Scholarly gem with an unfortunate flaw

This book is something rather unusual -- a detailed description of another book. The book it describes is a hand-made, lavishly illustrated, deluxe item completed in Lahore in the late 16th century. This priceless work of

art from the Mughal period (this spelling, rather than Mogul, is used throughout the book) now resides in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, New Jersey.

The book contains a classic work of Persian-language poetry, the Khamsa of Amir Khusraw. Khamsa means "five" in Arabic, and the work is so named because it consists of a set of five verse tales. It was written in Delhi at the very end of the 13th century. So for someone brought up in the English literary tradition, it might be helpful to think of it as a poem written by a contemporary of Chaucer being copied and re-illustrated during the

lifetime of Shakespeare.

Amir Khusraw's Khamsa had been copied, often in lavishly illustrated editions such as this one, many times before. But, as this book's author points out, the last two decades of the 16th century saw the peak of the art of Mughal hand-made book production. This copy of the poem is the finest in existence. No finer version of this particular classic was produced either before or after the one now housed in Baltimore.

The reason why this account is so fascinating is that it tells in meticulous detail how this book collector's treasure was produced. And to the layman it's extraordinary how much is actually known.

It demonstrates, for instance, how the calligrapher who wrote out the text -- and he was the finest calligrapher of his day in the entire Muslim world -- took about 24 months to copy out the complete poem. This has been calculated

by studying a similar illustrated book, also called Khamsa but by a different poet, Nizami, now in the British Library. That book's calligrapher noted down with a minute number how far he'd got at the end of each day.

These tiny numbers are still visible on the pages of the book, and it's assumed they represent days because they go up to 30 (or 31) and then begin again.

But at one point somebody must have complained that this practice impaired the perfection of the final product, because after a certain point the numbers cease, and in their place, at approximately the same intervals, can be detected a small red dot. From these marks taken together scholars are able to estimate how fast a professional calligrapher, intent in this kind of immensely prestigious task, worked.

Everything about a product such as this was as fine as it was possible to make it -- the paper, the writing, the illustrations, the border decoration, the binding, and so on. All had to be of an unsurpassable excellence.

And of course, since it was first produced the book has also had a history. Most importantly, 10 of its original 31 paintings have been cut out. What is surprising to discover is that the whereabouts of eight of these missing pages is known -- they were presented to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1913. These are illustrated here alongside their fellows still contained in Baltimore's book. Consequently this new publication re-unites long-separated elements of a great treasure. Two of the paintings that were cut out are still lost.

The text is merely summarized -- only the pages containing major illustrations are reproduced. The poem is a conscious imitation of Nizami's Khamsa mentioned above, long considered the pinnacle of all Persian literature.