TWO ILLUMINATED CALLIGRAPHIC ALBUM PAGES, PERSIA, 16TH-17TH CENTURY, ONE POSSIBLY FROM THE "READ" ALBUM

One of these album pages (A) may be from the same album now known as the Read Album, of which the majority is in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. The size and border decoration is very close to several of the calligraphic folios in that group, and the inclusion here of a panel of marbled paper and a background to the text panel of an unusual type of thread-like stippled marbling ties in with the fact that several of the pages from the Read Album in the Morgan Library also feature marbled panels and borders. The text on this folio consists of fragments from Arabic manuscripts and Persian verses, mostly from Sa'di's Bustan.

The second folio (B) is of a smaller size with nasta'liq calligraphy in several hands in black ink, mounted with borders of gold-decorated cream paper. The text consists of a section from the Munajat of Imam Ali with Persian translations copied by Abd al-Rahim ibn Muhammad Qasim al-Katib. Although this calligrapher is recorded as a scribe of the 16th century (see Bayani 1346, p. 392), nothing else is known about him.