Digital Exhibition from the Islamic Studies Library: The Persianate Literary Heritage

Thanks to Islamic Studies Liaison Librarian Sean Swanick, much of the marvellous Persian Literary Heritage exhibition that graced McLennan Library in 2014 during the 10th biennial Iranian Studies Conference is now available online. The beginnings of our collection of Persian materials pre-dates the creation of the Institute of Islamic Studies and the Islamic Studies Library in 1952. The materials in the Blacker-Wood collection were chosen by the Russian Orientalist Wladimir Ivanow, who also catalogued materials at the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal.

The digital exhibit includes 6 items from South Asia, including a portrait of the 18th-century Mughal ruler Farrukhsiyar. Then there is MS 53, depicting a young woman in profile with a strikingly curved and thick eyebrow. 

This painting is described in Glen Lowry’s unpublished 1977 catalogue as a "Miniature of a Princess" from c. 1650. (See Swanick’s page on McGill's Islamic manuscripts, including catalogues by Adam Gacek, Ivanow, and Lowry). It bears an inscription in the upper right indicating the name of the woman. If we take the third element of the name as a lām-alif in which the alif has absconded, this lady may have been called "Almās Bā’ī"—"Miss Diamond." One imagines that this could as easily be the name of a courtesan or other professional as of a princess, but perhaps Lowry had some reason for so designating her.