Author Description

The collection of Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan contains some of the world's finest examples of painting and calligraphy and is perhaps the most important private Muslim collection of Islamic art. This volume, richly illustrated with 24 color plates and 101 black-and-white photographs, provides a brief history of the collection and offers a generous selection of paintings, manuscripts, calligraphies, bindings, and drawings that spans the geographic range of Islamic art from North Africa to India. Detailed discussions of each illustration introduce readers to the major patrons and artists in the development of the arts of the precious book. Anthony Welch and Stuart Cary Welch have selected the most magnificent pages from the prince's collection for this volume. Included are portraits of the great Mughal rulers of India, paintings from the pages of a sixteenth-century Shahnamah (Book of Kings) of Iran, and stunning examples of calligraphy. Among the Muslim manuscripts represented are Qur̕ans from North Africa, Ottoman Turkey, Iran, and India; historical works such as the Ottoman illustrated manuscript of the Tuhfet ul-Leta̕if; philosophical treatises such as the Ethics of Nasir al-Din Tusi of India; and literary works such as the late-sixteenth-century Anvar-i Suhayli, commissioned and probably illustrated by the leading Safavid Iranian painter Sadiqi Bek. -- Inside jacket flap.