PANEL FROM THE “BIRDS” FRIEZE, FROM THE MAUSOLEUM OF SHAYKH - Lot 42

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Lot n° 42
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PANEL FROM THE “BIRDS” FRIEZE, FROM THE MAUSOLEUM OF SHAYKH - Lot 42
PANEL FROM THE “BIRDS” FRIEZE, FROM THE MAUSOLEUM OF SHAYKH SOUFI NUR AL-DIN 'ABD AL-SAMAD (d. 1299–1300) IN NATANZ, IRAN, KASHAN, ILKHANID ART, 707 H./1308 Siliceous ceramic with molded decoration, enhanced with lustre, cobalt blue, and turquoise on a white background. The central panel features a monumental Qur’anic inscription set against a dense network of vegetal scrollwork punctuated by birds perched or depicted in pairs; in the upper frieze, the birds’ heads are dotted. A narrow lower frieze bears the word “Allâh” in repeated Kufic script. Condition: a repaired fracture and retouching to the decoration. The work is set in an old wooden frame bearing several old labels, including a large label indicating a storage location and a number: “Garde-meuble Tailleur (Fils), 3508.” Dimensions: 37 x 37 cm. Text: Surah 76 al-Insân (Mankind), part of verse 13. Provenance: private collection, Paris; acquisition by the current owner from a direct descendant of Mr. Maurice Buffet, painter (1909–2000), not documented. The reverse side retains old labels and inscriptions, one of which refers to a former art storage facility: Société Tailleur Fils – transport and storage (Saint-Denis), a business that closed on December 25, 1990. This tile comes from a remarkable epigraphic frieze that adorned the interior of the Natanz complex, commissioned by Zayn al-Din al-Mastori, a high-ranking official of Sultan Uljaytu, in homage to the famous Sufi master Shaykh Nur al-Din ‘Abd al-Samad, who died in 699 H./1299–1300. The latter belonged to one of the two major Sufi orders of Ilkhanid Iran. Set against a background of stars and crosses, the frieze encircled the burial chamber. Its monumental inscription quotes verses from Sura 76 of the Quran, al-Insân (“Mankind”), which focus in particular on the rewards promised to believers in Paradise. The precise dating of this ensemble is based on a panel preserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (inv. 12.44), which bears the date Shawwal 707 H., corresponding to March–April 1308 (McClary and Grbanovic, 2021). The dispersal of the tiles into Western collections began as early as the 19th century, when several museums acquired significant fragments of this collection. The records of what would become the Victoria and Albert Museum thus note the acquisition, in 1876, of 43 tiles from a mosque in “Natenz [sic]” (Miroudot, 2012). These acquisitions were made through Europeans then stationed in Iran, with the consent of the Iranian authorities (Masuya, 2000). This history explains why the frieze is no longer in its original architectural context. Among the panels identified to date is a tile housed at the Granet Museum in Aix-en-Provence (inv. 942.1.65), bearing the inscription “wa kataba thâlika fî,” “He wrote this in,” thus completing the inscription on the Metropolitan Museum’s tile to form the section that allows us to date the frieze’s creation. This tile from the Granet Museum was photographed and published by Anaïs Leone (Leone, January 15, 2025, Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, fig. 9). Now completely dismantled and scattered, the frieze was already mentioned by Count Julien de Rochechouart in his 1867 memoirs, following his trip to Natanz in 1862–1863 (Masuya, 2000). According to Anaïs Leone, the room’s perimeter, approximately 22 m, allows us to estimate that nearly sixty tiles originally made up the inscription setting out the first eighteen verses of Sura 76 (Leone, January 15, 2025. Host: Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online). Several dozen fragments have been identified in various museums, notably at the Louvre; the tile bearing the last word of verse 18 belongs to this group (Louvre AD 7638 a). The Louvre also houses the panel immediately following our tile (Louvre AD 7638 e), as shown in our proposed reconstruction of this section of the frieze. Other tiles are now held in major public collections, including the British Museum in London, the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, the Hetjens Museum in Düsseldorf, and the MAK Museum in Vienna. Finally, it is worth noting a panel located at the beginning of the frieze, inscribed with the opening lines of the basmala, which was listed by Sotheby’s on October 13, 2004, as lot 103. A recent reconstruction of this frieze, bringing together all the panels identified worldwide, is announced by Anaïs Leone in her January 2025 article: Leone and McClary, “From the Shrine to the Museum: New Perspectives on the Qur’anic Bird’s Frieze from ʿA
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