The Look of the Book assesses the role of the city of Shiraz in
Iranian book production between the early fourteenth and mid-fifteenth
centuries. It is the first detailed analysis of all aspects of the
book―illumination, codicology, illustration, calligraphy, and
binding―during this significant era when the "look of the book" was
transformed. Four periods of change are identified: the years following
1340, until the end of Injuid rule in Shiraz; the later 1350s and the
1360s, during Muzaffarid rule; the years from 1409 to 1415, when the
Timurid prince Iskandar Sultan was governor of Shiraz; and the decade
(1435-45) following the death of Ibrahim Sultan, Iskandar's cousin and
successor as governor. Although the focus is Shiraz, the author's
comparative and chronological approach to the material means production
elsewhere in Iran is also considered, while the results of the study
increase our understanding of the history and development of the arts of
the book not only in Shiraz, or even Iran as whole, but also in other
centers of the Islamic world that followed the Iranian model.
Highlights
of this book, which is heavily illustrated with exquisite illuminated
manuscript pages, are its examination of illumination, an overlooked
area of book production; the codicological aspects of the manuscripts,
including paper and text layout; and the development of nasta'liq
script. The manuscripts studied are held in more than fifty collections,
primarily those in Dublin (Chester Beatty Library), Istanbul (Topkapi
Palace Library and Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts), London (British
Library), Oxford (Bodleian Library); Paris (Bibliothèque Nationale de
France); and Washington, DC (Freer and Sackler Galleries of the
Smithsonian Institution).