SHAYBANID BUKHARA, 16TH CENTURY

Our folio finds comparable with a painting of dancing dervishes attributed to early 16th century Bukhara and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (acc.no.17.81.4; Ernst Grube, The Classical Style in Islamic Painting, Germany, 1968, p.192, no.41). Like ours the ground is a distinctive dark green colour with a silver stream running through it. Another painting which shares this feature is also in the Metropolitan Museum (acc.no.13.228.5.2; https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/455021?sortBy=Relevance&ft=Bukhara%2c+painting&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=19). That painting depicts ‘Yusuf Arriving in Egypt and leaving the ship in the Nile’ from a manuscript of Jami’s Yusuf wa Zulaykha, copied in Bukhara and dated AH 930/1523-24 AD. Again the ground is the same deep green colour peppered with accurately rendered colourful flowers. The figures too are comparable – with a high concentration of cobalt and orange robes – each with elegant gold embroidery.