A Sixteenth-Century Manuscript From Transoxiana

Цитата:
The Ta'rikh-i guzida-i Nusratnäma has been described in two catalogues:that of Rieu in 1888 for the textual content, and that of Titley in 1981 for the illustrations.' Rieu notes that the work has a preamble on the Turkish races and then treats the period from Chingiz Khan to Shaybani Khan, often referred to in the text by his original name of Shah Bakht, the Uzbek who displaced the Timurids and established himself in Transoxiana in the early sixteenth century. Material is derived from the Ta'rikh-ijahängushäy of Juvayni, from an abridgment made for Ulugh Beg of the Jamic al-Tawarikh of Rashid al-Din, and from records in
Uighur. The work was composed by a dependent of Shaybani, and it seems clear that it must have been designed to celebrate the taking of Samarqand and to associate that achievement with the past glories of the Mongols.
The manuscript appears to be a unique survival, but is nevertheless considered to be a copy of an original composed for Shaybani. This conclusion derives from two peculiarities. Firstly, a space has been left in the preface where the name of the author should have appeared.
Secondly, there is a slight problem regarding the dating of the composition, since the author claims to have completed his work in Jumada I 908 (November 1502) — the year after the Uzbek capture of Samarqand — but events are included wrhich extend to slightly beyond 17 Dhu'lqacda 909 (2 May 1504) .2 It is thus clear that in this volume a history and its continuation were copied together.
A possible but uncertain date of transcription is supplied at the end, where an unfinished folio and an additional folio bear the year 970 (1562—63) .3 The contents patently point to an origin in Transoxiana, and the manuscript might thus have been produced in Bukhara under Abdallah II (1556-83) or in Samarqand under Khusrau Sultan (1560-67). The script is a bold nastacliq on paper flecked with gold. The illumination consists of a double sarlauh at the beginning, drawn in a good sixteenth-century style.

Поделитесь записью в соцсетях с помощью кнопок: