that Behzad and Sultan Ali coordinated their work, although Behzad’s contribution to every attributed painting is not certain.

The 1427 Qur’an, Islam’s sacred scripture, was copied by prince Ibrahim Sultan. Its calligraphic text used ink on paper, while opaque watercolor and gold added color and ornament; a leather binding protected the pages.

A manuscript’s later layers

Attar, a Persian poet from Nishapur who lived around 1142–1220, wrote Mantiq al-Tayr (Language of the Birds). Calligrapher Sultan Ali Mashhadi copied the poem in a Herat manuscript dated 1486. Around 1600, Safavid ruler Shah Abbas I ordered the volume refurbished before giving it to his family shrine. Craftspeople remounted its pages in gold-flecked borders, added a new frontispiece and four paintings in blank spaces, and supplied a gilded binding. The work was complete when the manuscript reached the shrine in 1609.