Page from the Manafi al-Hayavan c. 14th century
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ink, color-on-paper
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water colours
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This 14th-century page from the *Manafi al-Hayavan* (Benefits of Animals) is a vibrant example of Islamic manuscript illustration. The page features two graceful deer, one with large antlers, amidst a lush floral backdrop. The text, written in Arabic, likely discusses the nature and characteristics of the animals depicted. Such illuminated manuscripts were valuable tools for education and entertainment in the Islamic world.
Comments
This folio depicting two stags comes from a dispersed copy of a medical text titled Manafi al-Hayavan (On the Uses Derived from Animals); a Christian doctor who was a court physician to the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad wrote the original in Arabic in a.d. 941. In the late thirteenth century, the Mongol ruler of Iran and Iraq, Ghazan Khan, ordered a copy of the Manafi to be translated into Persian. Because this leaf was copied from that volume shortly after the Mongol conquest of Persia, there is a strong Chinese influence in the stylized clouds above the stags and in the treatment of the flowers.
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