Abu'l Qasim Firdausi (d.1025 AD), Shahnameh, copied by Nizam al-Din, North India, Kashmir, dated 3 Jumada II 1244 AH/10 December 1828 AD

Faridun Jah, Muntazim ul-Mulk, Mohsin ud-Daula, Nawab Sayyid Mansur 'Ali Khan Bahadur, Nusrat Jang, Nawab Nazim of Bengal,

Bihar and Orissa (1830-84, r.1838-80)

Faridun Jah's first wife, Shams-e Jahan Baygum Sahiba (1830-1905)

'Mir Ghazanfar 'Ali, a member of the family of the Nizam of Hyderabad (late 19th century)

Muhammad Abdullah Khatkhatoy (unidentified), of Hyderabad, Deccan, by repute

Poohoomull Bros., dealers ('shippers of certain Artistic Antiquities'), Bombay, from March 1930, by repute

Ex-private collection, USA, acquired circa 1930

Bonhams, London, 8 April 2014, lot 21

This luxurious copy of the Shahnameh is one of the finest manuscripts produced in Kashmir in the first half of the nineteenth century. It bears both a date and signature and with its lavish illumination and extensive illustrations, it is unsurprising that it entered the illustrious collection of Faridun Jah, last nawab of Bengal.

The vast illustrative cycle of the manuscript, comprising 110 miniatures can be compared with a contemporaneous Kashmiri shahnameh sold in these rooms, 24 April 1979, lot 293, and another in the New York Public Library comprising 66 miniatures (Schmitz 1992, pp.158-163, cat. no.III.15). The illuminated frontispiece displays a particularly fine iteration of the blue and gold illumination typical of Kashmiri Qur’an production, reprised in the illuminated headpieces within the text. A richly illuminated Kashmir Qur’an dated 1831 was sold in these rooms, 23 October 2019, lot 62.

A seal impression indicates that it was formerly in the library of Faridun Jah, the last Nawab of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. He was born in 1830 in Murshidabad and succeeded his father in 1838. His reign was tumultuous, and the Nawab was accused as being complicit in the murder of two servants in 1854, while his inclination towards pleasure and extravagance led him to fall deeply in debt, forcing him liquidate his family’s collection. He left Murshidabad for England in 1869, eventually abdicating his titles to his eldest son. A Qur’an from the same collection was sold at Bonhams, London, 2 October 2012, lot 30.