AN ILLUSTRATED FOLIO FROM A DISPERSED MANUSCRIPT OF FIRDAUSI'S SHAHNAMEH: RUSTAM SAVES BIZHAN FROM A WELL
CENTRAL ASIA, BOKHARA, CIRCA 1670
Estimate: £3,000 - £4,000
Auction: 11 June 2025 from 10:00 BST
Description
ink, gouache heightened with gold on paper, the image set within four columns of nasta'liq text with gold rules, two lines above, and three lines below, the text continues on the reverse, within a mountainous landscape under a moonlit and starlit sky, Rustam is wearing his characteristic tiger-striped tunic and holding the lid of a well up high in his left hand with a look of triumph, three soldiers are peering in the well, whilst three figures on the right are standing, one holding a spear looking impressed, mounted, glazed and framed
Dimensions
25.1cm x 16.8cm
Provenance
Formerly, the collection of Octave Homberg (French, 1876-1941).
Sale, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, Collection de Octave Homberg, 3-5 June, 1931, no. 103.
Footnote
The Shahnameh or Persian Book of Kings, an epic that recounts both the mystical and real history of Persia, contains many tales of the hero Rustam in which he meets a series of challenges and fights a variety of demons and monsters. Here he is taking the lid off a well to save Bizhan, who has been imprisoned within it. Bizhan was the son of Giv, a friend of Rustam’s. The princess Manizha had drugged her lover Bizhan and taken him to her palace. This annoyed her father Afrasyab, who put Bizhan in chains and threw him into a well. Later Manizha was able to lead Rustam and his followers to the pit. The extremely heavy rock covering the well had belonged to the div (demon) Akvan whom Rustam had killed. Rustam mustered the strength to lift it and hurl it back to China and the lovers were reunited.
This miniature comes from a manuscript that was offered for sale in Paris in 1931 as part of the collection of Octave Homberg, the pages of which have since been dispersed. This manuscript was described in the catalogue as a collection of “Epopees du Cycle Saitanais”. The manuscript took the very rare form of extracts from the main epics of Persian history, the Shahnameh of Firdausi; the Faramouznameh; the Bahman Nameh and the Nariman Nameh. The manuscript originally had a frontispiece decorated with eighty-five paintings, the main ones signed by Mohammed Moqim and Mohammad Salim. Some other miniatures from this manuscript reappeared at auctions in Paris and London. Other paintings by the two principal artists of this Homberg manuscript can be seen in a manuscript illustrating the lyric poems of Nizami, copied and illuminated in Bokhara in 1670 for the library of Sultan ‘Abd-al Aziz Bahadur Khan (1945-1680), now in the collection of the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin.
For a recent study on the painters of Bokhara, see Y. Porter, Farhad the Painter, in connection with the painting workshops of Bukhara in the time of ‘Abd-al Aziz Khan, 1645-1680, in The Timurid Heritage: Iran, Central Asia, India, XVth-XVIIth centuries, Cahier d’Asie Central, IFEAC, 3-4, 1977, p. 267.