Maysantarek

Nizami Ganjavi, a 12th century Persian poet, is well-known for his work ‘Khamsa’ or in Persian ‘Panj Ganj’. The Khamsa is in five long narrative poems, ‘Makhzan Al-asrar’, ‘Khosrow o Shirin’, ‘Leyli o Majnun’, ‘Eskander-Nâmeh’, ‘Haft Peykar’. The Khamsah of Nizami H.762 took almost half-century to be completed and several patrons took hand in these paintings, it started in the Timurid Abu’l Qasim Babur, and then in hand of Pir Budaq, and it has been completed for Ya’qub in Tabriz in 886/1481 and its illustrations extended to 1505. It has a lot of significant and unusual features like the white kerchief with drooping point in the women’s costume, and in Aq Quyunlu period the white kerchief was worn by attendants, and it is not accepted until the Safavid period at a royal level. The aspect of style of H.762 is mainly influenced by the extensive use of the pen and a detailed treatment that shows the detailed trees, rocks and rocky horizons. This was unusual between manuscripts in that era, but it was common in Album drawings. Miniatures figures are introduced into many paintings in H.762. This manuscript appears to be a work of artists who would have escaped from Baghdad after the fall of Pir Budaq to the court of his father-in-law, the Shirvanshah Khalil Allah. H.762 illustrations are examples of Turkman and early Safavid visual styles.