AN ILLUSTRATED LEAF FROM THE CHAPTER ON THE SUPERLUNAR REGIONS IN QAZWINI'S 'AJAIB AL-MAKHLUQAT ('THE WONDERS OF CREATION'), TURKEY, OTTOMAN, 16TH CENTURY

Sotheby's London, 28 April 2004, lot 49.

The miniature shows a winged angel holding a black and a gold cloak in either hand standing above the earth, probably in order to regulate day and night.

The author al-Qazwini was born in Qazwin circa 1203 AD. By 1233 he had relocated to Damascus where he came under the influence of the mystic Ibn al-'Arabi (d.1240). He served as a qadi (judge) in the towns of Wasit and Hillah in Iraq under the last 'Abbasid caliph al-Musta'sim (r.1241-58), and was celebrated both as a geographer and as a natural historian. He wrote two principal texts, the present text The Wonders of Creation and Cosmography, and a text on geography composed in 1262. The text describes the firmament and the angels that inhabit it, the spheres and elements, meteorology, fire, thunder, the sea and its fishes and monsters, the earth and its mountains, rivers, minerals, plants, animals, birds and reptiles. Al-Qazwini cites more than a hundred sources including Aristotle, Ptoemy, Dioscorides, the Qur'an and the Torah. The earliest recorded copy dated 678 AH/1280 AD is in Staatbibl. C. arab.464 in Munich. The work was translated into Persian and Turkish, and illustrated copies were commissioned by Timurid, Safavid and Mughal rulers.