The Family and Professionnal Circle of Two Samarkand Calligraphers of Persian Belles-Lettres Around the Year 1600 (ca. 1010 AH)

Maria Szuppe (1)

1 Mondes Iranien et Indien - UMR 7528

The analysis of several extant manuscripts of the Šāhnāma epics and other Persian literary texts produced by two calligraphers, Ādīna Kātib Buḫārī (fl. 1595-1605) and Mīr Māh b. Mīr ʿArab (fl. 1592-1613), seemingly in the same atelier in Samarkand, opens up an interesting field of investigation. The latter copyist was a close relation of a renowned court calligrapher and Chief Librarian of the Shaybanid rulers of Bukhara, Mīr Ḥusayn “Kulangī” (fl. ca. 1535-85) who himself also specialized in the copy of Persian classical literature; more then 30 manuscripts by his hand are extant today. This article presents the available information on professional biographies of these calligraphers (introducing some hithertho unknown manuscripts), but also it touches upon the issues of the actual organization and practices of skill transmission and book production, some aspects of professional specialization, and the importance of transmission reference figure in professional and family contexts of the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Central Asia.

Mots clés: Central asia; Persian manuscripts; Skill transfer; Families and ligneages; Book History

Domaines: Histoire

Maria Szuppe. The Family and Professionnal Circle of Two Samarkand Calligraphers of Persian Belles-Lettres Around the Year 1600 (ca. 1010 AH). Eurasian studies, 2017, Channels of Transmission: Family and Professional Lineages in the Early Modern Middle East, 15/2, pp.320-349. ⟨10.1163/24685623-12340041⟩. ⟨halshs-01798663⟩