English: A CALLIGRAPHIC PANEL DEDICATED TO SHAH TAHMASP SAFAVI

SIGNED MUHAMMAD MU'MIN, IRAN, 16TH CENTURY

Arabic manuscriptnt on paper, with 5ll. of elegant black riqa' in clouds reserved on gold ground, a single line of black nasta'liq above and below on gold ground, signed in the second last line, applied gold and polychrome illuminated panels in each corner, set within gold and polychrome rules on wide blue margins gold-outlined floral illumination, mounted, glazed and framed Calligraphy 7¼ x 4 7/8in. (18.5 x 12.3cm.); mount 16 x 13 1/8in. (40.6 x 33.4cm.)

Muhammad Mu'min ibn Khawaja Shihab al-Din 'Abdullah Murvarid (d.1541) was the son of the Timurid vizier Shihab al-Din 'Abdullah ibn Shams al-Din Muhammad Murvarid Kirmani (d.1516) who composed one of the two earliest album prefaces known, for an album for Mir 'Ali Shir Nava'i (David Roxburgh, Prefacing the Image, Leiden, 2001, p.41). Following the fall of Herat to the Safavids, Muhammad Mu'min was transferred to the court of Shah Tahmasp (r.1524-76) where he served both him and his brother Prince Sam Mirza. He is known to have worked on several calligraphic exercises with the ruler. The Shah Tahmasp Album in the Istanbul Library for instance includes a nasta'liq quatrain signed by Tahmasp as well as five signed calligraphies by Muhammad Mu'min (ff.1422, 16a, 26b,56a, 61a and 61b). For a qit'a by Muhammad Mu'min in the Topkapi Palace Museum (H.2156, f.7a), see David Roxburgh, The Persian Album 1400-1600. From Dispersal to Collection, Yale, 2005, fig.118, p.221.

As noted by Sam Mirza in his Tuhfa-i Sami, Muhammad Mu'min became his private tutor and calligraphy teacher. He writes of his master, 'he is the Yaqut and Sayrafi of his age ... If I narrate only a fraction of his many excellences, it would cover a whole volume He was at my company at Herat and Shiraz and held the office of Sadr. Subsequently he began to live with Shah Tahmap, but later on went away to India where he died in 948' (Dastgirdi, Tuhfa-yi Sami, p.66, quoted in David Roxburgh, op.cit., 2001, p.45).

The first line of Mu'min's taliq' reads, 'as witnessed by the writing in the holy and most honorable hand of the benefactor, patron of the sufi-zadehs'. The sufi-zadehs are the descendants of Amir Ghazi Shahilu, the younger brother of the Aqqoyunlu Sultan Hassan and Yaqub Beg, who supported Shah Isma'il Safavi and joined his forces after the defeat of the Aqqoyunlu state. The "patron of the sufi-zadehs thus probably refers of the reigning Safavid ruler, Shah Tahmasp. It is known that Shah Tahmasp was a calligrapher, and that he worked with Mu'min. It is therefore very tempting to suggest that the nasta'liq between which Mu'min's calligraphy is laid down, is in the hand of Shah Tahmasp.