St Petersburg International Conference of Afghan Studies

St Petersburg International Conference of Afghan Studies 93 Panel Six. Religions, Material Culture and Archaeology of Afghanistan... Khamseh copied in Herat in 1445, completed in Tabriz for Uzun-Ḥasan, with the binding inscribed with the attribution to the treasury of the Ottoman Sultan Bāyazīd (ruled 1481–1512) and others 1 . The inscription of Ms. Dorn 343 differs from these examples in a number of ways. Firstly, in style as it does not begin with the dry and widely spread formula “for the treasury of…”, being instead a quatrain praising not only the owner of the book but also the art of the binder. It also mentions the name of the binder, which was not a very common practice at that time 2 . Finally, this inscription provides us with the exact year of the binding’s production. We do not know how long the book remained in the hands of the descendants of the Mihrabanid line of Maliks, but eventually it ended up in the Safavid Royal Library and in 1017 AH (1608–1609 CE) was donated by Shah ‘Abbas I to the Ardabil shrine. Binding of the Nizami’s Khamseh , Ms. Dorn 343 (National Library of Russia), dated 893 AH (1487–1488 CE) 1 See: Aslanapa O . The Art of Bookbinding // The Arts of the Book in Central Asia. Ed. Basil Gray. UNESCO, 1979. P. 62–63, ill. 34–35, 39–41, 45–46, 47–48, 4. 2 The earliest cases date back to the early 14 th century, see: Afshar, Iraj. Inscriptions on the covers of Islamic manuscripts: and introductory study // Manuscripta Orientalia. Vol. 10, no. 1. March, 2004. P. 47; one of the earliest stamps with the binder’s name is mentioned in: Bahrami M. Iranian Art: Treasures from the Imperial Collections and Museums. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1949. P. 24, fig. 27.