THE FOURTH BOOK OF MAWLANA RUMI’S MATHNAWI-YE MA'NAVI
PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT EUROPEAN PRIVATE COLLECTION
Mughal India, 17th century

Persian manuscript on paper, 125ff. plus four flyleaves, each folio with 17ll. of black ink nasta’liq script on gold-sprinkled brown paper, the opening folio with a finely illuminated heading and a blue central column with scrolling trellis, the text in gold cloudbands, the border with sweeping floral scrolls, the text in two columns, laid on wove paper, chapter headings in gold, set within gold, black, and orange rules, bound in plain black calf endpaper and heavy tooled brown calf binding with lacquered black on gold central and corner decorations, the text panel 18cm x 7.3cm, the folio 27.5cm x 16cm.