Three Ways of Reading a Frontispiece: The Example of the Cairo Būstān

The double-page frontispiece to the manuscript of Saʿdi's Būstān transcribed for the penultimate Timurid ruler Sultan Husayn (r. 1469–1506) and now in the National Library of Egypt (Adab Farisi 22) is well-known and oft-published. Reproduced repeatedly since the turn of the twentieth century, it has become part of the canons of Persian painting, Timurid art, the oeuvre of Bihzad and his circle, masterpieces of the Cairo Library, and more. Connoisseurs and scholars have repeatedly discussed its period details. Barbara Brend, the scholar we honour in this volume, who has written so mellifluously about Persianate painting, analysed the identity and pose of several figures in it. Here I should like to continue the lengthy isnād, suggesting three ways of examining the frontispiece in the context of the manuscript to which it belongs, first structurally as the opening spread in a codex, then literarily as the introduction to a specific text, and finally, historically as a pictorial encomium to the princely patron for whom the manuscript was produced. Altogether, the article looks at three different ways of reading this and other pictorial frontispieces.