An unusually large leaf from a dispersed manuscript of Firdausi's Shahnama, depicting a battle between the Iranians and the Turanians, the armies facing each other on the slopes of a rocky hillside, wearing contemporary Ottoman and Safavid military dress and using firearms Safavid Persia or Ottoman Turkey, late 16th/early 17th Century and later


gouache with some gold on paper, probably one full page of a frontispiece or finispiece, trimmed and laid down on a later sheet of paper and pasted down on card (with loss of any text verso), some retouching, later floral border and margin rules painting 333 x 240 mm.; with borders 422 x 325 mm.
|For another large full-page illustration (432 x 257 mm.), one side of a double-page illustration, depicting a raging battle between the Iranians and Turanians, from the Shahnama of Firdausi, Persia, probably Shiraz, ascribed to AH 970/AD 1562–63 (main text block) and AH 991/AD 1583–84 (extended margins), see M. D. Ekhtiar, S. Canby et al., Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2011, pp. 217–218, no. 144. For further reading on large manuscripts and dispersed folios produced in Shiraz in the late 16th Century, see L. Uluc, Turkman Governors, Shiraz Artisans and Ottoman Collectors, Istanbul 2006.