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Muraqqa'
Imperial Mughal Albums from the Chester Beatty Library
June - October 2010
This magnificent exhibition of paintings from the land of the Taj Mahal has been on tour in the US for the past year and will now be shown at the Chester Beatty, between June and October 2010. The Library holds one of the finest collections of Indian Mughal paintings in existence, and this exhibition is a rare opportunity to see many of the best of those works. The exhibition focuses on a group of six albums (muraqqa‘s) compiled in India between about 1600 and 1658 for the Mughal emperors Jahangir and Shah Jahan (builder of the Taj Mahal). Each album folio originally consisted of a painting on one side and a panel of calligraphy on the other, all set within beautifully illuminated borders. Many of the paintings are exquisitely rendered portraits of emperors, princes and courtiers—all dressed in the finest textiles and jewels—but there are also images of court life, and of Sufis, saints, and animals. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated, multiple award-winning catalogue.
Further information here.
Heroes and Kings of the Shahnama
November 2010 - April 2011
The Shahnama, or Book of Kings, is the Iranian national epic that relates the glorious and often gory feats of the heroes and kings of pre-Islamic Iran. Derived from the oral history of Iran and compiled in written form in the eleventh century by the poet Firdawsi, the tales of the Shahnama have been popular both within and beyond the borders of Iran for more than a millennium. While many of its tales are steeped in legend and tell of the killing of dragons and divs, others derive from recorded history, such as the stories of Alexander the Great, known to Persians as Iskandar. The Library holds twenty-five complete and fragmentary copies of the Shahnama, produced in both Iran and India between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries, and folios from each of these will be on display. The exhibition, which will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, opens in November 2010 and celebrates the 1000th anniversary of the poet Firdawsi’s completion of the text in the year 1010.