An important Timurid grey schist cenotaph, Central Asia, 14th-15th century, the black...

An important Timurid grey schist cenotaph, Central Asia, 14th-15th century, the black granite carved with cartouches containing calligraphic inscriptions and designs of entwining palmettes and arabesques, the top with a square Kufic inscription, each side with architectural details, with later inscribed date

87cm x 29 x 27cm.

Provenance: Ex-private collection, Belgium acquired in 1969

Inscriptions:

To top: couplets from a ghazal of Hafiz

Geometric composition in Kufic: The name Ali repeated four times

To sides: Verses lamenting the death of a young person; the first couplet of the quatrain is a version of Sa'dis with a later inscribed date [His?] death was the year 1054AH (1644-5AD)

See Christie's 7 October 2008 Lot 150 for a slightly larger but comparative example

The form and carved decorative details on the present cenotaph are characteristic of a style developed in Herat under Timurid patronage in the second half of the fifteenth century. This cenotaph has an architectural quality that is heightened by the inclusion of a stalactice corniche that is similar in style to that on the mausoleum of Timur in Gur-i Amir in Samarqand (T.W. Lentz and G.D. Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision, Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century, Los Angeles, 1989, p.28, fig. 3).

The lush foliate details carved across the surface of this cenotaph include peonies, split-palmettes and arabesques that are stylistically comparable to those executed on other cenotaphs of the period in a variety of media, for example that of underglaze painted decoration such as on the double cenotaph of Seyyed Ala al-Din in Khiva, circa 1305 (illustrated in Soustiel and Porter 2003, p.40). The semblance of these designs corresponds to the visual language associated with the Timurids as embodied on the present example.