A Persian retelling of Kalila wa-Dimna, with forty miniatures

[Kalila wa-Dimna]. Kashifi, Kamal al-Din Husayn ibn 'Ali. Anwar-e Soheyli.

"The most important Persian reworking of the Indian-Middle Eastern cycle of mirror-for-princes fables known at different periods and places and in various recensions as the Pancatantra, Kalila wa Demna, and the Fables of Bidpay (Pilpay)" (Wickens 140). This beautiful Persian manuscript boasts the full fourteen chapters - illustrated with forty remarkable miniatures - of the famous collection of moral tales titled here in Persian as "Anwar-e Soheyli" (or Sohaili), penned in the 15th century by the writer, astronomer, and Sufi mystic Kamal al-Din Husayn ibn 'Ali Kashifi (1436-1504). Of Kashifi's prolific oeuvre, this is one of his best known and best-loved, especially in India.

In his prose Kashifi plays with genre, intertextuality, and the intellect of his readers. The title itself is a pun twice over: written for Kashifi's patron Sultan Hosayn Mirza Bayqara (1438-1506), the work is named after the Sultan's much-favoured vizier, Ahmed Soheyli, while also making a pun on Sohayl, the Persian name for the bright star Canopus.

The present text itself covers all fourteen chapters which normally appear in Anwar-e Soheyli, each chapter including a loose collection of animal fables (though human beings are very much also part of this animal landscape) with tales of fabulous scenes, prolifically illustrated. A given miniature might depict two geese making a tortoise fly by means of a stick held by their beaks, the terrible lion Kamgu'i and the sly jackal Fariseh deep in conversation, or a camel-rider and a venomous serpent discussing the reward of the good deeds, witnessed by a large tree. The largest and most artistically refined miniature is from the story of a bear, intent on ridding a sleeping gardener's face of flies, dashing a boulder on the latter's head.

Certainly a handsome manuscript, with spine professionally rebacked and subtle paper repairs to the lower margins of some leaves. A few instances of staining, otherwise bright and clean, with colourful and generally well-preserved miniatures throughout. An important Persian continuation of a longstanding and distinctly Middle Eastern and West Asian genre of fable-writing, beautifully presented.