Matthew Thomas
Senior Specialist
Lot 8•
Ibrahim Hakki, Ma'rifatnameh, an encyclopaedia of cosmological subjects, copied by Dervish Muhammad bin 'Ali al-Erzurumi Ottoman Turkey, probably Erzurum, dated AH 1238/AD 1822-23
30 March 2021, 11:00 BST
London, New Bond Street£6,000 - £8,000
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Ibrahim Hakki, Ma'rifatnameh, an encyclopaedia of cosmological subjects, copied by Dervish Muhammad bin 'Ali al-Erzurumi
Ottoman Turkey, probably Erzurum, dated AH 1238/AD 1822-23
Ottoman Turkey, probably Erzurum, dated AH 1238/AD 1822-23
Ottoman Turkish manuscript on paper, 286 leaves, approximately 37 lines to the page written in naskhi script in black ink, significant words and titles picked out in red, inner margins ruled in gold, catchwords, one illuminated headpiece in colours and gold, other headings written in thuluth in white on a gold ground within coloured rectangular panels, numerous diagrams in watercolour and gold, 19 full-page, six half- or quarter-page, including a double-page map of the world, or simpler tables in black and red ink, several watercolour illustrations in a fantastic style added in the 20th Century, dark red leather with stamped central medallions, with flap, doublures of patterned paper
305 x 195 mm.
305 x 195 mm.
Footnotes
The original text was compiled by Erzurumlu Ibrahim Haqqi in 1756-57, encompassing geography, both celestial and terrestrial. The planispheric illustrations were drawn by a certain Mustafa (otherwise unknown), based on the Atlas Maior of Joan Blaes, a Dutch cartographer. Blaes reproduced the error found in his source (a Spanish chart), in which California appears as an island, and it also occurs here.
Two copies of the text, also dating to the early 19th Century, are in the British Library (MS. Or. 12964), and the Khalili Collection (see J. M. Rogers, Empire of the Sultans: Ottoman Art from the collection of Nasser D. Khalili, Geneva 1995, pp. 121-123, no. 74). This second manuscript was copied at Erzurum. Other copies of this work have appeared at auction, e.g. Sotheby's, 24th April 2013, lot 49; 22nd April 2015, lot 109; 7th October 2015, lot 264; 1st May 2019, lot 28.