Writing and Illustrating History: Rashid al-Din’s Jami` al-tawarikh
By Sheila Blair
(Abstract)
The Jami` al-tavarikh, or Compendium of Chronicles, the multi-volume world history composed by the Ilkhanid vizier Rashid al-Din in the early years of the fourteenth century, provides an excellent example for studying the production and transmission of medieval mansucripts, because we have so much information about it. Along with the author’s instructions specifying how manuscripts should be produced, we have three copies of the text made under his supervision. They show that already during his lifetime, changes were made in format and illustration. The text continued to be copied for several centuries in Iran and India, and these illustrated manuscripts show us how later artists adapted the original prototypes. In addition, then, to theoretical models, studying the Jami` al-tawarikh allows us to understand the practical problems in the transmission of oriental manuscripts.
The author, the Ilkhanid vizier, left his instructions for transcibing manuscripts in the endowment deed for his pious foundation outside of Tabriz, the Rab`-i Rashidi. The text of his endowment, dated 1 Rabi* I 709/9 August 1309, provided for the annual transcription of a 30-volume manuscript of the Koran and a collection of hadith. The vizier was evidently pleased with his work, for three and a half years later, at the beginning of Dhu’l Hijja 713/18 March 1314, he added an addendum to the endowment providing for the annual transcription of two copies (one in Arabic, the other in Persian) of five of his own works. These include theological works and a treatise on agriculture, but the most famous is his world history, Jami‘ al-tawarikh.
We can match the instructions in Rashid al-Din’s endowment deed to actual manuscripts, including copies of the Koran dated 713/1313 (Istanbul, TKS, EH 248) and 715/1315 (Cairo, Dar al-Kutub ms 72), the theological treatise entitled Majmu`a al-rashidi dated 710/1310 (Paris, BN ms. arabe 2324), and three copies of the Jami` al-tawarikh, one in Arabic dated 714/1314 (divided Edinburgh Univ. Lib. arabic ms. 20 and the Nour Foundation, ms. 727) and two in Persian, one dated to the end of Jumada II 714/October 1314 (TKS 1653) and the other dated 3 Jumada I 717/14 July 1317 (TKS H1654).
The manuscripts commissioned by Rashid al-Din share certain physical characteristics. They are all large, with fine illumination done by a named illuminator who worked alongside the named scribe. The Koran manuscripts are written in five lines of large muhaqqaq penned freehand within double blue rulings and have a double-page certificate of commissioning at back. The other manuscripts have many more lines (up to 35) of smaller naskh ruled with a mastar, and the historical manuscripts were planned with numerous (over one hundred) illustrations.
In his endowment deed Rashid al-Din stipulated that manuscripts be copied yearly, but the surviving manuscripts of the Jami al-tawarikh suggest that this stipulation was overly optimistic and that calligraphers and painters had to cut corners to get the work done promptly. The Arabic copy was apparently fully illustrated before the scriptorium was disrupted after the patron’s execution in 718/1318, but the painters were apparently under some pressure to speed up work as the paintings towards the end of the manuscript are more simplified. Production of the first Persian copy (H1653) lagged, and the illustrations at the end of the manuscript were left blank and painted only a century later. The backlog got worse by the time of the second Persian copy (H1654), and only the first three illustratons were painted before Rashid al-Din’s untimely execution a year after copying. These manuscripts set the style for later copies of the Jami` al-tawarikh made for the Timurids (e.g., Paris, BN, supp. pers. 1113, done at Herat ca. 1430) and and the Mughals (e.g., Tehran, Nat. Lib; copy made for Akbar and completed on 27 Ramadan 1004/25 May 1596).
In the the foreword to Henri-Jean Martin’s classic study of the history of writing, Pierre Chaunu notes that “The century of the great take-off was the fourteenth, the century of Paper and the first outpouring of reading in the vernacular. The new start happened then; it took off full tilt and foreshadowed all that followed.” His word, like the book itself, were devoted to the Western tradition, but Rashid al-Din’s Jami` al-tawarikh show that the fourteenth century was a crucial time in bookmaking in the Islamic lands as well.