Messrs. Sotheby lately sold a small collection of Persian' and Indo-Persian miniatures and manuscript, the property of M. Claude Anet, the well-known French traveller, and good prices were realized for the choicer specimens.
Mr. Devgantz paid £1,550 for "Khosrau-Delhavi" (725.H.), Qiran-i-Sadain, dated 92 an.
AH), a poem by a well-known Delhi poet, illustrating the meeting of Moizz ed-din Kay Kobad, King of Bengale, with his father Nassr ed-din Boughra Khan, at Delhi, in the year 688 a.H. The decorations are of the same date as the MSS., and the cover, of chiselled leather, is a remarkable example of Persian bookbinding, "Made by Mohamed Salih, Tabriz." This manuscript came originally from the famous library founded by Shah Abbas at the mausolem of his grandfather at Ardebil. For £700 Mr. Ryer purchased "Divan," by Hafiz, with 73 quatrains of the Rubdiydt, by Omar Khayyam, in the margins, Attributed to the "greatest master of the School of Boukhara, Mirak," this manuscript is a fine specimen of Persian art as practised at the Court of Heart in the year when Shah Tahmasp was raised to the throne. The price realized recently compares badly with the manuscript's valuation at £7,000, in 1024 of the hegira. Mr. Devgantz also bought for £600, Toh-fet-el-Ehrar of Djami, imitating Makhzen el Asser of Nizami, a Sixteenth Centuhy manuscript. The total was £4,029 Tus.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.