This is the first scholarly book devoted to this illuminated manuscript, and explores its technical and codicological, but most of all, its artistic qualities. The mid-sixteenth-century manuscript copied by Ruzbihan Muhammad al-Tabʿi al Shirazi, housed in the Chester Beatty Library of Dublin (Is 558), is a sizeable Quran (427 × 290 mm) with 445 folios executed with extraordinary fineness. In 2013, the manuscript was removed from its nineteenth-century binding and all folios underwent extensive conservation, which provided an abundance of fresh data on the paper and the pigments used in the illumination. The conservation project led to an extraordinary exhibition held from 15 April–28 August 2016, and curated by the author. The book that evolved from the exhibition is indeed structured like a published exhibition. By means of an attentive layout, which relates the text with numerous photographs, magnified when relevant, Wright walks the reader through the leaves of the manuscript.
The book is structured into five main chapters and nine appendices. In the introduction, Wright defines the main problematics and arguments of the exhibition and the book, and familiarizes the reader with the manuscript's fundamental calligraphic and decorative qualities to be detailed in the following parts. She introduces the scribe, whose name duplicates that of a contemporary scribe/illuminator. Ruzbihan or his namesake are known through Safavid sources and through signatures in several other manuscripts, including other copies of the Quran.
The second chapter focuses on the paper and writing of the manuscript. Wright explores Ruzbihan's writing style to understand how he employed his own way of writing different scripts while strictly following the traditional canons and page layout of Shirazi Qurans of the sixteenth century. Her meticulous analysis – including of the methods he employed to rectify his errors, which are inadmissible in copying the word of God – demonstrates how a scribe develops an individual style, something which seems unclear to our modern eyes, as opposed to a contemporary connoisseur's recognizing gaze.
The third part aims to familiarize the reader with the tradition and rules of reciting the Quran, and how these rules were visually implemented by the scribe and illuminators. Informative especially for a non-specialist audience, this chapter also helps the reader understand how an imperative and convoluted tradition developed around Quranic practices, which imposes a set of strict conventions and rules on artists to copy and decorate the sacred text.
The fourth and fifth chapters, structured as three sub-sections, are devoted to the decoration of this extraordinary Quran. Detailed descriptions of the motifs and their varying compositions at the beginning, middle and end of the manuscript, as well as in the side panels, in the headings, and those in the margins marking the specific rules of recitation, allow the reader to follow the diligence of the artists. She explores the manipulations of the “same” motifs and compositions to create novel and differing visual effects. In these chapters, the author points out the varying styles of different illuminators, cites the manuscripts with illuminations closely related to the Ruzbihan Quran when pertinent, but she – I think deliberately – neither classifies the motifs and compositions and assigns them to certain illuminators, nor focuses on comparisons with other contemporary manuscripts as might be expected as part of a historicized approach. Rather, she tells the story of every single motif created by the artists, varying modes of painting and analysing them for their own sake, and in doing so, she somehow recreates the perception of a sixteenth-century bibliophile, admiring the painstaking work of the illuminators decorating the sublime text.
One of the intriguing aspects of the manuscript explored here is the change in aesthetic taste of decoration (and writing) at the very end of the Quran, from a clear, classic style to a dense one combining assorted colours and motifs. Her careful observations reveal how the new taste was meant to be spread on previous folios through refurbishing some motifs. Even though the reasons for this preference will most likely remain unknown, Wright's remarks show that the visual effect of the decoration of a fine manuscript emanates from a calculated conceptualization rather than being designed to fill the allocated parts beautifully.
The contribution of Kristine Rose Beer in part 5 evaluates the scientific examination of the pigments and gold employed in the manuscript. Her expert assessments are valuable for specialist and non-specialist readers alike to understand the production process of the materials used in Islamic art, which, as she explains, differs from European methods. Undoubtedly, the results of the material analysis provided as a table in Appendix 6 will contribute greatly to the work of professionals in the field of Islamic manuscript conservation.
In her concluding remarks, Wright compares the manuscript with other Qurans (one of which is signed by Ruzbihan) to understand its place in the tradition of Shirazi illuminated books. Supported by the dates of closely related manuscripts, she posits that the production of the Ruzbihan Quran started around 1550. Through detailed comparisons with manuscripts with Shirazi provenance and dated or attributed to the second half of the sixteenth century, she argues that the decorative programme of the Quran directly related to Shirazi pictorial conventions and some specific forms of the floral motifs used in its decoration continued to be included in later manuscripts’ illumination, such as the manuscripts decorated by a certain illuminator Muhammad ibn Taj al-Din Haidar, who signed manuscripts dated between the 1560s and 1590s.
Elaine Wright's monograph confronts the obstacles to analysing and interpreting a single illuminated manuscript. Providing insightful analyses to help the reader develop an empathy towards the artists who made this extraordinary Quran, its writing and decoration, Wright's scholarship stands up well to charges of being excessively descriptive. The eyes of specialist and non-specialist readers alike, guided by the text and visual documentation, explore the means and inventions of artists who created an individual style within the limits of a quite established and strictly imposing visual tradition.
