Oliver White
Head of Department
Lot 274•
Tuhfat al-mu'minin, also known as Tuhfeh-ye hakim mu'min and Tuhfeh-ye sulaymani, a medical treatise, by Mir Muhammad Mu'min Husaini Tonekaboni, known as Hakim Mu'min, the physician and pharmacist working at the court of the Safavid Shah Sulayman (reg. 1666-94) Qajar Persia, waqf dedication dated muharram 1240/August-September 1824, copied before AH 1235/AD 1819-20
23 April 2013, 10:30 BST
London, New Bond StreetSold for £3,500 inc. premium
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Tuhfat al-mu'minin, also known as Tuhfeh-ye hakim mu'min and Tuhfeh-ye sulaymani, a medical treatise, by Mir Muhammad Mu'min Husaini Tonekaboni, known as Hakim Mu'min, the physician and pharmacist working at the court of the Safavid Shah Sulayman (reg. 1666-94)
Qajar Persia, waqf dedication dated muharram 1240/August-September 1824, copied before AH 1235/AD 1819-20
Qajar Persia, waqf dedication dated muharram 1240/August-September 1824, copied before AH 1235/AD 1819-20
Persian manuscript on paper, 531 leaves, 18 lines to the page written in elegant nasta'liq script in black ink, significant words picked out or underlined in red, inner margins ruled in gold, catchwords and significant words written diagonally in wide outer margins, two illuminated headpieces with decoration in the Kashmiri style in colours and gold, contemporary floral lacquer binding, cover with central medallions and border bands decorated with floral motifs in colours and gold, doublures with central panels of crushed gold, borders with a repeating pattern of floral motif in colours and gold, lower cover detached
248 x 165 mm.
248 x 165 mm.
Footnotes
The text was composed in the name of the Shah in AH 1080/AD 1669-70. It is divided into sections on all aspects of health such as illnesses and their diagnoses, their cures, medicines, herbs, and unusually, sections on minerals, gemstones and talismanic symbols.
According to the official note on the opening page, it was given as waqf to Tabas Gilaki (a desert town between Kirman and Khurasan) by Amir 'Ali Naqi Khan, son of Muhammad Hasan Khan on muharram 1240/August-September 1824, and it bears his signature. A seal of his father on the same page shows that the manuscript had already been in his possession earlier, before 1819, when the father died, and so it must have been copied before that date. The same waqf text is written in shikasteh, most probably by the endower once in red and once in black on another two pages.
'Ali Naqi Khan of the Zangu'i Arab tribe was Governor of Tabas at the time and he is known to have accompanied Prince Muhammad Mirza (later Muhammad Shah) at his capture of Herat in 1833. (See M. Bamdad, Dictionary of National Biography of Iran, 1700-1900, vol. 2, 1966, p. 501).