Speaker
Details
Speaker: Shiva Mihan, Institute for Advanced Studies
Respondent: Domenico Arturo Ingenito, UCLA
Persian manuscripts produced at the library of the Timurid Prince Baysunghur (1397-1433) in Herat are globally well-known for their exquisite aesthetic quality, and highly refined arts of the book. However, the textual content of his corpus has never been explored in previous scholarship. Comparative textual study of the prince’s manuscripts demonstrates that almost each text, from poetry to history, is a new recension. A counsel of literati and cultivated individuals closely followed the royal commands and decided on base texts and methodologies for new emendations. This paper investigates the unique editing principles and various approaches to text editing under Prince Baysunghur.
Shiva Mihan is a fellow in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Her work focuses on Perso-Islamic manuscript studies and her dissertation (Cambridge University, 2018), “Timurid Manuscript Production: The Scholarship and Aesthetics of Prince Baysunghur’s Royal Library (1420-1435)”, received the best PhD dissertation award by the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies. She is the President of the Persian Manuscripts Association.