Arts of the Islamic World & India including Fine Rugs and Carpets
Arts of the Islamic World & India including Fine Rugs and Carpets
A large Ottoman illuminated genealogical scroll (silsilname), period of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent (r.1520-66), Turkey, circa 1560
Auction Closed
March 30, 12:47 PM GMT
Estimate
35,000 - 45,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Arabic and Ottoman manuscript on paper, written in naskh and nasta’liq, with the names within polychrome and gold roundels, illuminated headpiece incorporating a calligraphic composition in square Kufic, backed on green silk
563cm.
Previously acquired in Turkey by a French Naval officer between 1916 and 1917.
Silsilename are genealogies which were popular in Ottoman Turkey, listing rulers and religious leaders and their line of descent. This particular example is a silsilename of the Prophets and the ruling dynasties, including the Oghuz tribes, the ancient kings of Iran, the family of the Prophet and the Imams, the ‘Abbasids, the Ghaznavids, the Khwarazmshahs, the Chingizids, the Mamluks, the Timurids and the Ottomans, ending with Süleyman the Magnificent. It also lists the grand viziers of the Ottoman Empire, ending with Rüstem Pasha (d.1561).
The square Kufic calligraphic panel surmounting the scroll recalls those found on a scroll now in the Topkapi Palace Museum Library, inv. no.MS H.1956, illustrated in G. Necipoğlu, The Topkapi scroll – Geometry and ornament in Islamic Architecture, Santa Monica, 1995, images 68 and 69 p.265.