KHĀQĀNI, Afdal al-Din-al-Shirwani al-.

£5,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Tuhfat al-'Iraqayn ("The Gift of the Two Iraqs"). An attractive Safavid-era manuscript, the only mathnawi - or long narrative poem in couplet form - of the celebrated 12th-century CE Persian poet Khāqāni. It is presented here in an appealing binding, the onlays, probably once gilded but the gilt now oxidised, almost certainly made of paper, a distinct Safavid practice at this time. "Instead of cutting filigree designs out of leather, craftsmen began to use paper, which was both cheaper and easier to handle, pasting it onto painted paper or sometimes silk or other material" (Encyclopaedia Iranica: Bookbinding, article 1). A native of Azerbaijan, Khāqāni is described by the distinguished Czech orientalist Jan Rypka as "more closely attached to his native land... than any other poet... He was not a craftsman in the art of poetry but possessed the true and genuine qualities peculiar to a poet's nature, one of the greatest geniuses in the literature of Persia". His Tuhfat al-'Iraqayn is considered "one of the most eminent examples of sophisticated use of ornament in the whole of classical Persian literature" (Encyclopaedia Iranica). Most of its verses are addressed to the Sun, whom Khaqani asks to undertake the hajj, as "he claims to be unable to perform [this] himself because he cannot leave Servan. Kāqāni... asks him to deliver two long panegyrics of the Ka'ba and the Prophet at Mecca and Medina. In the last part of the poem there is a shift of addressee from the Sun to Jamāl-al

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