Imaging Music: The Representation of Music in Timurid Manuscripts by Dr Shiva Mihan

Imaging Music: The Representation of Music in Timurid Manuscripts

Dr Shiva Mihan
Curator of Islamic Collections (Persianate World)
The British Museum

This paper examines depictions of music in fifteenth-century Timurid manuscripts produced at the court of Prince Baysunghur, highlighting illustrations of musicians, instruments, and performance that reflect his patronage of music. Including rare images of female musicians, these sources shed light on gender and courtly performance practices. Read alongside contemporary texts, the images can be linked to historical figures such as the singer Yusuf Andikani and possibly ʿAbd al-Qadir Maraghi, underscoring the central role of music in the intellectual and artistic life of Baysunghur’s court.

Shiva Mihan (PhD, Cantab) is Curator of Islamic Collections (Persianate World) at the British Museum. She received her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2018, where her award-winning dissertation examined Timurid manuscript production at Baysunghur’s library in Herat. She has held prestigious post-doctoral fellowships at the Harvard Art Museums and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and taught Islamic art as Visiting Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research focuses on Persian manuscript culture, artistic patronage, and the transmission of texts in the Persianate world. She is also the founder and President of the Persian Manuscripts Association.

https://persianmanuscripts.org/