Persian Painting: The Arts of the Book and Portraiture - Tapa dura

Contains hitherto unknown and unavailable Persian art works. This book will go a long way to help laymen and experts alike to understand the Islamic and Persian arts in a historical context. It should be required reading for those interested in Islamic and Persian art. Adel Adamova and Manijeh Bayani, eminent scholars specializing in Persian painting and epigraphy, respectively, catalogue the al-Sabah Collection of Persian miniature painting and bookbinding from complementary perspectives.

This is a luxuriously illustrated catalogue of more than forty extraordinary Persian miniature paintings, illuminated manuscripts and elaborately decorated bookbindings in The al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait, dating from the period before the Mongol invasions (11th–12th centuries CE) to the early 20th century. It includes rare examples from the pre-Mongol invasion period; fine illuminations of Qur’an manuscripts; Mu’nis al-Ahrar , an important early fourteenth-century anthology by Muhammad ibn Badr al-Din al-Jajarmi; material from dispersed manuscripts of Firdawsi’s Shah-nameh ; two previously unpublished copies of Qazwini’s ‘Aja’ib al-Makhluqat ; three copies of Nizami’s Khamsah; Sa‘di’s Golestan; and Jami’s Yusuf and Zulaykha and Subhat al-Abrar – as well as paintings from dispersed Safavid and post-Safavid albums, and seventeenth- century bookbindings and oil paintings from the Zand and Qajar periods.