Yusuf va Zulaykha

Bound in a leather cover with interlaced gold indentations, the 1569 copy of Yusuf va Zulaykha was arrayed among the many fine books that were produced in the kitābkhāna (workshop) in Samarqand, the capital of the Shaybānid Uzbegs in the sixteenth century. Although not much is known about the specific workings of the kitābkhāna, given that the Shaybānids considered themselves the true heirs of the Timurids – great patrons of the art of the book – and the perceived competitions with Safavid artistic productions in Herat and Shiraz, the Samarqand workshop would have been organized similarly. The making of the manuscript of Yusuf va Zulaykha was therefore collaborative, consisting of various chains of transmission – pictorial, literary, material, and historical – despite the identification of Sultan Muhammad ibn Dust Muhammad Samarqandi as the single copier. The book, with its constellation of five full-page illustrations, meticulous nasta’liq in black, red, and gold, and a vividly illuminated unwan (preface), projects into the milieu of the Samarqand workshop, artists, calligraphers, and designers gathered varied materials, techniques, and models.  

The manuscript reenacts Jami’s rendering of this romance tale, which first appeared in the Qu’ran and was reworked by the Sufi poet Jami in the late fifteenth century as part of his Haft Awrang (“Seven Thrones”) in masnavi format, through the interpenetration of texts and illustrations. Situated within broader visual, material, and thematic relationalities, the five full-page illustrations are notable for their emphasis on the female protagonist, Zulaykha, including her gathering, banquet, and garden visualized in an entrancing palimpsest of lines, colors,  patterns, and spatial constructs. This shift in interpretive loci from events associated with Yusuf,  who is the eleventh son of Jacob and a key prophet in the Qu’ran, to those featuring Zulayka resonates with Jami’s version of the story steeped in Sufi dimensions of love, and the dialectics of appearance and reality, existence and non-existence, hidden and revealed.

Sources:

Bahari, E, “The Sixteenth Century School of Bukhara Painting and the Arts of the Book.” In Society and Culture in Early Modern Middle East: Studies on Iran in the Safavid Period, edited by Andrew J. Newman (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2003): 251-263.

Balafrej, Lamia. The Making of the Artist in Late Timurid Painting. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019.

Roxburgh, David J. “Persian Drawing, c. 1400-1450: Materials and Creative Procedures.” Muqarnas 19 (2002): 44-77.