Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Plates bright and vivid. Nice older book in good condition. Softcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> Before the arrival of the Mughals painting was already flourishing in India as manu- script illustration and as wall-painting. Broad divisions can be made between the known types according to religion; some of the earliest Indian pictures are associated with the Buddhist or Jain faiths but the two most relevant religions for the purposes of this exhibition are the Muslim and the Hindu. Pre-Mughal Indian painting under Muslim patronage is known as ‘Sultanate Paint- ing’ in reference to the Delhi Sultanate whose administration began during the thirteenth century and was finally eclipsed by the Mughals in the sixteenth century. This does not mean that all Sultanate painting came exclusively from Delhi or even the north of India for there were Muslim communities further south in the Deccan and in the west of India which was accessible to the Arab sea-trade routes. No.1 is a leaf from a manuscript of the Iskandarnama by the Persian author Nizami which is of the north Indian type. The lay-out of the text is very Persian in manner being quite closely derived from a Persian text which could have found its way into India in the hands of a Persian-speaking Muslim. The date of the manuscript now dispersed is accepted as 2.1500. Although the style of illustration can be detected as Indian on account of certain features of costume architecture and the pigments used the general appearance of the miniatures is not so far removed from the Persian tradition of the preceding two centuries. (SP)