Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
The fifteenth century was the golden age of miniature painting. This is strikingly illustrated by the survival both of written sources describing the development of the art and of the miniatures themselves.
Various Soviet Scholars including A. A. Semenov, G. A. Pugachenkova, V. G. Dolinskaya, O. I. Galerkina, N. V. Diakonova, O. F. Akimushkin, and A. A. Ivanov, as well as the present writer, have all worked on the problem of the development of the Central Asian miniature. Thanks to their studies, the outline of the Samarqand miniature, something unknown not long ago, has gradually begun to emerge. The issue of the Samarqand miniature has not yet been fully resolved and many problems still remain. These include the difficulties of access to the miniatures themselves which are kept in various libraries, museums, and private collections around the world and the fact that the vast majority have not been published.
Editor's note: It is widely thought that the miniature discussed in this article is one-half of a double-page painting -- see B. W. Robinson, et. al., Islamic Painting and the Arts of the Book III, 76, (London: Faber and Faber, 1976) -- the other half being in the Keir Collection. I would like to thank Dr. Glenn Lowry of the Freer Gallery for this information.
1 G. A. Pugachenkova, “Portret Ulugbeka”, Narody Azii i Afriki, 1969, No. 6, pp. 97-103.
2 Ivanov, A. A., “Po povodu stat'i G. A. Pugachenkovoi,” Iskusstvo, 1980, II, pp. 69–70.Google Scholar
3 Gray, B., An album of miniatures and illuminations from the Baysonghori manuscript of the Shahnameh of Firdowsi preserved in the Imperial Library, Tehran, 1971.Google Scholar
4 G. A. Pugachenkova, “Portret Ulugbeka,” pp. 97, 99.
5 Similar dress is found in the Shirazi “Anthology of 1410-1411 made for the Timurid Iskander Sultan” in The Arts of the Book in Central Asia. The 14th to the 16th Centuries, Paris-London: UNESCO, 1979, p.133Google Scholar, ill. 74.
6 Bartold, V. V., Sochineniia, Moscow, 1964, v.2, pt. 2, p. 120.Google Scholar