MANSUR IBN MUHAMMAD IBN AHMAD IBN YUSUF IBN FAQIR ILYAS (FL. FIRST HALF 15TH CENTURY), AL-TASHRIH BI'L-TASVIR (ANATOMY WITH ILLUSTRATIONS), ALSO KNOWN AS TASHRIH-I MANSURI, PERSIA, LATE TIMURID/EARLY SAFAVID, LATE 15TH/EARLY 16TH CENTURY |

Persian manuscript on paper, 38 leaves plus 1 fly-leaf, 19 lines to the page written in nasta’liq in black ink, headings and important words written in red, five illustrations in multicoloured ink, the first and last page replaced, in brown stamped binding with a central oval medallion decorated with floral scrolls, with flap

In overall good condition, the margins have been cropped, numerous annotations in different hands on the margins, some rubbing and stains throughout, minor restorations to the paper, the binding restored, the first and last leaf later replacement, as viewed.
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Mansur ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Yusuf ibn Faqir Ilyas was an anatomist and physician active between 1396 and 1423 who dedicated this medical treatise to Ziya’ al-Din Amirzadah Pir Muhammad Bahadur Khan, likely to be with Timur’s grandson, Pir Muhammad ibn ‘Umar Shaykh, governor of Fars between 1394 and 1409. The Al-tashrih bi'l-tasvir is divided into six chapters, each dedicated to a specific area of the body. The chapters are listed as follows:

Introduction (ff.1-6)
Chapter 1 (ff.6-14): on the bones of the body, with a drawing of the skeleton on f.14a
Chapter 2 (ff.14-20): on nerves, with a drawing of the nervous system on f.20a
Chapter 3 (ff.20-22): on muscles, with a drawing of the muscular system on f.22a
Chapter 4 (ff.22-27): on veins, with a drawing of the venous system on f. 27b
Chapter 5 (ff.28-30): on arteries, with a drawing of the arterial system on f.30a
Chapter 6 (ff.30-38): on compound organs, such as the heart and brain, and also the foetus

Many copies of the Tashrih-i mansuri have been attributed to the fifteenth century, but very few are dated with certainty. A copy in the Khalili Collection is dated to the mid-fifteenth century (Acc. No. Mss 387, illustrated in Raby 1997, pp.18-22); a similar date is attributed to the copy in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin; a copy in the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, is dated 984 AH/1488 AD, and a further fifteenth-century copy was sold in these rooms 19 April 1983, lot 189.

Comparing the style of the diagrams, the present copy appears to resemble the late fifteenth/early sixteenth examples. A comparable copy dated to the sixteenth century is now in the Islamic Arts Museum, Malaysia (Acc. No. IAMM 2016.11.12, published in De Guise 2018 pp.84-87); another attributed to mid-seventeenth century is in the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (Acc. No. AKM 525, published in Kana’an 2014, p.97). An eighteenth century version copied in India sold in these rooms, 8 October 2008, lot 45.